#Dutch Reformed leaders

[minnesotafollower]

World Communion Sunday at Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church Celebrates Its Global Partners

October 1 was the Sunday for Minneapolis Westminster Presbyterian Church’s joyous celebration of World Communion Sunday and its global partnerships in Cuba, Cameroon and Palestine.[1] The Calls to Worship The three Calls to Worship were provided in their native languages by Joseph Mukete (a Westminster member from Cameroon), Reinerio Miguel Arce (a Cuban pastor involved with our Cuban partners…

[itsallpoliticsstupid]

So talk of the election is going to rumble on for a long time, and this means I'm going to be thinking about it a lot. Because I studied American Politics and this is something that is of interest to me, even though I am now more focused on my work in Russia.

And the more I think about the less surprising this result gets. Because if you look at global trends across many Western Democracies (and some Latin American) there seems to be a global shift towards the right Politically.

People are growing increasingly concerned with issues such as immigration and cost of living, both which the right are traditionally seen to give more positive ideas of lowering than to the left.

You just have to look and it can be seen around Europe:

The European Union Elections - A higher proportion of right wing parties gaining seats

Austrian Legislative Election - The FPO (Freedom Party of Austria), winning the most seats and the popular vote.

Dutch Elections - The PVV (Party for Freedom), another right win party winning the most seats.

Italian Prime Minister - Georgia Meloni, the leader of the right wing Brothers of Italy Political Party.

France - If it wasn't for some Political dealings and candidates dropping out of some areas to create a left wing alliance, it is likely that the National Front would have made significant gains and may even be the ruling party.

Even in the UK, the Reform Party gained 14% of the vote share, even though they only gained 1% of seats. I do believe without them we would have had a closer election result than we did.

I mean these are just a few examples. But it notes that there is a rise of the right wing across the world. So really, this result shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody.

[stephensmithuk]

The Boer War (1899-1902)

If the 1897 Diamond Jubilee is seen as the zenith of the British Empire, the Boer War is arguably the start of its collapse.

There are two conflicts with the name "Boer War", of which the second is by far the better known.

"Boer" is Afrikaans for farmer. The two wars are known as "the Freedom Wars" in the Afrikaans language and "the South African War" in the country itself.

More specifically, the Boers were Dutch farmers who emigrated from the Dutch and then British-controlled Cape Colony north and east into the Transvaal region that is now north-east South Africa, to get away from what they saw as an oppressive government. As well as the fact that the British abolished slavery, which they wanted to keep. So yeah. They were more specifically known as "Trekboers" or travelling farmers. Trek is of course where we get the term Star Trek from.

The first conflict from 1880-1881 started after a farmer refused to pay an illegally inflated tax, had his wagon seized - and his friends then assaulted the auction.

The Boers, better equipped, better trained and far more experienced at shooting than their British opponents, managed to defeat the latter in three major engagements. Unwilling to become engaged in a major conflict, London negotiated a peace deal that gave the South African Republic effectively full control over internal affairs, although the British retained control of external relations. This was the first time the British had lost a war to rebels since the American War of Independence.

Then gold was found in the region and an influx of immigrants, mostly British, turned up, seeking their fortune. Johannesburg emerged as a major community overnight. This caused a lot of tensions, even more so when the government in Praetoria (the SAR capital) denied the 'uitlanders' civil rights.

In 1896, Cape Colony Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes authorised Leander Starr Jameson to conduct a raid into the territory with the aim of triggering a revolution. The raid was badly botched, failed and caused massive embarrassment to the British government, especially when Kaiser Wilhelm II sent a congratulatory telegram to the SAR government... and telegrams showing Rhodes' involvement were found. Jameson, while lionised in the press, spent 15 months in Holloway for the raid.

Shortly after this, the Second Matabele War saw the British have to deal with an uprising by the Ndebele and Shona peoples in what is now Zimbabwe. They defeated it, but with many losses on both sides.

Tensions between the British and the Boers continued to grow after the Jameson Raid; the uitlanders did not see their rights improve, the Boers mistreated the African population, and a lot of the British establishment thought it would be an easy victory. The generals, for their part, did not.

The SAR had acquired high quality weaponry from Germany and France, including bolt-action Mauser rifles. The British Army for its part was in dire need of reform.

The war broke out in 1899 after an ultimatum from SAR leader Paul Kruger for the British to withdraw their forces from the border. The SAR had allied with the Orange Free State by this point.

The Boers had formed civilian militias called "commandos". They launched an invasion of the Natal and Cape Colony, soon putting British garrisons under siege. One notable such siege was at Mafeking, where the British commander was one Robert Baden-Powell, whose use of scouting, along the deception to make his defences look better than they were allowed his force to hold out for 217 days until relieved. He would later use his experience in scouting to form, well, the Scouting Movement.

After a series of major reverses, it was clear the British were going to need to send major reinforcements, recruiting a lot of volunteers - the biggest overseas force Britain had sent to date. They also removed their local commanders and put new ones in.

The sieges were lifted and Praetoria was captured on 5 June 1900 - at which point the Boers (along with foreign volunteers) moved to guerilla warfare, something that they were very adept at, in stark contrast to the British. However, harassment is not the same as taking and holding ground.

Both forces tried to minimise the involvement of people of colour due to fear of what would happen if they armed Africans, but personnel shortages meant they ended up being involved anyway, usually in supporting roles. Mahatma Gandhi, who was a civil rights activist there, formed a corps of volunteer stretcher bearers from the Indian population.

Realising that they were only controlling the territory that they were physically in, the British changed their tactics.

Firstly, they built fortified blockhouses and armoured trains to control their supply routes.

Secondly, the British adopted a "scorched earth" policy; they rounded up Boer and African civilians, placing them in concentration camps, while also systematically destroying farms, crops etc. that the Boer forces could use to supply themselves.

The Spanish had used concentration camps in Cuba earlier in the 19th century, but this was a much wider use. With little or no soap, along with dirty water, disease swept through the overcrowded camps, with over 46,000 dying in them, including a quarter of the Boers in them - African numbers interned were not properly counted. Emily Hobhouse exposed the horrific conditions, and the matter was taken up by domestic politicians. A government commission led by Millicent Fawcett then recommended major improvements, which were largely implemented and brought down the death rate, but the damage had been done by this point.

The brutal tactics were sadly effective; the Boers were beginning to give up. However, the British themselves were running out of time and money, so gave them a generous settlement in the 1902 Treaty of Vereeniging; while the SAR and Orange Free State would be absorbed into the British Empire, Dutch could be used in schools and courts, there would be a general amnesty and reconstruction aid would be given.

Self-government was also promised and granted; it was decided that the issue of black enfranchisement would not be discussed until then - and full enfranchisement would not come until 1993.

The war was controversial in the UK; it was opposed by the opposition Liberal Party. Lord Salisbury called a snap election in 1900 and won with a slightly reduced majority. The next election in 1906 was a massive defeat for them though.

The conflict also exposed the dire state of British public health - with up to 40% of volunteers for the war being rejected on health grounds. This spurred the creation of the National Insurance system.

Arthur Conan Doyle volunteered for military service in the conflict; but was turned down due to his age. Instead, he served for three months in a field hospital and then wrote two books about the conflict. The second one, defending Britain's involvement in the war, was felt by Doyle to be the work that got him his knighthood in 1902.

The war was also notable for one journalist who after being captured by the South Africans, managed to escape from behind enemy lines, using the publicity to get into Parliament on his second attempt. His name was Winston Churchill.

At 2022 values, the war cost Britain over £19.9 billion.

They had also had 26,092 soldiers killed to the Boers 6,189. As with all wars at this time, disease was the biggest killer.

[3rdeyeblaque]

On November 26th we venerate Elevated Ancestor & Hoodoo Saint Mama Sojourner Truth on the 140th anniversary of her passing 🕊

An abolitionist, Womens’ Rights activist, & itinerant evangelist, Mama Sojourner Truth truly lived up to her name as one of the fiercest, relentless, & unstoppable pro-abolitionist voices of the 19th Century.

Given the name, Isabella, at birth, Mama Truth was born around 1797 to Dutch-speaking enslaved parents on Colonel Ardinburgh Hurley's plantation in Ulster County, NY. The actual date of her birth remains unknown. At the age of 9 she was sold away from her parents. She was passed through the hands of several slavers across NY State before ending up with the Dumonts. As was the case for most enslaved folks in the rural North, Isabella was forcibly isolated from other slaves and suffered physical & sexual abuse at the hands of the Dumonts.

Alone in the nearby woods, she found peace. Here, she'd speak to Spirit/God. Inspired by her many conversations with Spirit, one day in 1826, she walked away from Dumont Farm to freedom. Although the journey tempted her to return to the Dumonts, she stayed the course after she was struck by a vision of a man she identified as Jesus, during which she felt "baptized in the Holy Spirit," and thus gained the strength & confidence to push on. Like countless Ancestors before her, Isabella called on Spirit & supernatural forces for the power to survive her conditions.

Eventually, she married & birthed 5 children. On July 4, 1827, the NY State Legislature emancipated the enslaved, including Isabella & her children. Yet the Dumont family who "owned" her, refused to comply. Before dawn the next morning, with her youngest baby cradled in her arms, she sought refuge 5 miles away with an abolitionist family. During her time there, she converted to Pentecostal and joined their local Methodist church.

She later then moved again, this time with one of her eldest sons, Peter, in NYC wherein by day she worked as a live-in domestic. Here she found & joined a religious cult called, The Kingdom. It's leader, Matthias, beat Isabella and forced her to take on the heaviest workload. Soon thereafter she became a Pentecostal preacher. Her faith and preaching along with her life story as an emancipated slave drew the attentions of abolitionists & women's rights crusaders. Her speeches were not political by nature. They were based on her unique interpretation - as a woman and a former slave -of the Christian Bible.

On June 1st 1863, Sojourner Truth was born. Isabella took on this new name for herself as she headed East to, “exhort the people to embrace Jesus, and refrain from sin". She lived in a utopian community called, The Northampton Association for Education & Industry, which was devoted to transcending class, race, & gender. She preached at camp meetings for a few years before the community was dissolved. Even though the community lasted less than five years, many highly influential & reform-minded individuals visited the Northampton community; including prolific abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison.

Through these connections, she began to speak at public events on behalf of slave abolition and women’s rights. Eventually, this compelled her infamous 1851,“Ar’nt I A Woman” speech at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, OH. This was a significant moment in the sociopolitical climate of the country at the time because, for the first time for most, "slave" became equated to women & "woman" became equated to Black. She became increasingly involved on the issue of Women's suffrage, but eventually separated her voice from leaders such as Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton one they asserted that they would not support the Black vote if Women were not also granted the same right.

In 1857, Mama Truth purchased a house with the help of friends in a small Spiritualist community called, Harmonia, near Battle Creek, MI. Here she lived thriving the years of supporting hwrself thrift paid speaking events, selling photographs of herself, publishing her book titled, "Narrative of Sojourner Truth" which was written by an amanuensis, as she was illiterate.

Once the Civil War began, Mama Truth pushed for the inclusion of Blacks in the Union Army, which was not intitially the case. She then poured her energy into gathering food & clothing supplies for the underserved volunteer regiments of Black Union soldiers. This is when the plight freed slaves captured her attention, as many of whom were living in refugee camps in Washington D.C.. Mama Truth embarked on a round-trip journey from her home near Battle Creek,MI to D.C. to meet with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss the conditions of the freedmen refugees in D.C. & across the North.

After the Civil War, she championed the idea of a colony for freed slaves out West where they could galvanize their desires to become self-reliant. Mama Truth garnered numerous signatures for her petition urging the U.S. Government to provide land for this endeavor. Although she presented this petition to then President Ulysses S. Grant, her mission never materialized. Nevertheless, in the Fall of 1879, a large migration of Southern freedmen ventured westward to start begin life anew. Mama Truth saw this as God's Divine Plan for our people. Despite her old age, Mama Truth traveled to Kansas to help them. Four years later, Mama Sojourner Truth passed away at her home near Battle Creek, MI. She was believed to be 86.

"How came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? But the women are coming up blessed by God and few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk an' a buzzard." - Sojourner Truth @ the 1851 Ohio Women's Convention.

We pour libations & give 💐 today as we celebrate Mama Truth her selfless service and pioneering vision for the freedom & self-determination of our people. May her life be a reminder of: the power of stillness & deep meditation, to lead with Spirit, & the grit of perseverance that's alive in our blood.

Offering suggestions: woodland soil, water, Pentecostal prayers/ scripture, read/share her speeches & written words.

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

[mariacallous]

What Geert Wilders Wants in Europe

On Nov. 22, Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) won the most seats in the House of Representatives following national elections in the Netherlands. On the same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban gave a keynote speech in Zürich at the invitation of the conservative magazine Die Weltwoche. The latter event offers a key to understanding the former. Orban offered a preview of what Wilders wants to do with Europe.

Wilders, who has earned the right to try to form a governing coalition with several center-right parties that have already rolled out the red carpet for him, has repeatedly said in the past that he wants to take his country out of the European Union. The PVV program calls for a referendum on “Nexit.” But like other far-right politicians in Europe, Wilders has understood the lessons of Brexit: Countries standing alone in this turbulent world marginalize and weaken themselves, so instead of leaving the EU, it would be better to stay and change it from the inside. This is exactly the scenario Orban sketched out in Zürich.

For starters, Orban apologized to the audience because it had to put up with him, the leader of a small country, while in these challenging times it had deserved a speech by a real leader like Konrad Adenauer or Helmut Kohl—politicians who had ruled postwar Germany for years with a steady moral and political compass, shaping Christian democracy in Europe. But alas, Orban continued, Europe is in decline. It does not have politicians of that caliber anymore. It has lost its grip on the world because it is ruled by bureaucrats infected with the liberal-progressive bug, not by true politicians. If we want to stop this decline, he said, “we must return to classical European political and leadership culture.” This would mean national leaders taking the helm in Brussels, from now on treating European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as “our employee, our paid employee, whose job it is to carry out what we decide.”

Wilders, whose wife is Hungarian, is close to Orban. He has visited him many times. He knows a large majority of the Dutch do not support a Nexit. Eighty percent think membership is beneficial for the country, which is higher than the European average of 72 percent. None of his possible center-right coalition partners advocate an exit from the EU. Moreover, like Orban, Wilders considers it unwise that the United Kingdom did not just leave the EU but also the single market. Orban told his Swiss audience that decisions taken in Brussels directly affect Switzerland as a participant in the single market, without Bern having any say in those decisions. All the more reason to stay and shape those decisions from the inside. For him, national sovereignty is key, and this would be better served by staying in the EU.

When it comes to Europe, sovereignty is also a key word in the PVV program. “Intensive cooperation between countries does not need a political union like the EU,” the program states. It calls for a smaller EU budget and the usage of opt-outs; for example, in the fields of asylum and migration. On election night, on television, Wilders mentioned the Dublin agreement (on asylum and migration) as a positive piece of EU regulation he wants to stick to. If European regulation is not good, he added, “we can always change it to make it better.” This did not sound at all like someone who wants to leave the EU. On the contrary, it sounded like someone who stays in to grab the steering wheel.

In fact, Orban is showing him the way. Orban currently is playing out several trump cards in Brussels. The European Commission is refusing to pay him around 30 billion euros in European subsidies, because those funds are tied to requirements connected to the rule of law and anti-corruption. Some cosmetic reforms notwithstanding, Orban is doing nothing to meet those requirements. Now, Orban is taking revenge. He keeps blocking Sweden’s accession to NATO. At a European summit in December, European government leaders are supposed to decide whether or not to start formal accession talks with Ukraine. In a letter last week, Orban announced that he does not want a decision yet. He is also threatening to block European financial and military assistance to Ukraine—50 billion euros over the next few years, plus joint arms purchases through the European Peace Facility. Finally, Orban has signaled that if he does not get his billions, he will try to prevent the reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission in 2024.

Meanwhile, he ordered posters to be put up all over Hungary depicting von der Leyen and Alex Soros—the son of George Soros and new leader of the Open Society Foundations he founded—with the text, “Let’s not dance to their tunes.” He has also organized a (nonbinding) national consultation on Europe, with 11 rather suggestive questions. One segment about EU financial assistance to Ukraine reads as follows: “They are asking Hungary for additional support [for Ukraine] even as our country has not received the EU funds due to it.” One of the possible answers says: “We should not pay more to support Ukraine until we have received the money we are owed [by the EU].”

Like Orban, many far-right politicians in Europe have concluded that now is not the time to leave the EU. Even a large country like the United Kingdom has lost influence since Brexit. The economy took a beating, immigration has doubled, hedge funds are buying up the country. Moreover, potential trade agreements with third countries have been revealed to be worse than the ones the U.K. had through the EU, with powerful countries like India or Australia taking the opportunity to squeeze concessions out of London they never managed to get from the EU. As former Prime Minister John Major noted in a lecture in 2020, the U.K. is a second-class power that has chosen to become more poor and more powerless—with the slogan “taking back control” more applicable to Europe than to the U.K.

It is no coincidence that both the U.K. and Switzerland are seeking rapprochement with the EU at the moment. The EU’s waiting room is full of candidate countries. Many countries in the EU’s orbit have discovered that with regional powers like Russia and Turkey bullying everyone at will, being part of a larger group can protect them from being eaten raw before breakfast.

The mantra of Europe’s nationalists used to be, “We lose sovereignty in the European Union, so let’s leave the European Union.” Now, many realize they actually gain sovereignty by being part of it. Figures like Orban suddenly emphasize the advantages of the European single market and other benefits such as cheap, common vaccines or the power to collectively discipline multinational companies such as Google or Microsoft.

If anybody embodies this U-turn on Europe, it’s Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni. The minute she took power last year, she started investing in Europe in a way no one had thought possible. She suddenly became supportive of the euro and European defense, and got herself constructively involved in the search for a better EU asylum and migration system. Only on environmental policy and cultural issues has she remained arch-conservative.

France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, and Austria’s Herbert Kickl, like Wilders, all seem to realize that—contrary to what Orban says—EU member states already have almost all of the power in Brussels. And that if they manage to get themselves elected nationally, like Orban, they can actually play with that power to their advantage. Like him, they can inflate their position by threatening to use a veto now and then and take everybody hostage. They can open their doors, like Hungary, to those seeking a foothold in Europe in order to undermine it from within. Moreover, they can force the Bundeskanzleramt and the Elysée to finally pay attention. In short, EU membership provides leverage. It is a tool that makes national leaders larger than they would otherwise be.

This is the cynical Europe that politicians like Orban, Le Pen, Salvini, and Wilders are working on. Next weekend, at a conference of Salvini’s far-right European parliamentary group in Florence, they will be tuning their violins again.

Far-right parties used to rant on the national podium against the EU and “unelected Eurocrats” in Brussels, pushing narrow national interests—and, as a result, often clashing among themselves. Those differences are now increasingly overshadowed by the new prominence of some of their favorite themes: security, defense, migration, and border control. The far right no longer just speaks on behalf of the nation against Europe, Hans Kundnani of Chatham House recently wrote; it is now starting to speak on behalf of Europe. This “ethnoregionalism,” as he calls it, is characterized by a rhetoric that focuses on the idea of an endangered “European civilization.”

Indeed, the “decline of Europe” is becoming a common theme for far-right parties. In Zürich, Orban mentioned Europe’s inability to exercise “autonomous and sovereign action” several times. Europe, he said, is losing its way in the world. Then, he posed as its savior—in the footsteps of political giants like Adenauer and Kohl.

The fact that Orban now positions himself in a center-right tradition, not on the far right, is not accidental. It implies that the dam between the center right and the far right, which has been in place for decades, has broken. In many countries, the center right is copying the far-right discourse, making it mainstream. In the Netherlands, it was the center-right VVD—Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s party—that made the PVV electable by opening the door to cooperation. The same is happening in Austria, where the far-right FPÖ has overtaken the center-right ÖVP as the more popular party, with elections scheduled for next fall. In Belgium, which holds elections in June, a similar dynamic could play out. In France, the center-right Republicans are now more radical than the far-right National Rally—and a lot smaller, too. Meanwhile, in the European Parliament, the conservative family that has been a powerful bulwark against political extremism since World War II is equally shifting to the right. It votes down some of the Green Deal climate laws it previously supported; it wants to close borders; and it is getting increasingly vocal in opposing social-justice issues.

With all this happening, far-right politicians like Wilders have fewer reasons than ever to leave the EU. As Orban said in Zürich, “Hungary is not the black sheep but the first swallow, and … we look forward to the others.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kiera Butler at Mother Jones (06.11.2024):

During the contentious confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, a self-appointed Christian apostle named Dutch Sheets issued an urgent call for prayer on his website. Sheets is a leader in an enigmatic charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which calls the faithful to fight a spiritual war for Christian control of the United States government. He urged his readers to ask God to grant them “a majority of Justices who are Constitutionalists, literalists (meaning they believe the Constitution is to be taken literally, exactly as it is written) and who are pro-life.” He added, “Let’s also boldly ask Him for another vacancy on the Court soon—I feel strongly in my spirit another is coming quickly. We should be offensive in our prayers, not just defensive and reactionary.”

Apostles, prayer offensives, spiritual messages—by most standards, Sheets’ approach to politics would be considered highly eccentric, to put it mildly. Yet among adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation, the idea that God was involved in anointing justices had already gained traction. Another influential apostle, a Texas-based, self-described “strategist, futurist, and compelling communicator” named Lance Wallnau, declared in a 2018 broadcast that the accusations of rape against Kavanaugh were a “spiritual attack.” The previous year in a YouTube video, apostle and Trump campaign adviser Frank Amedia recounted how, “at 3:30 in the morning, the Lord showed me a broom going up and down the pillars of the Supreme Court building.” The message was clear: God wanted to sweep out the old justices—especially the liberal ones—to make room for new Christian ones. In the midst of the chaos surrounding Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination, the apostles’ visions of a Christian Supreme Court didn’t get much mainstream attention—until they did. Over the last few years, the Christian nationalist movement has gained political prominence, as its influential members have sought to make the case for an explicitly Christian society in public schools, social policy, and even in Congress, led by the ultraconservative and devout House speaker Mike Johnson.

Against this cultural backdrop, calls for a godly Supreme Court have moved beyond the echo chamber of the far-right fringe. Last month, the New York Times broke a series of stories about flags displayed at the homes of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Outside of Alito’s main residence was an upside-down American flag, a symbol associated with the effort to overturn the 2020 US presidential election. At his vacation home in New Jersey, the Times’ Jodi Kantor later reported, was an “Appeal to Heaven” flag showing a lone pine tree, an old icon that had been revived by none other than Dutch Sheets. (As it turned out, the flag belonged to Alito’s wife, Martha Ann.) Leonard Leo, the deep-pocketed conservative kingmaker who has extended his largesse to several Supreme Court justices and their families, has also flown the “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his home in Maine, Rolling Stone recently reported. Perhaps more troubling than the flags, though, is that the idea of promoting a Christian nation seems to be seeping into some of the justices’ legal arguments. Elliot Mincberg, an attorney and Supreme Court researcher at the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, has documented ways in which some members of the Court espouse the popular evangelical belief that Christians are being persecuted and therefore must be defended. “The far-right majority of Court is very much in the same view as the New Apostolic Reformation folks about religion, about government,” he says. “And, frankly, about the hostility of government to religion.”

[...] One common misconception about the New Apostolic Reformation is that it is a Protestant denomination, like Baptists or Presbyterians. When I first started researching this movement, I googled “New Apostolic Reformation church near me,” naively thinking that I could pop into a service and perhaps ask a pastor to explain the sect. What I quickly discovered, though, is that there is no single leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, no annual conference, nor any website with its statements of belief. Rather, the movement is vast and amorphous, a network of various individual prophets and apostles overseeing their own ministries and issuing prophetic declarations as they go along. It’s safe to say that many people who attend a church whose leaders dabble in the theology promoted by the New Apostolic Reformation have never heard of it. The movement came out of the older and more well-known tradition of Pentecostalism, whose adherents believe that God grants some believers the ability to perform miracles and speak in tongues. The term “New Apostolic Reformation” was coined in the 1990s by an influential evangelical writer named C. Peter Wagner, though the term didn’t get much national attention until a few decades later.

In 2011, National Public Radio’s Terry Gross interviewed a scholar of religion about the movement and referred to Wagner as its “leading architect.” In a rebuttal piece for the Christian publisher Charismatic News, Wagner emphasized that he was not the movement’s leader—because it had none. Rather, he said, it was a coming together of several sects that shared a belief that God appointed apostles and prophets. He noted that it was the duty of Christians to engage in spiritual warfare to establish “kingdom-minded people in every one of the Seven Mountains: Religion, Family, Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, and Business so that they can use their influence to create an environment in which the blessings and prosperity of the Kingdom of God can permeate all areas of society.”  This doctrine—sometimes known as the Seven-Mountain Mandate—is a central tenet in the New Apostolic Reformation. Many of the most prominent apostles today—Texas business consultant Lance Wallnau, for instance, as well as Korean-American Pastor Ché Ahn of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California—regularly preach about its importance. Today, estimates of the number of people whose churches are influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation vary widely, from 3 million to 33 million. Because of the movement’s laser focus on starting a spiritual war to Christianize America, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently called the New Apostolic Reformation “the greatest threat to US democracy that you have never heard of.”

One other distinguishing feature of the New Apostolic Reformation is the belief that God is still communicating directly with people through modern-day prophets, who preach about the messages directly from God that they receive, often in dreams. Since 2016, many of the most publicized prophesies have concerned former president Trump, whom they see as chosen by God. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag that Dutch Sheets popularized was flown by many attendees at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021; a few months before, Sheets told his followers that the results of the presidential election were “going to be overturned and President Trump is going to be put back in office for four years.” In 2022, Sheets said that Trump had told him in a dream that he would be a “political martyr” because, he had said, loosely quoting the Bible, “‘God has put the tools in me to tear down, root up, and confront the system.’”

[...] In March, Jauregui instructed his followers to “[p]ray that the Lord would be glorified through the remainder of the Supreme Court session and accompanying decisions.” Some Christian groups are doing more than praying; they’re filing amicus briefs— documents submitted by people outside of a given case who believe their expertise may help the justices in their deliberations. The briefs can be influential. In a landmark ruling last year on affirmative action in higher education, for example, legal scholars noted that a brief from the US military strongly influenced the justices to exempt military academies from the new rules. Previously, those who wanted to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court had to obtain permission from lawyers on either side of the case in question. That requirement was dropped in early 2023; now anyone can file, as long as their lawyer is a member of the US Supreme Court bar. The amicus floodgates then opened, and included in the onslaught of briefs for the current roster of cases were some whose authors had explicitly Christian Nationalist ties. Condemned USA submitted a brief in support of President Trump in the immunity case. Describing its mission as “preserving your rights and freedoms by defending against a weaponized system of justice for all American citizens and future generations,” it is led by January 6th insurrectionist Treniss Evans, who has appeared at live and virtual events with New Apostolic Reformation prophets. Another brief in support of Trump came from the Christian Family Coalition, a Florida nonprofit that says it is “intensely involved in the political process to secure its goals in the public interest.” Among its current projects is advocating for chaplains in Florida’s public schools.

The Mother Jones piece on SCOTUS and Christian Nationalism’s harmful influence on the court is a must-read.

[spinnysocks]

i've been sucked into a RDR2 fixation at the same time as my Lion Guard one. naturally, my mind crossed em over and BOOM! i present: The Outlanders in a human au where they're COWBOYS!!! buckle up >:)

also you don't have to know anything about rdr2 for this au! it's based loosely on some of the events and dynamics of the game, but i mostly wanted to develop a cool human au :3

under the cut cuz long post!

setting things up:

jasiri takes the role of dutch essentially. she is the leader of the "gang", as i'm gonna call it! although she was supposed to be head of the Hyena family, she and madoa rejected the town lifestyle and started their own together, the 'cowboy' life i suppose haha. their motto is something like 'Free, but Good'. their original gang (jasiri's clan in canon) has changed a bit over the years as the members slowly joined, and some died - the two of them have looked after wema and tunu together ever since their mother passed away

as the cowboy life appears pretty sketchy to most of the prideland townsfolk, jasiri and madoa started helping people wherever they could, however big or small. they gained the trust of the towns and started to move on to harsher parts, a desert called the Outlands. eventually, their smaller jobs transformed into the much bigger and more impactful goal of trying to help/see the good side of the land's notorious gangs. jasiri realised that's what she wanted overall - to help people, even if they hurt others, and hopefully change their ways. she wanted to help them live "Free but Good". obviously janja's gang was her first target....

janja's had a rough life. his mother and her infamous gang dropped off the face of the earth one day, so he and his friends were raised by mzingo's gang. seeing it as their means to survival, janja led his gang in town raids, stealing whatever they needed, even if it sometimes ended in the gang getting hurt or killing townsfolk. though it took a lotta standoffs between them, jasiri eventually got them to see eye-to-eye. she showed him how she was surviving without the need to kill innocent people, and with time they became the first gang she reformed! janja reminisces a lot about when he led his gang, but he wouldn't change his new life for anything, and he would defend his new gang till the end

mzingo and his gang followed janja's joining. it didn't take them much convincing- despite a few conflicting moral values- as it was a hard time even in the towns and they were pretty much going to starve without jasiri's help. the former Vulture gang members kinda work as spies for jasiri, specialising in being swift and able to spy from high vantage points on horseback. i'd say jasiri and mzingo have a decent friendship and work pretty well together on strategy; mzingo likes being able to put his brain to use and jasiri likes him not using his questionable strategies to kill people lol

the Jackal family were basically forced to absolute poverty. the only thing reirei and goigoi could really do to get enough for all of them was steal for money, food, travel, etc. it was the only way they thought they could survive, believing there was no help for them, and there wasn't for a while. with janja's gang- who somewhat threatened their livelihood- reformed, it was much easier for reirei and her family to take what they wanted from people, but jasiri's offer to her was pretty convincing... so after a few hard and lonely years, reirei accepts jasiri's help. she promises them food, warmth and community- kind of the only thing reirei ever wanted for herself, her husband and her children, and they get to live free too! she's just happy that her husband and children are happy, and that she can be too, even if she can have arguments with the other former gang leaders lol

kiburi's gang..... yeah they were definitely the hardest to convince. jasiri wasn't acquainted with them at all. they'd were a bit newer to the Outlands, coming there after some failed riot kicked them out of their town. but janja, mzingo and reirei knew them well. kiburi was very adamant that he didn't care for jasiri's lifestyle, that it was "too soft" for he and his gang, that they didn't want or need their help and that violence was just "what they did". jasiri had just about accepted defeat. that was until one night kiburi's gang were attacked by strangers who were too much for them, but jasiri's gang swooped in to save them, both from the attack itself and their bad wounds. if it wasn't for them, kiburi's gang would be dead. he doesn't have much of a choice but to sign off his leadership in exchange for the protection of his friends, which he decided inwardly matters more to him than being leader anyway. in joining the gang his personality doesn't change much from the outside, but you spend a little time with him and you realise he's a good guy beneath it all

the same sorta thing went for ushari and the Skinks. ushari grew up in the stuffy towns and he liked it well enough when he was left alone, but he just kept getting disrespected by people. it only took a few months for him to snap, and then it was him who was disrespecting by plotting against the different towns in the lands. his plans were pretty genius, especially with his acquaintances shupavu, njano and their gang called the Skinks, who just so happened to be the best spies in the lands. despite their lack of brawn and being far from well-off, together their plans were dangerous and could cause lots of townsfolk casualties. people also just kept getting tricked and robbed by the skinks. no one wanted anything to do with them, ushari, or anyone associated with them (ahem, kenge and sumu, ahem ahem)

there was a massive, brutal shootout between the Prideland townsfolk and the Outland gangs before they reformed. jasiri tried to stop it and reason with the gangs, but all hell broke loose as everyone started shooting. ushari was shot as jasiri was talking to him. he was genuinely considering being the first to join her side, as she'd shown him genuine kindness like no one else, but it ended in the shootout (you can guess who shot ushari. i am glaring at you bunga). jasiri and her gang tried everything but the wound was untreatable :( the guilt weighs on jasiri's shoulders as well as the skinks. initially they tried saving ushari themselves- finally putting someone else over being in a fight- but were surprised and inwardly thankful that jasiri tried so hard to save him, even if it was futile

after the shootout and ushari's death, shupavu's gang spent a few weeks aimlessly wandering, realising that stealing wasn't so fun or as easy now that ushari was gone. they kinda awkwardly shuffled into jasiri's gang when she next came to see em. they found it really hard to fit in or do 'good'. like most of them, they joined because they kinda had no choice but to. eventually they find their place, especially when kenge and sumu join

only ushari and the skinks knew, but kenge and sumu were at that shootout too. they went because ushari, shupavu and njano told them about it and What Else You Gonna Do In The Wild West lmao. it was pretty tragic when they found out ushari died, they didn't know bc they were caught up in the shootout and weren't really on the main scene until the shooting started. realistically they probably caused the most carnage; kenge is insane and sumu is a sniper. they left once it was all over, expecting to hear from their acquaintances, but shupavu and njano had to break the news to em. they were also completely unaware that the skink gang joined jasiri

almost forgot to talk about their history! sumu doesn't come from the pridelands/outlands, he travelled a long way bc he pretty much worked as a hitman sniper for criminals who wanted townsfolk killed. he wouldn't stay long in each place to avoid getting caught by law, but he stuck around the outlands because ushari was a cool guy he actually made friends with, and kenge too. in kenge's case, he's that guy who could like. crack your skull if he wanted to. he's really antagonistic and has been in loads of bar fights before being run out of towns, but they could never kill him because he's too good of a fighter and too strong. i guess like rasputin without the lust lmfao??

but yes! kenge and sumu were eventually convinced to join the gang when jasiri finally met them, in her eyes she saw another two misunderstood individuals on the wrong path and managed to reach out to them. she probably called them "friends" and that was the first time they'd ever heard any stranger be that kind to them. both of em were definitely the most uncertain and antsy about being in the gang, as they'd lived solitary before, but no one was really going to bother or push them. sumu's the almost-silent one who has cleaned up a mess before you even notice there was one (perks of being a sniper) and kenge's the guy ordering the best drinks for the camp (perks of being a former bar fighter)

speaking of what everyone does in the gang, i will be talking about that in a follow up post 👀 because i didn't realise how long this was!!!

i have loved building this au!! :3 there might be a few tweaks along the way as i try to find a good balance between the outlanders being from a kids show and the brutality of rdr2 lol. i think i'm starting to develop a story i like tho, just going to flesh out important events as i go along :)

[thoughtlessarse]

The Netherlands’ new right-wing coalition government aims to reintroduce daytime speeds of 80mph on motorways as part of a number of proposed changes to the country’s environmental policies which have sparked concern. The move echoes the anti-green stance of other right-wing parties across the continent, as environmental issues become popular bogeymen for populist politicians. In Germany, for example, heat pumps have been politicised, as members of the far-right party AfD have called the Green party “our enemies’. On Thursday morning, the far-right politician Geert Wilders announced that his anti-Islam, anti-immigration Party for Freedom was forming a coalition with the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), pro-reform party New Social Contract and the Farmer-Citizen Movement. A 26-page coalition accord titled “hope, guts and pride” outlined measures aiming to reduce migration, introduce constitutional reform, address a housing and cost-of-living crisis and row back on climate change and pollution policy. Under previous governments, the Netherlands was seen as one of the forerunners of Europe in adopting renewable energy sources – especially in solar power – and planning to drastically reduce animal farming to address its manure-based pollution problem. But, although the small, low-lying country would be partially submerged without action on rising sea levels and river flood risk, there is little in the accord on climate change.

continue reading

Well, they wasted no time in wrecking the environment.

[qnewsau]

Out artistic director reacts to Paris Opening Ceremony furore

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/out-artistic-director-reacts-to-paris-opening-ceremony-furore/

Out artistic director reacts to Paris Opening Ceremony furore

Thomas Jolly, the out artistic director of the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, has defended that queer tableau during the show that’s left people arguing for days over allusions to Christianity.

On Saturday morning (AEST), queens from Drag Race France joined a group of queer dancers and models hosted a fierce runway show to help inject a bit of life into the hours-long ceremony.

At one point during their segment, Drag Race France host Nicky Doll and some of the show’s queens gathered behind a long table.

In the centre was lesbian DJ Barbara Butch, with a halo over her head and her hands in a heart over her chest.

In front of them, a French actor was painted blue and covered in glitter, lying on a platter as the Greek god Dionysus.

Christians, Catholics and conservatives complained online about that part of the performance all weekend. Many said it “parodied” or “mocked” Christianity, specifically the iconic Renaissance painting The Last Supper.

However, Thomas Jolly told French channel BFMTV that for his part, The Last Supper wasn’t his inspiration for the tableau. That iconic Renaissance painting depicts Jesus’s last meal with the 12 apostles.

“It’s not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious. There’s Dionysus arriving on a table,” Thomas said.

“Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity’.

“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine.

“The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”

Olympics: The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/2vnMNrlmMi

— Paris 2024 Olympics (English) (@OlympicsParis) July 26, 2024

Jolly told BFMTV, “You will never find in me, or in my work, a desire to mock or denigrate anyone.

“My aim was to create a ceremony that heals and a ceremony that reconciles, but also a ceremony that reaffirms the values ​​which are those of our Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity freedom, and absolutely not to mock anyone.”

‘Demonic and deranged’ opening ceremony slammed

Some religious folk went against the grain and suggested the tableau is in fact inspired by The Feast of the Gods by 17th Century Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert.

Here in Australia, the hot takes from conservatives, Christians and other commentators got pretty wild as they continued all day Sunday.

Australian Senator Ralph Babet hurled ugly slurs online at those involved in the “demonic and deranged” performance.

Family First leader Lyle Shelton said the scene was “evil” and was part of a sinister plot to “destroy families”.

Sky News Australia commentator Joe Hildebrand said the French drag show would somehow impact Australian LGBTQIA+ law reform.

‘Nudity is the origin of the Games’

But the actor who played the naked blue man during the segment brushed off the backlash.

He’s French actor and singer Phillippe Katerine. Phillippe told Le Parisien he “suffered a lot” getting painted and glittered for the gig but he “loved it.”

“I’m proud. It’s my culture. We’re full of different people and everyone lives their own way and, above all, has the right to do so. I loved doing it,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be fun if there were no controversy. Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone agreed on this planet?

“Nudity is really the very origin of the Games. At first, they were naturist Olympics.”

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on��Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[m00nz-writes]

Due to the fact that the movies underutilized Logan's animal empathy, I made the choice that Olivia uses this ability heavily in the RDR2/X-Men crossover AU.

It only makes sense that Liv would use her animal empathy more than Logan would, especially since after her amnesia she spends a lot more time traveling with her horse, Magnus. Liv doesn't feel as though she belongs in the Van der Linde gang due to not remembering anything and it also isn't easy with Micah fucking Bell in her ear saying some of the most rancid and discriminatory shit about mutants because if that motherfucker is racist, then he'd def hate mutants too.

On the topic of other members of the gang; Liv would be very close to the ladies of the gang, obviously, because women stay together. And the people she's the closest to friendship wise are Arthur, John, Lenny, Uncle, Charles, and Sean. Liv and Arthur have a strong "responsible big brother/reckless little sister" bond and everywhere he goes, she will often shadow him because she looks to him for strength and guidance. And during the events of the first game, Olivia travels and works with John.

Liv constantly butts heads with Dutch due to her being able to catch onto the fact that maybe he's not the "amazing" leader everyone claims he is thanks to the amnesia removing any sort of good memories of him. Olivia and Javier have a relationship, one that existed before the amnesia and now is reforming after it. Though after the gang starts to fall apart, Liv and Javier break apart due to his blind devotion to Dutch.

By 1911, Liv and Javier are such drastically different people between his disloyalty to everybody and Olivia's bitterness that the likelihood of them ever being the same is impossible. Despite this, Olivia actually saves him from execution because she can't handle anymore pain of losing anybody else, so it's more of a final goodbye than anything.

Will I ever make this into a full fledged fic? Probably not. I want to but without a computer to help me keep shit in line, writing is fucking impossible. Writing on my phone is a fucking joke but I kind of have to. I would love to turn this into a fic but for right now, it's just a bunch of ideas and a general outline.

[beardedmrbean]

South African political leader Julius Malema led racially violent chants at a massive rally on Saturday.

Malema, who is the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, sang the genocidal anti-apartheid struggle song "Kill the Boer, the farmer," referring to the White descendants of Dutch settlers or "Boers" in South Africa.

The Economic Freedom Fighters has emerged as one of the preeminent powers in South African politics after the end of the Apartheid regime. Malema was originally a youth leader in the African National Congress (ANC) which was famous for being led by South Africa’s first Black leader, Nelson Mandela. 

Malema faced backlash for his call for violence against White South Africans. John Steenhuisen, the leader of South Africa's biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) condemned Malema on Monday, warning, "This is a man who is determined to ignite... civil war." He later noted that Malema is a "bloodthirsty tyrant" calling for "mass murder." He also claimed that the DA will file a complaint against Malema with the UN Human Rights Council.

While the EFF is a relatively new party, it appears to be rising in popularity.

"The liberal DA, which has traditionally appealed to a largely White electorate, is polling to win about 16 percent of the vote," the Agence France Presse reported. "The militant EFF, which advocates for reforms to increase land ownership among Black South Africans, is polling at around 13 percent."

According to the BBC noted that Malema has been brought to court for multiple similar offenses.

"He has been repeatedly accused of hate speech. He's been dragged to court by civil rights group AfriForum after the organisation filed a complaint to have the two songs Dubul'ibhunu (Shoot the Boer) and Biza a ma'fire brigade (Call the Fire Brigade) declared hate speech and unfair discrimination," the BBC reported in an article about the EFF’s 10-year anniversary.

At a similar rally in 2019, Malema declared he would be willing to destroy the political system in order to ensure equality.

"White people, all we want is to join you at the dinner table and eat with you," he said to thousands of followers at Soweto's Orlando Stadium. "If you do not want us to sit with you at the table, then we have no choice but to destroy the table."

In response to previous backlash he has faced for singing "Kill the Boer," ("Kill the White farmer") Malema said the EFF is not "anti-White" so much as seeking "equality for South Africa's Black majority." 

Malema also argued that the EFF seeks to address the "ill-gotten privileges that White people enjoy, and which are being protected by the ANC."

In 2019, Malema said, "The first thing we will deal with is the issue of land. We want to expropriate the land without compensation so that Black people also benefit from its wealth."

[ausetkmt]

Some people describe a police dog’s bite as a deep tear through their flesh. Others are haunted by the feeling of a Vise-Grip, the dog's jaws slowly but painfully tightening around their arms or legs until the muscles go numb.

These are not the nips or snaps of a pet dog in a backyard. A police dog, trained for weeks on how to bite harder and faster and with little reservation, can inflict debilitating injuries and lasting scars. The physical damage lingers as long as the memories of a dog’s snarling teeth, its guttural growls, its head ripping back and forth upon crashing into a fleeing target, all while a police officer stands nearby shouting commands and praise in German, Dutch or Czech.

Across the nation, police dogs bite thousands of people a year. And in no major city is someone more likely to be bitten than in Indianapolis.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, home to one of the largest K-9 units in the country, has the highest rate of dog bites among police departments in the largest 20 U.S. cities.

Some cities saw one police dog bite over the last three years. In Indianapolis, it was once every five days.

Law enforcement officers from around the United States train with their police dogs on how to capture a suspect at Vohne Liche Kennels, in Indiana, on Sept. 23, 2020. Dogs are muzzled for the protection of the man acting as a decoy, who is not wearing typical bite gear for this training exercise.Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar

Those are just some of the findings of a yearlong investigation by IndyStar and the Invisible Institute in Chicago, along with The Marshall Project, and AL.com.

The first-of-its-kind national analysis included a review of police dog bites from 2017-19. That review found that IMPD dogs bit 243 people over those three years. That’s more bites than New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Antonio; Dallas; Austin; San Francisco; Fort Worth; Columbus; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

Combined.

Police K-9 Bites per 100,000 Residents

Among police departments in the 20 largest cities, some have much higher rates of police dog bites than others. Between 2017 and 2019, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police dogs had 243 bites, or about 28 bites per 100,000 residents. But city police in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco each recorded only one incident.

Source: Analysis of use of force data from police departments, population data from the Census Bureau.

Per-capita rates use the latest five-year census population estimates and are approximations. City police departments in Los Angeles, Houston and San Antonio may include serious non-bite injuries in their K-9 use of force records. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department data for bites in 2019 include numbers through January 23, 2020.

The investigation also revealed for the first time:

Nearly 60 percent of people who had been bitten in Indianapolis were suspected in only low-level and non-violent crimes or traffic infractions; bites that would appear to be out of policy in some other cities, such as Seattle and Washington, D.C.

At least 65 percent of those bitten were unarmed and did not act violently, facts that contradict IMPD’s stated reasons for using dogs so often.

More than half of the people who were bitten are Black, a disproportionately high number for a population that makes up just 28 percent of the city.

15 percent of people bitten were younger than 18. Three-fourths of the juveniles are Black.

Sometimes police dogs bite the wrong people entirely, such as police officers at a crime scene or innocent bystanders in a neighborhood.

Marshawn Wolley, a community leader who has worked alongside Indianapolis city and police leadership to reform IMPD’s policies, said he was shocked to learn about what’s happening with IMPD’s dogs.

"This is not meeting the standards of what we expect from a professional police department. They have missed the mark. Dramatically,” Wolley said. “There’s really no hiding from this. They set the standard for being the worst. This has to be addressed. This has to be addressed."

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett declined an interview request. He answered questions by email.

"These numbers are clear evidence that we must continue to have a dialogue with our community around what they expect not just of the K-9 unit," Hogsett said via email, “but of their police department as a whole."

The high number of bites in Indianapolis is driven in part by the convergence of two factors: a comparably loose set of IMPD policies that enables K-9 officers to release their dogs on people suspected of committing low-level offenses and, critics say, an old-school policing culture that encourages officers to do just that.

When IndyStar presented its findings to IMPD Chief Randal Taylor this month, he said he was concerned about the numbers.

"You know, I would hope we wouldn't have to bite that often," Taylor said. "If there's changes we need to make, I'm always for that."

Then, in an email Oct. 7, Taylor announced his department had drafted a new policy that, he says, will eventually place restrictions on the use of police dogs. For example: Officers would no longer deploy dogs on suspects in misdemeanor cases unless they believed that person is armed, though dogs would still be justified in all felony cases.

The policy change, if enacted, would have stripped out as many as 23 bites in misdemeanor cases over the last three years—an amount larger than the total number of bites found in some major cities.

That said, it's just 10 percent of the bites in Indianapolis. Even if they were removed from IMPD's total, Indianapolis would still remain the major city where someone is most likely to be bitten by a police dog.

[yourmexahistory]

Margarita Neri

Born in Quintana Roo in 1865 to a Dutch-Mayan family, she was a landowner turned revolutionary.

After killing her husband and joining the Zapatista forces she vowed to decapitated Díaz with her bloody machete. Her reputation was such that when the governor of Guerrero heard she was at his door, he hid himself on a crate and pleaded to be sneak out of town.

One day she was abandoned by her compratiots, therfore decided to create a league of their own, in the spand of just 2 months her troop of 200 workers rise up to 1000 and they raid, sweept and loot Tabasco and Chiapas.

She was giving the nickname the “Rebel Queen of Morelos” after a battle that lasted from dawn till dusk in Morelos 1911. 19 zapatists were killed but the number of Federals far surpased it. Fighting alongside Jose Morales, Neri developed a plan in which she sent 18 year old Esperanza Echaverris with 300 hundred fighter under her command, while Neri herself stayed with another 700 and fought in the front ranks until the federals retreated. Neri left the battle with a slightly wounded arm and the Washington Herald calling her the “Mexican Joan D’arc”.

The same year she would command the take over of Culiacán Sinaloa. Respect in the Mexican Revolution came to a correct display of *machismo*, how far you shoot and how well you rode, and Margarita Neri was one of the best of all.

If there is a thing Margarita Neri leaves us apart from a woman of legend, is a ruthless leader that new how to get the job done, in order to reform this country into something appart from the burgoise ideals of Porfirio Díaz.

[deafmangoes]

This is a wonderful example of people correcting one wrong narrative with another that's equally suspect.

As much as it may pain us to admit, the Puritans were both persecuted and persecuted others, it's not black and white.

Brief history lesson:

Henry VIII was Catholic. He wanted a divorce. The Pope said no. Henry made a big fuss and struck out with his own church instead - basically still Catholic but with him in charge. At that time there were a lot of English Christians who were really getting into the ideas of Luther and the other Reformers in Europe. They saw a chance to make changes, and so started the English Reformation. During this time, Catholics and Protestants were persecuted if they refused to fall in line.

When Henry's heir, Edward, died he was succeeded by Mary, who was married to the Catholic Philip of Spain and wanted to bring the country back to Catholicism. She ramped up the persecution of Protestants, so many went into exile in Europe and learned from Calvinist and Reformed ideas.

When she died, Elizabeth made the 'Church of England' official, and these exiles came back, now emboldened with new ideas for change and reform. Many didn't think Elizabeth went far enough, and became "Non-Conformist" (many different groups, Puritans only one of them). They were punished for not joining the 'official' church. Some of them left for the Americas.

Another religious scare happens after Elizabeth dies, and James VI of Scotland becomes king as a compromise Protestant candidate. However his son, Charles I, is much fonder of Catholicism and the whole 'divine right of kings' business and starts abusing his powers.

That's why many of these Non-Conformists fought against the monarchy, and they won. Cromwell was elected temporary leader but stuck around, doing a bunch of stuff that lends him a very controversial track record (for example, he oversaw the genocide of the Irish, but also let Jews return to England after four centuries of being banned). And yes, he did ban Christmas for a bit.

Charles II played it much safer than his dad, and further crises were averted. A tenuous religious tolerance was established. Mostly the end.

Meanwhile in the Americas, the British, German and Dutch colonies were nearly 100% Protestants (of all kinds, again including Puritans) and without the history of Catholicism over there just sort of did their own thing... which again produced a controversial record. A lot of their ideas influenced the future United States in good ways, while also things like the Salem Witch Trials happened.

So, TL;DR: Puritans were persecuted at some points, and persecuted others sometimes too. Mostly they wanted to be Not Catholic and also Not Anglican. Sometimes they weren't very tolerant about other people preferring different lifestyles.

[head-post]

EU discusses deportation centres to tackle migration

European countries will discuss on Thursday “innovative” ways to increase deportations of irregular migrants and rejected asylum seekers, including controversial plans to set up special return centres in non-EU countries.

The rise of nationally-oriented parties in several European countries has helped put migration issues at the centre of the attention of the interior ministers of the 27-nation bloc, who are meeting in Luxembourg ahead of a meeting of EU leaders later this month.

Whether the bloc should explore “the feasibility of innovative solutions for the return of migrants, in particular the concept of return centres” will be discussed at the ministers working lunch, according to a background note to the official agenda.

The meeting comes just months after the EU adopted a sweeping reform of its asylum policy.

The long-discussed package, which will come into force in June 2026, tightens border procedures and requires countries to accept asylum seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy or Greece or provide money and resources. But more than half of EU member states said it doesn’t go far enough.

In May, 15 of them urged the European Commission to “think outside the box” by calling for the creation of centres outside the EU where rejected asylum seekers could be sent while awaiting deportation – a plan to be discussed on Thursday. Jacob Kirkegaard, an analyst at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, told AFP:

Pressure is on accelerating deportations.

A growing number of governments are keen to show they are trying to “get rejected migrants off the streets one way or another,” he also added.

Centres for migrants

There are no detailed plans yet for how the return centres might work in practice. A diplomatic source said one option would be to ask EU candidates, over whom the bloc has some leverage to ensure acceptable standards, to host such centres. But sending migrants to third countries is fraught with ethical and legal issues, which could prevent the idea from becoming a reality.

Another diplomatic source warned that legal due diligence and an assessment of basic human rights would be needed to test the feasibility of any such project.

Last year, less than 20 per cent of the nearly 500,000 people ordered to leave the bloc were returned to their country of origin, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office. Repatriation is notoriously difficult – it is costly and requires the co-operation of the countries to which the migrants need to return.

According to border agency Frontex, the top three migrants who crossed the EU border illegally this year include Syria, Mali and Afghanistan – countries with which Brussels has no or at best difficult relations.

In addition to return centres, Austria and the Netherlands have proposed legislative changes that would punish asylum seekers who are ordered to leave the country but fail to do so, which experts say could open the door to detentions.

“Hotspots” outside the EU

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who currently holds the presidency of the EU Council, advocated the creation of “hotspots” outside the EU to process asylum claims and called for a regular “Schengen summit” to discuss border control issues. Hungary’s PM also reiterated his country’s request to opt out of EU migration policy – an approach the Dutch government is now considering.

Some point to Italy’s deal with Albania to hold and process migrants in that country as a possible way forward. But other agreements the EU has made with Tunisia, Libya and other countries, providing aid and investment in exchange for help in deterring the arrival of migrants, have proved highly controversial and faced legal challenges for subjecting migrants to abuse.

Just last week, two non-governmental organisations filed a lawsuit against Frontex, claiming that the support it provided to the Libyan coastguard to detect boats carrying migrants violated EU rules.

Numbers are down, but that means nothing

Frontex claims that unauthorised border crossings from the south have fallen by 39 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023.

The route from North Africa through the central Mediterranean to Italy is the most commonly used by migrants, but 65 per cent fewer people used it this year than in 2023. However, the figures for individual routes do not show a decline in all cases.

The second most popular route is the eastern Mediterranean, where migrants arrive in Greece. Arrivals have increased by 57 per cent in the first eight months of this year, with trafficking networks using speedboats and other aggressive methods to thwart the coastguard.

This is despite the supposed success of a declaration between the EU and Turkey signed in 2016 that was supposed to stem the flow of irregular migrants from Turkey to the EU.

The Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is the third most popular and has more than doubled this year. More than 25,500 migrants from countries such as Mali and Senegal landed here at the end of August, according to the United Nations.

Read more HERE

[mariacallous]

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan offered his “lesson number one about America” in his farewell address to the nation: “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” The same is true in China. One of the first steps of the Maoist revolution was forced collective dining, but reform and opening up of the country revolutionized Chinese households’ dinner options with an array of diverse delicacies from Dutch cheese and Norwegian salmon to Mexican avocados and Rainier cherries.

Tang Renjian, China’s minister of agriculture and rural affairs, accounted that, every day, China’s 1.4 billion people consume a staggering 700,000 tons of grain, 98,000 tons of edible oil, 1.92 million tons of vegetables, and 230,000 tons of meat. The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understand that “to the emperor, the people is heaven; to the people, food is heaven,” as the traditional saying goes, and they have prioritized food security as a prerequisite to maintaining power, especially after the calamitous famines of the Maoist era. For decades, coupons were necessary to buy any food—a system not fully ended until 1995, although largely dead in the cities by the mid-1980s. Despite China’s emergence as the world’s factory, the country’s No. 1 central document, the first policy statement issued by the top authorities each year, has centered on food security and the three issues of agriculture, the countryside, and farmers since 2004.

This year is no exception, as the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council jointly released the highly anticipated No. 1 document for 2023 on Feb. 13. The document, which carries enormous weight, sets forth two critical priorities: safeguarding national food security and protecting farmland. While previous No.1 documents touched on these issues between 2004 and 2012, it was not until 2013, when Xi Jinping assumed leadership, that the annual No. 1 document established a consistent and resolute focus on food security and farmland preservation.

The 2013 No.1 document marked Xi’s first policy statement as China’s top leader and laid out his roadmap for enhancing China’s food security. At its core was ensuring China’s national food supply to strengthen food self-sufficiency. The document called for a robust supervision system to improve China’s food safety. It also unprecedentedly urged the need to “implement the most stringent farmland protection system and promote the development of high-standard farmland.”

Xi’s steadfast prioritization of food security is not misplaced, as China’s political system remains vulnerable to food insecurity. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, collective grievances aggravated by disruptions in the food supply and lockdown-induced food shortages sparked a wave of protests in more than a dozen cities, with demonstrators demanding, “We want food, not COVID tests.” Such public expressions of dissent have been rare in China since the mass Tiananmen protests in 1989. Given such alarming circumstances, Xi has underscored that China’s growing dependence on imported food presents a national security concern, even though China so far has been able to feed its 1.4 billion people.

Since taking office in 2013, Xi has stressed that “the rice bowls of the Chinese people must always be held firmly in our own hand and filled mainly with Chinese grain.” His approach to safeguarding national food security rests on achieving self-sufficiency by increasing domestic supply. At the Central Economic Work Conference in December 2022, Xi reiterated the importance of bolstering China’s capacity to ensure food security and self-sufficiency.

Xi is correct to recognize that preserving farmland is an indispensable factor in the quest to achieve food self-sufficiency. China has experienced alarming levels of farmland loss and deterioration in recent years. The most recent land use survey showed that China’s total arable land decreased from 334 million acres in 2013 to 316 million acres in 2019, a loss of more than 5 percent in just six years. Shockingly, more than one-third of China’s remaining arable land (660 million mu, a traditional unit of land measurement in China and equal to roughly 109 million acres, slightly larger than Montana) suffers from problems of degradation, acidification, and salinization.

The land has been eroding faster in recent years. The annual net decrease of arable land has risen from about 6 million mu (about 988,421 acres) from 1957 to 1996 to more than 11 million mu (about 1.8 million acres) from 2009 to 2019. This means that between 2009 and 2019, China lost farmland equal to about the size of South Carolina. China’s diminishing farmland is also losing productivity due to over-cultivation and excess use of fertilizers. China’s fertilizer usage in 2018 was 6.4 times that of 1978, but grain yield in 2018 was only 2.2 times that of 1978.

As in many other countries, such as the United States and India, a major cause for China’s farmland deterioration has been its land-intensive industrialization and urbanization over the past three decades. Farmland has been expropriated to meet the strong demand for land to support the expansion of manufacturing, infrastructure, and urban development. Competing interests for land use have resulted in arable land being expropriated for more lucrative development projects. In the contest for land use among food growers, cash-crop planters, and property developers, profit maximization often trumps the needs of food farmers, especially when imported foods are much cheaper than locally grown options.

Satellite monitoring data shows that grain planting accounts for about 70 percent of China’s existing arable land, while the remainder is used for growing cash crops, gardens, forestry, or left fallow. Several Chinese researchers, such as scholars from Anhui and a team from China Agricultural University and China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, have independently reached the same conclusion that by the time China achieves an urbanization rate of 70 percent by 2030, the country is likely to lose about 20 million mu (about 3.3 million acres) of high-quality arable land..

In March 2022, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of China jointly issued “General Rules for Well-Facilitated Farmland Construction,” which set quantifiable criteria for high-quality farmland for different Chinese regions. The Chinese government aims to develop 1.2 billion mu of high-quality farmland (about 198 million acres) by 2030, an area larger than Texas. The government plans to increase investment in high-standard farmland to an annual average of 3,000 yuan per mu nationwide, which requires a yearly investment of at least 75 billion yuan for 2023-2030. However, current investment significantly falls short at only 1,458 yuan per mu, less than half of the target, due to local government fiscal difficulties and declining central government subsidies.

Yet, however necessary it might be, Xi’s prioritization of food security and farmland protection does not and cannot come for free. Implementing restrictive farmland protection policies will inevitably reduce local governments’ fiscal capacity because revenue from land-use-right sales constitutes the majority of local government revenue—as it has done since fiscal reforms in the 1990s left regular tax income flowing toward the central government, not local authorities. In 2022, local governments’ land-related income fell for the first time in six years, primarily due to declined revenue from land-use-right sales.

According to China’s Ministry of Finance, local government revenue from land-use-right sales fell from a record high of 8.7 trillion yuan in 2021 to 6.68 trillion yuan in 2022, a reduction of 23.3 percent. Given that revenue from land-use-right sales remained as high as 51.29 percent of local government revenue, any further decrease in this revenue source will worsen their fiscal capability to finance public expenditures, including funding the development of high-quality farmland urged by Xi.

In addition, the massive nationwide spending on COVID controls in 2020-2022, which the BBC reported to be somewhere between 520 billion yuan and 1.56 trillion yuan, coupled with the decline in local government revenue, suggests that neither the central authorities nor local governments will have the fiscal capacity to increase expenditure on farmland protection without increasing their debt. Allocating money to finance farmland protection with debt proceeds is particularly challenging when the government has another more urgent priority: boosting economic recovery by encouraging Chinese households to expand their consumption.

Stripped of financial resources, local governments are more incentivized to boost land sales and increase revenue than to abandon selling farmland, especially when the immediate priority is to jump-start an economic rebound. To this end, in November 2022, the People’s Bank of China and China’s Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission jointly issued a set of 16 measures to revive the country’s distressed property market and help developers secure financing. This policy change suggests the party-state is once again betting on the property market’s recovery to restore growth.

Over the past two years, Chinese private property developers such as Evergrande and Vanke have pulled back from aggressive land purchasing due to stringent restrictions. While this reduced demand from private property developers should have helped alleviate the temptation to appropriate farmland for property development, much of the demand void has been filled by state-owned enterprises and government-backed developers or companies, such as local government financing vehicles (LGFVs). LGFVs allow local governments to raise off-balance-sheet debt through bond issuance to fund long-term infrastructure investment without increasing their on-the-book leverage ratio. A report by Haitong Securities, a Shanghai-based securities brokerage firm, showed that in 2022 more than 80 percent of the 100 largest land-purchasing companies were state-owned enterprises.

The share of LGFVs’ land purchases in local government land sale revenue increased to nearly 20 percent in 2022, up from 14.5 percent in 2021, suggesting that LGFVs likely have provided a false revenue source and exacerbated local governments’ off-balance-sheet debt problem. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported cases in Zhengzhou, Shenyang, and Suzhou where half to three-quarters of land sold by the city governments were bought by local government-controlled companies, many of which were set up just days or weeks after the announcement of the land auctions. In essence, local authorities are borrowing illicitly to fund their own revenue, mortgaging their financial and pastoral future in order to stay afloat. Boosting land sales through government-owned or government-controlled entities when demand from private developers is low provides a politically convenient channel for local governments to raise revenue at limited costs.

Investing limited fiscal resources in farmland protection, in contrast, does not generate immediate political and financial returns, making it a tough sell for local officials who are under pressure to deliver a rapid economic recovery. While safeguarding farmland is an important cause in the long term, and one backed from the top in Beijing in theory, it costs money from the pockets of local governments and subsidies from the central authorities. For local officials, the more pressing challenge consuming their attention and resources is to restore economic growth.

These cost-benefit calculations mean local officials are likely to revert to their most familiar playbook of increasing revenue by expanding land sales and converting farmlands to factories and houses to accelerate rural industrialization and urbanization. This immediate-term expansion in land sales implies that China could have an excess housing supply that may lead to another housing market crash in the next five to 10 years if demand for housing fails to catch up.

Limited domestic farmland availability combined with the pursuit of food security dictates that China would expand its overseas farmland investment and advance its strategy of farming out. The 2007 No. 1 document set farming and agriculture “going out” into the rest of the world as a national strategy for the first time, but the focus back then was exports. The 2016 No.1 document updated guidelines on international agriculture cooperation, focusing on agricultural investment and supporting Chinese companies’ overseas operations.

According to Land Matrix, a European land-monitoring organization, Chinese companies have gained control of 6.48 million hectares (16 million acres) in foreign territories, which is nearly the size of Ireland. This number dwarfs the combined 1.56 million hectares controlled by British companies, the 860,000 hectares held by U.S. companies, and the 420,000 hectares owned by Japanese companies. Chinese investment in U.S. farmland has already triggered concerns in Washington, even though China currently only holds less than 1 percent of foreign-owned U.S. farmland. Republican lawmakers have already drafted a bill to ban Chinese purchases of American farmland, while in states like Texas measures are even more advanced. China not only owns farmland in the United States but also in U.S. allies’ territory, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

If China’s economic recovery and its continued growth are fueled by land sales and its property market, Xi’s prioritization of food security means Chinese entities will have to embark on more aggressive overseas land purchases. While the current theater of U.S.-China competition has been centered on the chips and semiconductors industry, a new front may emerge in the form of competition over farmland and agriculture technology. The party can survive setbacks in the chip war, but the stakes are much higher in the fight for food security. Failure on the food security front will threaten the survival of the regime.