#North Shields UK

[jeppiner]

North Shields UK slum where my maternal great-grandparents used to live, long since gone now.

[warrenwoodhouse]

20th April 2016 - Tynemouth Beach, Tynemouth, North Tyneside, North Shields, North East, UK.

Photos by @warrenwoodhouse #warrenwoodhouse

Photos I've taken with my Nikon D3300 DSLR at Tynemouth Beach in North Shields, North East, UK.

Camera: Nikon D3300 DSLR

Date & Time: 20th April 2016 at 10:21 am

Location: Tynemouth Beach, Tynemouth Beach Promenade, Tynemouth, North Tyneside, North Shields, North East, UK.

[julieconnelly]

Hillwalking & meditation

Hillwalking & meditation retreat. Despite the train strike, I managed to get up to Stirling, without any drama. I  got into a shared mini-bus up to Dhanakosa the Buddhist Retreat Centre. It had been a long time since I visited; (10 years) last time was a yoga retreat. I thought I would try the Hill Walking & Meditation course. We did 3 days of hillwalking and a lot of meditation it is an…

[lionofchaeronea]

Denarius of the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 CE), minted between 119 and 122. On the obverse, the bust of Hadrian. On the reverse, the personified goddess Roma, seated. Roma holds a spear in her left hand and a small, winged Victoria (Victory) in her right; beneath her is a cuirass, and behind her a shield. The inscription around her reads P(ONTIFEX) M(AXIMUS) TR(IBUNICIA) P(OTESTATE) COS III. This coin was found in North Yorkshire, England, UK, and is now in the British Museum.

Photo credit: Amy Downes on behalf of the West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service/The Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum.

[aimeedaisies]

The Princess Royal’s Official Engagements in October 2024

01/10 As Court Member of the Fishmongers’ Company, visited a Food Technology Class at Bingley Grammar School. 🐟🏫

As President of the UK Fashion and Textile Association, visited SIL Group’s Fibre Processing Mill at Ladywell Mills in Bradford. 🧵🧣

Visited Viking Arms Limited in Harrogate. ⚔️🏹🗡️

02/10 Visited Blackburn Meadows Bio-Mass Power Plant in Tinsley, Sheffield. 🍃🔋

Visited Sheffield Forgemasters. 🔥⚒️

Visited Loadhog at the Hog Works. 🚛🚚

Opened the University of Sheffield’s Gene Therapy Innovation and Manufacturing Centre. 🧬

03/10 As President of Carers Trust, attended the Short Breaks Wales Conference at Sophia Gardens Cricket Ground in Cardiff. 🦽🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

As Colonel of The Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons), attended the Annual Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge, London. 💂🍽️

04/10 As Vice Patron of the British Horse Society attended the Changing Lives Through Horses Forum at Saddlers' Hall in London. 🐎

08/10 As President of the Royal Yachting Association, opened Warsash Sailing Club’s renovated Clubhouse. ⛵️🍾

As Patron of Catch22, visited the Orion Centre in Havant, Hampshire. 🫂

Sir Tim represented Princess Anne at the Memorial Service for Mrs Julia Rausing (Philanthropist) which was held in St James’s Church in London. ⛪️

09/10 Attended the Annual National Service for Seafarers in St. Paul's Cathedral. ⛪️⚓️

10/10 As Patron of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, attended the Annual Scientific Conference at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead. 💊

As Patron of the Butler Trust, visited North Tyneside Youth Justice System in North Shields. 🔗

Opened a renovated manufacturing facility in North Shields. 🏢

11/10 As Admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps, Marine Society and Sea Cadets, opened Midlands Boat Station in Birmingham. 🫡⛵️

As Chancellor of Harper Adams University, opened the Digital Learning Hub at the Quad in Telford. 🖥️💻🎮

As Patron of YSS Limited, visited the Criminal Justice Service at the Shropshire Golf Centre in Telford. 👩‍⚖️

14/10 As Guardian of Give Them A Sporting Chance and the Chaffinch Trust, held Management Board and Team Meetings at Gatcombe Park. 💼

15/10 With Sir Tim as Royal Patron of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, attended the “Countdown to Cure” Reception at the Royal College of Nursing in London. 💊

With Sir Tim As Patron of the Remembrance Trust, attended a Dinner at the Beefsteak Club in London. 🌹

16/10 As Royal Patron of the Security Institute, attended the Annual Conference at the Royal Society of Medicine. 🚨🔒

As Master of the Corporation of Trinity House, attended a Civic Luncheon at Trinity House. 🍽️

As Royal Patron of WISE, attended the Annual Conference at IET London: Savoy Place. 🧩

17/10 As Patron of the Cathedral Church of Saint German Peel Development Appeal attended a Thanksgiving Service in St German’s Cathedral, Peel, Isle of Man. 🇮🇲⛪️

Visited the Manx National Heritage “All at Sea” Exhibition at the House of Manannan in Peel, Isle of Man. 🇮🇲 🌊

As Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order, attended Evensong and a Reception at The King’s Chapel of the Savoy in London. ⛪️🍾

As President of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, attended a Reception to mark the 250th Anniversary of RSA House. 🎂

Unofficial Sir Tim, as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Science Museum Group, attended the launch of the Manchester Science Festival at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. 🧪🧬🔭

18/10 On behalf of The King, held an Investiture at Buckingham Palace. 🎖️

Attended a performance by the Spanish Riding School of Vienna at OVO Arena in Wembley. 🇦🇹🇪🇸🐎

19/10 With Sir Tim Attended British Champions Day at Ascot Racecourse. 🏆🐎

22/10 As Master of the Corporation of Trinity House, chaired the Quarterly Meeting of the Court and attended a Luncheon at Trinity House. 💼

As Patron of UK Coaching, held a Reception at Buckingham Palace to celebrate Olympic and Paralympic Coaching. 🇬🇧🏅

23/10 Attended a Bicentenary Commemorative Service to recognise the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. 🚒🧯👨‍🚒

As Royal Patron of Leuchie Forever Fund, held a Benefactors’ Dinner at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. 🍽️

24/10 Re-opened the Rowan Glen Factory at Palnure, near Newton Stewart. 🍶

As Patron of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, opened the new wing at West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven. 🏥

With Sir Tim As Patron of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity, attended the Trafalgar Night Dinner at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. ⚓️🫡🍽️

25/10 Opened the British Standards Institution International Electrotechnical Commission Annual Meeting at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🔋

28/10 Attended the Prison Advice and Care Trust’s 125th Anniversary National Volunteer Awards at St John’s Church in London. 🏆

29/10 On behalf of The King, held morning and afternoon investitures at Windsor Castle.🎖️

31/10 Visited the Robotic Surgery Unit at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton. 🤖🏥

Attended a Reception for the Pride of Somerset Youth Awards winners at Bridgwater and Taunton College. 🏆

Was installed as Chancellor of Health Sciences University before launching the University in Bournemouth. 🎓

As Patron of Save the Children UK, attended the Autumn in the City Dinner at the Savoy in London. 🍽️

Total official engagements for Anne in September: 58

2024 total so far: 371

Total official engagements accompanied/represented by Tim in September: 5

2024 total so far: 91

FYl - due to certain royal family members being off ill/in recovery I won't be posting everyone's engagement counts out of respect, I am continuing to count them and release the totals at the end of the year.

[breederbutch]

want to take the opportunity to share this resource because it is actually incredibly terrifying to live in a state where men at large nationalist rallies are openly seig heil-ing the crowd to no condemnation, especially from self-proclaimed (though obviously false) "pro-jewish orgs".

while zionists lament anti-zionism, mass shooters with antisemitic manifestos and jewish targets, politicians proclaiming the state to be christian, and lawmakers pushing "biblical education" into classrooms continue to grow.

just because many white and affluent jewish people have the privilege to align themselves with oppressive antisemitic forces and sell out other jewish people (especially poor jewish people— who are the majority of jewish people— and jewish people of color) in exchange for (perceived) safety does not mean that jewish people, even white and affluent ones, are usually safe or inherently privileged or aligned with oppressive forces.

just because zionists continue to falsely paint human rights for palestinians as an antisemitic threat does not mean there is not real antisemitism.

just because zionists have posited that you can only care about palestinian rights OR jewish rights does not mean you cannot carry healthy wariness, attention, and care for both.

please go to the link below to learn more about antisemitic dogwhistles, phrases, slurs, numeric terms, etc. it is more important than ever to know our enemy, so we can recognize them quickly enough to stop them.

This post by Jewitches (the person who made the above link) sums up the essence of how philosemitism and zionism are not covers for antisemitism.

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A post shared by Jewitches (@jewitches)

I also want to share this specific resource on the Groyper movement as it is growing in popularity, but I don't recommend many of the sources linked (like statistics from the ADL) or other articles by this site— I think this article is helpful alone.

And finally, a piece by Joshua P. Hill on the current state of nazism in the United States and how we can combat it to protect not just ourselves but our neighbors while disempowering the USA and fighting against USAmerican Imperialism.

There are more pieces specifically on philosemitism below and another piece by Joshua P. Hill on resistance but the above links are, I feel, the most necessary. Please look out for your Jewish siblings and empower them to be able to look out for themselves and each other.

And remember that the focus on Jewish targets of nazism is because of the overwhelming proportion of Jewish targets of nazism to people of color targeted by nazism within the most successful nazi state— a european territory (however these are still unacceptable numbers of targeted individuals— any number is— and it is widely accepted that the number of Africans who perished in the north African campaign are not as widely counted or known). as nazism begins to take hold in places with more people of color, please remember that nazism is inherently white supremacist and is not just antisemitism but also racism. standing up for and empowering communities of color, especially Black and Indigenous communities, is incredibly important too.

Joshua P. Hill's treatise on community defense during times of fascism.

Here is a piece on general philosemitism, but it mentions the UK a bit. Keep in mind that philosemitism is an excuse people like Trump and Musk use to shield themselves from being identified as antisemitic.

Here is an excellent piece by Jewish Currents on how philosemitism can easily play into antisemitism, tokenization, and racism in the name of jewish people. This piece is specifically about Germany, but many parts of it can be applicable to other self-proclaimed "philosemites" using the phrase or their allegiance to "israel" as a cover for antisemitism.

A piece on French philosemitism and its antisemitism.

More generally on philosemitism and its links to zionism, but speaks specifically about Australia and France at some points.

[katz-chow]

i remember everything...

synopsis: in which johnny deals with the lingering feelings he has with his coworker 🏷| fluff, american!reader, gn!reader, reader is described as having hair long enough to have to towel dry (its like one sentence), mostly in johnny's pov, prompt 29, culture clash, part of @glitterypirateduck's soap it up challenge

masterlist | taking orders | main menu

“Strange words come on out of a grown man’s mouth when his mind’s broke. Pictures and passing time, you only smile like that when you’re drinkin’…”

“Do you like it?” You ask him, as you both sit on your respective beds in the hotel room. The soft glow of the hotel lamps mixed with the pristine, white sheets gave off the allusion of an ethereal heaven. You both untucked the sheets and wrapped them around you and on the bed in your nests of bedding, shielding away from the blasting AC air. 

Johnny groans, falling back onto the firm queen-sized mattress. “If I have to hear another Southern accent, I’m gonna blow my brains out. Yours is enough!”

“Bitch!” You scream and laugh as you throw a pillow, aiming for his crotch. A sharp breath stopped itself in his throat as he groaned in discomfort. Another laugh was pulled from you as you too, squirm around in bed. 

Eventually, he recovers and sat back up. “Bonnie, you remember when we first went on this world tour of ours?”

A world tour, that’s what you both referred it to. In reality, it was just a guest speaker program on international joint bases. You were there in the UK as an American, part of a joint company operation. Then Kyle pointed you out when you shared some memories in North Carolina together. Hitting it off with Johnny was just pure fate (maybe, he thinks). 

The first time he saw you, you and your squadron stood shiny in the unfamiliar dress blues in front of that board meeting. An hour later, he discovered you’re all American service members, here on an ally program. 

The second time, fate forced you both together. Chow Hall at dinner time proved to be both bliss and the Thunderdome at the same time– which was no foreign territory for the Americans. They were loud, Johnny thought. The more he heard their wide range of accents, the more intrigued he became with this new group.

He gazed at them, you included, deciding when would be the right time to bud into the conversation. That’s when you spoke up, hinting at the cutest, slowest speech he’s ever heard; a real, Texan accent. 

“I dunno about all this, y’all…It kinda looks, like, bland…” You say as you look at the food on your tray. Kyle right over your shoulder with your friends crowding around the “experimental plate”. 

Kyle laughed and cut open the pastry with a knife, moving the peas around. The meat inside spilled out of the puff pastry as everyone oo-ed and ah-ed and not in a good way. “You telling me you’ve never had a meat pie?”

“Closest thing would be chicken pot pie…and even with that the peas are inside and I don’t have to look at it when I eat it.” One American laughed. Johnny noted that his accent sounded “standard” compared to your more regional one.

Another woman piped up as she shoved his arm with hers, “Chicken pot pies aren’t all that, Johnson, you’re fucking weird.”

“Cut that shit out, Phillips…I’m gonna…fuck your husband.”

Johnny snickered and interjected himself into the appropriate conversation. “How about you shag me instead? A true Scotsman right here.”

“I mean, if you want…” The Standard American, now he knew as Phillips, responded as he turned towards him and smiled. 

He noticed the group of Americans all turned their bodies to include him in their small circle, even when he was about three feet away and on a different table. They were kind and eager, friendly even. 

From then on, he decided to always stick around the group of funny Americans, who always seemed to do the weirdest things. He also got to know the mirage of people within this seemingly rag-tag team. From Edward Phillips, the Washingtonian Linguist, Michelle Hernandez, the New Mexican demolitions expert,  and then you, the Texan. 

After that, he just gravitated towards you, like an asteroid in your presence. He revolved around you, hovering when you need him and jumping in. Never far for you to hold onto, he was right beside you, an equal rather than someone to catch you if you fall or a subordinate waiting upon your every command. You liked that about Johnny, how he’s a partner, and thus on par with you. Your strengths are his weaknesses (reading comprehension) and your weaknesses are his strengths (chemistry). 

Johnny often questions whether fate is real or not, must be the Catholic in him, but the critical, logical part of his brain won’t let him fully believe. He wonders if fate is real if there truly is a bigger spirit that predetermines whether or not he will die horrifically in battle, or how many kids he’ll have— if he is allotted more than one. More often than not, however, he finds himself wondering if he somehow made the right choice to speak up with that lewd comment that led to meeting his best friend. Or was it how God had intended it? Or, perhaps, it was the Roman Moirai that had strung your paths together. In either case, he could only hope that he was making the right choice now. 

The AC continued to blast in the dim light, something he had to get used to. Months ago, when you were merely just a coworker, he had to adjust to the fact that you were afraid of sleeping in the dark. Teases and playful jabs seemed relentless, night after night as soon as you went to turn on the bathroom light and crept the door closed. But now, as whoever’s above fated it, he quite likes the addition to his nightly routine. 

Things are simpler, more clear, and more concise. It’s a lot different building bombs, and awaiting the next mission than simply giving a briefing on demolition safety and code of conduct. One might even say it’s boring, but what’s more boring than your job? At least he’s talking about something interesting! Says the man who eavesdrops on your talk whenever he’s not busy. 

Johnny has more time to journal, draw, and…think. It became routine, you getting ready for bed while Johnny props himself up on his pillows, thinking and scribbling away. So here he is, nightstand lamp casting its low, orange glow against his even yellower pages. Odd drawings of the desk chair in front of his bed, some notes about your lecture, and an odd sticky note drawing on your side profile he did while he waited for you to finish your talk. 

Never leave a man with his thoughts, one of the lessons he had learned when he started to let his mind wander from station to station, train of thought visiting back on when you caught his eye, or when you fell down the stairs and your nose started to bleed (Johnny had never felt his stomach sink so low), and just last week when you convinced him to try authentic Indian food…he thinks of you.

It's almost as if he no longer even lets his mind wander but now he lets his thoughts loose into Your World. His bonnie. His. Fuck him, He rubbed his face with his palms, exasperated.

“You good?” Your voice snapped him away from his consuming thoughts, hands falling to close his leather-bound journal with a snap. 

He looks at you. You had your head tilted, hair falling into the towel that you’re crunching up to dry it. “‘m fine, Birdie.”

Birdie, his songbird. His ears hear the way you scoffed, swinging back into the bathroom to set the towel up and get yourself into the twin bed next to his, the space separated by just a small nightstand holding the phone and now his journal. 

You hop onto bed, throwing the already jostled-up sheets onto you as Johnny stands to turn off the light on the opposite wall. Your laptop, which had now been turned off per his request, tucked itself under your bed, barely peeking out just for a reminder for when you both leave the next morning. 

“I don’t want to go on base tomorrow. I hate Newport.” You say to break the silence between the both of you, simply sitting in the not-so-dark. 

Johnny groans, having heard you say this since the two of you had landed here in Rhode Island. “Oh haud yer wheesht, we’re only here for another day,” he reasons.

You’ve heard that phrase a lot lately, especially as your World Tour is coming to an end soon. Two more bases, a fortnight left. But you can’t blame him, your whining was getting a bit much. 

A comfortable silence fills the air again as you hum in reply to him. Both of you find yourselves lost—or leashed in your worlds, thinking about what’s next.

He’s going to miss this; miss waiting for you to get ready for bed, miss listening in on your colloquies, miss the way your body wash smells, miss your awful music…”Fuck, I’m gonna miss you.”

“What?” 

Johnny freezes, he takes back about the time you fell: this was when his heart dropped the furthest and fastest it’s ever fallen. Almost like the New Year's ball in New York. Fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck.

“Johnny, what did you just say?” In his peripheral, he sees your head turn to look at him. he turns his head to you. 

He prays that you don’t see the way sweat begins to fall from his skin or hear the quiver in his voice. “I said, I’ll miss you.”

You giggle a bit, letting your head fall back onto the plush headboard, eyes up at the popcorn ceiling. “It’s not like I’m going to die anytime soon, I’ll still be here.”

“I don’t want you to ever leave.” He blurts out quicker than his brain can even pick up. Blood rushes into his ears, he feels his body get hot as he awaits your reaction. 

The tension grows thicker, even as the AC hums. He sees your feet under the sheets moving side to side, you’re thinking of how to respond, formulating the perfect response. God, you were perfect, thinking about what you wanted to say rather than just blurting things out like how he is. You’re so different than him, so precise in your doings, always thinking ahead, always planning for the worst outcomes. And not to mention how good of a teacher you are with those in your field, you spoke eloquently, formally– yet just enough casualty that not only demanded respect but provided a sense of comfort. 

He looks back over to you quickly, your head still in the same position as before, eyes closed, however. For a quick moment, he sighs in relief, thinking you had fallen asleep from talking and whining too much. But instead, when he snaps back into reality, he sees your face smiling at him. 

“I think I’d like that a little too much.” You scrunch up your nose just a bit at the end of your sentence.

He doesn’t know what to make of them, but he smiles back nonetheless. “Yeah?”

You hum again, thinking. Silence washes over the two of you again. You two don’t look at each other, Johnny can feel disappointment wash over him, ready to just retire for the night.

“You wanna watch a movie?” You blurt out, already reaching down to pull your laptop out from under the bed. He looks at you quizzically, but agrees anyway.

To his surprise, however, you find yourself throwing the laptop gently on his bed, shooing him over (which he obeys), and getting under the sheets with him. His heart flutters as he instinctively rests his arm behind you. You scoot closer to him, pulling your laptop onto your lap. But you stop, and his breathing does to match. 

“Is this okay?” 

Johnny nods and smiles softly at you, seeing your worried expression dissipate. You decide that Johnny gets no say in what the two of you watch, and honestly, Johnny seems more interested in the fact that he can smell your shampoo and feel how soft the tips of your hair are in between his fingertips. He zones out after that, rejoicing in the moment as your breathing steadies his old heart. 

You turn your head up to look at him, raising your head slightly from his chest. He looks down at you, an eyebrow raised. “Hm?”

“I’m tired.”

He smiles wider at how your eyes droop down, even after insisting the two of you watch a movie. The screen pauses as he presses the spacebar, timestamp at 23:09. He huffs a laugh. “It’s late, I ken, I ken…”

“Can I sleep here?” You ask, already resting your head on his chest and sinking further into the now-warm sheets. Johnny shifts over a bit, closing your laptop and tossing it carefully over to your empty bed. The strands of your hair lift up a bit as he absent-mindedly messes with them. Your arm found itself hooked under his bicep, the other arm thrown over his chest.

His lips reach down and places a soft kiss on the crown of your head, burying his nose into the inviting smell of almonds and cherries. 

You hum in contentment, yet sleepily mumbling out something just a tab bit too quiet for his ears to pick up. “Speak up, Bonnie.”

You whine and his heart skips a beat. He wonders how long this can go on before he dies of cardiac arrest. Hopefully for decades. “It was always going to be you.” You pout, before nuzzling into him again, not once opening your eyes.

Johnny freezes, and the stands of your hair fall from the tips of his fingers. He looks down and sees how your chest rises evenly now, body heavy and warm against his. “Birdie?”

When you don’t respond, he knows you’re dead asleep. He sits there for a while thinking about the choices he made that led him to this position, as a body pillow for you– not that he is complaining. Surely it wasn’t when he tripped over a pinecone in year 5 right? Or when he decided to disobey orders and blow up a base anyway right? No, it has to be much simpler than that– when he had decided to skip lunch that day the two of you met? He thinks about the choices he made, and how he could’ve missed all the signs you gave him showing him that you were also in a state of yearning for him. And why did you turn on a lame rom-com, knowing you were going to fall aslee– oh. Oh.

Was this your plan the entire time? Clever Birdie. Of course, you had planned this out, had planned on turning the AC up, whining about the cold. Leaving your laptop on a movie website already, drying your hair even when you never really do. You just had to find a window of opportunity: him. 

It was always going to be the two of you. He was just a bit behind. 

masterlist | taking orders

[girlactionfigure]

🟠 Latest Events from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

⚠️UNUSUAL MIDDLE EAST AIR MOVEMENTS NOTED, US & UK refueling tankers taking off - transponders then turning off.  Hints of possible Israeli attack.. or practice, or intentional fake to create pressure on Iran.

.. And the standard daily rumor: There is concern among U.S. government officials that Israel's attack on Iran will be carried out in the next few hours!

❗️HOME FRONT COMMAND.. There will be no classes in Krayot (north of Haifa) tomorrow.

❗️IDF LOCATES LEBANESE CROSS BORDER ATTACK TUNNEL.. IDF located and neutralized a tunnelfrom Hezbollah that crossed about  from Lebanon into Israel near Moshav Zerait. This tunnel was located a few months ago, but the info kept secret so the IDF could ambush Hezbollah if they used it.

♦️ISRAELI FLAG RAISED.. over the ruins of Maroon a Ras in Lebanon, a primary attack site for Hezbollah firing anti-tank missiles into Israeli civilian towns.  The IDF has demolished the village which was being used as an attack platform.

🎯TARGETED ELIMINATION - SYRIA.. next to the Iranian embassy!  Airstrike directly into 1 apartment within a high rise building in Damascus, Gaza neighborhood.  No info at this time on who was targeted.

❓FROM NEW BOB WOODWARD BOOK ON BIDEN.. Biden called Netanyahu a "s#%% son, a bad person, a bad fa%#^ person".  "Bibi, what the hell" he roared at Netanyahu on the phone after he found out that Israel had killed Fouad Shukar, Hezbollah's chief of staff who was a wanted man by the U.S. and mass murderer of American soldiers.

🇮🇱PM NETANYAHU TO LEBANON.. “Do you remember the days when your country was called "the pearl of the Middle East"? What happened? A gang of terrorists destroyed it. Israel left Lebanon 25 years ago. But the country that actually occupied Lebanon was Iran. Iran finances and arms Hezbollah so that it serves Iranian interests - at the expense of Lebanon.  Hezbollah has turned Lebanon into … a forward military base for Iran.

Today Hezbollah is weaker than it has been in many years.  Now you, the citizens of Lebanon, stand at an important crossroads. You can take back your country. You can put her back on the path of peace and prosperity.  If you don't do this, Hezbollah will continue to try to fight Israel from densely populated areas - at your expense. 

Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end and your country can prosper again.”

🔹FRANCE EVACS.. citizens from Lebanon by military transport.

🔹TURKEY EVACS.. citizens from Lebanon by ship.

🔹UNIFIL rejected the IDF's request to evacuate its positions near the battle space in Lebanon for their own safety and to prevent them from being used as human and political shields by Hezbollah.

▪️PM TO DM.. Netanyahu to Gallant: Your trip to Washington - only after approval of Israel's next actions in the cabinet and my conversation with Biden.

▪️IDF CHAREDI COMBAT BATTALION OPENS.. Hashmonaim Brigade: Recruitment begun and the first batch is expected in Dec. Base adapted for ultra-Orthodox Jews of enlistment age up to 32. All training on base, this way the soldiers will be guaranteed to maintain their lifestyle. The soldiers will serve full service, and the brigade will have a border patrol zone.

🔸HOSTAGE DEAL NEWS.. Sinwar demands from the Qataris to receive immunity from Israel during negotiations.

✡️A word of Torah: Remember that in a hall of perfect darkness, totally dark, if you light one small candle, its light will be seen from afar; its precious light will be seen by everyone. - The Lubavitcher Rebbe

[justforbooks]

How Deborah Levy can change your life

From her shimmering novels to her ‘living autobiographies’, Deborah Levy’s work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

Last August, the author Deborah Levy began to sit for her portrait. The starting point was a selfie – eyes penetrating, lips sensuous, head topped by a tower of chestnut hair. The artist, her friend Paul Heber-Percy, used Photoshop, then a pencil and tracing paper, to reverse and multiply the image of her face, until he had a drawing, neatly laid out on a grid, that satisfied him.

Then it was time to paint. He liked to work in the mornings, in hour-long bursts, in his tiny attic studio. When Levy came for sittings, he’d bring the painting down to the dining room, and the two of them would drink tea or wine, and talk. Not that these were sittings in the traditional sense, but “times I could observe her without feeling self-conscious”, he said.

Sometimes they’d discuss Levy’s new novel, August Blue, which she was finishing; but mostly it was “everyday things – friends, the news, exchanging recipes, how to unblock a sink”, said Levy. But, Heber-Percy said, nothing about these conversations was really everyday. She is the sort of person who makes the mundane remarkable. Even “going down to the bakery with her to get a baguette becomes a slightly magical thing”, says her friend the novelist Tash Aw. When her friends talk about her, they say things like this: “she is an event”, “she is a personage”, “she is a whole world”. People often remember the first time they met her. For Kate Bland, an audio producer, it was at a party at a Shoreditch warehouse. Levy was sitting on a high windowsill; Bland was leaning on it. The author’s rich, slightly breathy voice was coming over Bland’s shoulder. Talk unwound in a sequence of dazzling vignettes. “It seemed that there was a necessary theatricality: we had to hoist ourselves out of the ordinariness of chat and have a conversation that was going to be memorable,” she recalled. “I was quite thrilled by it.”

At the time of that party, in 2008, Levy was 49. Her life had contained one immense dislocation: when she was nine, her family emigrated from South Africa to the UK, after her father had spent three years as a political prisoner. After school at a London comprehensive, Levy took a theatre degree at the pioneering, avant-garde Dartington College of the Arts in Devon, and first forged a path as a playwright. Her first novel, Beautiful Mutants, was published in 1989, the year she turned 30. Twenty years on, at the time of the Shoreditch party, she wasn’t famous, and hadn’t sold more than a modest number of books, though she carried herself as if she had. She was teaching, adapting Colette and Carol Shields for the radio, raising two daughters, and living with her husband, playwright David Gale, in a semi-detached house off Holloway Road in north London. She was working on a novel, her first since 1996. Her previous books were out of print.

Four years later, Levy’s life was transformed. Her novel, Swimming Home – a sun-drenched story about a family holiday on the French Riviera, beneath whose glinting surface runs a Freudian riptide of wartime trauma – was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker prize. That sent sales flying. At the same time, her marriage fell apart. “By the time I went to the Booker dinner in December I knew I would be moving house and I was packing up,” she recalled. “It was very turbulent and very painful.”

The following year, she published Things I Don’t Want to Know, the first in a trilogy of what she calls “living autobiographies”, to convey their selective, fictive nature. Over the next few years, she alternated two more novels, Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything, with two more volumes of living autobiography, which spoke of how, after her marriage ended, she recomposed a life for herself and her daughters in her 50s, outside the old patriarchal structures. All of these books, flew out of her “like a cork coming out of a bottle”.

Levy’s novels are popular and critically acclaimed. But it is with the living autobiographies that her reputation has transcended the literary. At events, readers tell Levy that her books make them feel less lonely, or ask her what to do about a life crisis. (One can’t quite imagine readers doing this with, say, Rachel Cusk, who also anatomises female experience, but in a somewhat chillier style.) At one of Levy’s online readings during the Covid pandemic, an audience member posted in the chat: “I’m 41 with two kids and sometimes I don’t feel I’m at home at all … Did it work for you, coming out of an unhappy marriage?” Levy answered: “It did work for me. You have to make another sort of life and gather your friends and supporters to your table” – which is pretty much the story of the second and third of her living autobiographies, The Cost of Living and Real Estate.

Levy’s writing has a very particular quality: it seems to infiltrate the mind. You absorb her way of seeing and start to perceive the world in Levy-ish ways. In her stories, seemingly trivial moments take on political force: an encounter with a hairdresser in The Cost of Living becomes a story about the camaraderie of women and what they reveal to each other; a scene about sharing a table on the Eurostar becomes about how men, literally and figuratively, fail to make space for younger women. In the new novel, August Blue, the narrator, having been insulted by a young man in a cafe, tells us, “I think he was expecting me to respond, to reply in some way, but I didn’t care about him or his problems.” I’ve used that in my own life more than once, since first reading it. The books become “almost a guide to life”, said Gaby Wood, director of the Booker Foundation. “She trains you to become your best self.”

Part of the appeal of Levy’s writing is that it is shot through with unpatronising sympathy towards younger women – both the hesitant, tough young female characters who populate her novels, and those who appear in her living autobiographies, often negotiating sticky situations with older, entitled men. In Real Estate, there is a passage in which she describes her joy in cooking for her daughters’ friends: “I liked their appetite – yes, for the dish prepared, but for life itself. I wanted them to find strength for all they had to do in the world and for all the world would throw at them.” She is not just talking about her daughters’ friends. Levy is also in the business of feeding and strengthening her readers. And they feel it.

The plays and the novels Levy wrote in her 20s and 30s are collage-like, gravelly, spiky, and dense, marinated in the eastern European avant-garde influences she absorbed at college. She had a talent for epigrammatic, slightly surreal sentences. “I once heard a man howl just like a wolf except he was standing in a phone box in Streatham,” says a character in her first novel. But the work had not yet acquired the razored-away, spare quality that has given the later work such airiness, such ripple and flow, nor was there the emotional force with which readers identify so strongly.

It was in the late 2000s that she forged the style that transformed her reputation. She was working at the Royal College of Art at the time. Two days a week, she’d take the tube from the fumes of Holloway Road to green South Kensington. She was a tutor in the animation department, helping students learn to write and construct narrative. “It was a potent time,” she said. Her colleagues at the Royal College of Art were inspiring; so were her students. At nights, while her young daughters slept, she was writing Swimming Home. “I was somehow living closer to my own emotions and understood that I might be able to put them to work in my book.” She had always felt that emotion was frowned upon by her avant-garde art “family”, but “from Swimming Home onwards, I decided to totally up-end that”. Charging the story with feeling changed her writing – and her relationship with readers. “I knew I was on to something, and it rocked me,” she recalled. “There were times when I’d stop writing and I’d come down to cook my daughters spaghetti in the evening. There was a sort of cool place under the steps, and I was so on fire, I would just stand there and cool down.”

What Levy found in her writing was a way of giving her story a shimmering, attractive surface, while allowing her preoccupations with literary theory, myth and psychoanalysis to occupy its murkier depths. The novel can be taken as “a kind of holiday novel gone wrong”, she said – and it has been slipped into many a suitcase as a beach or poolside read. “I’m happy if the surface is read. Because everything else is there to be found. And I’m working hard for my readers to find it. But I don’t look down on readers who don’t. I think, ‘Something will come through.’” The “something” might include the Freudian desire and death-wish that suffuses the novel; its peculiar linked imagery of sugar mice and rats; above all the immense treacherous undertow of history – of the Holocaust, of 20th-century suffering and wars – that Levy sketches into the story with almost imperceptible strokes.

But Swimming Home was rejected by every major publisher it was sent to. Levy, in all her certainty that it was good, was devastated. The years following the financial crisis of 2008 were inhospitable to a midlist novelist who hadn’t been in print for a while. The publishing industry was in trouble; the powerful new wave of feminism of the 2010s was a whisper rather than a roar; and the kind of spare, experimental books by women that would come to define recent literary trends, such as Cusk’s auto-fictional Outline trilogy, or Annie Ernaux’s intimate unfurling of memory, or Elena Ferrante’s revelatory novels on female friendship, had yet to appear in Britain. At the time, she said, “your book was either going to sell or it wasn’t going to sell, and when they said it was ‘too literary’, they meant it wasn’t going to sell”.

Then, in summer 2009, something changed. A friend of Levy’s, the late Jules Wright, who ran an arts centre in east London, read the manuscript. She was organising a show on photographer Dean Rogers, who documented the sites of car crashes that had killed cultural heroes – the spot, for example, where Marc Bolan died. Swimming Home begins with a scene in which Kitty Finch, a young woman with a death wish, perilously drives an older poet, with whom she believes she has a telepathic connection, along a winding mountain road. Wright decided to have the first two pages of the book printed large and installed at the beginning of the exhibition. Not long after the opening, though, she called Levy and bluntly announced she was removing them. It was a disaster, she said – people were clogging the entrance as they stopped to read the text. “It was,” Levy said, “the first spark: that those two pages of this much-declined book were gathering a crowd around them.”

Eventually the novel did find its publisher, a tiny new press called And Other Stories. The literary translator Sophie Lewis was editor there. Levy’s pitch, remarkably given all the rejections, was supremely confident. “Deborah said: ‘This is the tightest book I’ve ever written, and it’s going to be a bestseller,’” Lewis remembered.

In autumn 2011, Levy’s friend Charlotte Schepke, who runs Large Glass gallery in London, hosted the launch party. They decided to project The Swimmer, the 1968 Burt Lancaster film, on to the wall. On the night, to Schepke’s immense surprise, “you couldn’t stand – the place was absolutely packed. It was rammed.” Her interesting new friend, who had written witty labels for the opening show at her small gallery earlier that year, was suddenly making waves. It was almost, said Schepke, “as if she’d done this grand thing of claiming to be an author – and then, suddenly, she really was an author”.

In her living autobiographies, Levy frequently refers to her rented shed, a writing space in a friend’s garden, on whose roof the apples used to fall in autumn with a dull thunk. These days, as she moves deeper into her 60s, the shed has been replaced by an attic in Paris, a few blocks behind the bookshop Shakespeare & Company, near the Seine. On a limpid blue February day, she had pinned a branch of yellow mimosa to her front door. Its flowering marked, she said, the “end of gloomy, rat-grey January”.

The studio was as near to the platonic ideal of a Paris garret as you could imagine: reached by a winding stair through a courtyard, and with low ceilings and wooden beams. Kilim rugs were scattered on the floor, and her bed was covered in a fluffy sheepskin throw. There was a stash of red wine in the fireplace. Everything about the studio radiated her delight in objects and food and pleasure. If you met the author and saw the studio before you read the work, you might expect something more excessive and elaborate than the stripped-down, translucent prose she produces.

She poured coffee from a moka pot and passed me a dish heaped with croissants from her local boulangerie, La Maison D’Isabelle; pastries from the same shop turn up in the new novel. Objects from her real world often slip into her fiction. There was a biography of Isadora Duncan face-out on a shelf, perhaps the same book about the dancer she has her character Elsa read in August Blue. On a table stood a bowl of pearl necklaces, and at her throat were pearls – like the pearl necklace she has her beautiful, careless character Saul wear in her novel, The Man Who Saw Everything.

Things in her stories often hold the kind of powerful significance that Freud attaches to artefacts in dreams – such as the pool in Swimming Home, which, at its most basic, Levy pointed out, is a rectangular hole in the ground, and thus also metaphorically a grave. She loves the surrealists. The turning point of Hot Milk is the moment when her narrator, Sofia, discovers boldness through making bloody handprints on the kitchen wall of a man who has been tormenting his dog – a scene borrowed from a story told about the artist Leonora Carrington who, letting herself into the apartment of her prospective lover Luis Buñuel, smeared menstrual blood over his pristine white walls.

Motifs slip between books, too; in this she has something in common with a visual artist building a subtly interconnected body of work. The title August Blue, for example, is taken from the colour of the thread that, in Hot Milk, one character Ingrid uses to embroider Sofia’s name into a shirt. Horses, in particular, gallop through Levy’s work – from the tiny horse-shaped buttons that, in Real Estate, she kept from her late stepmother’s button box, to the moment Ingrid appears in the desert landscape on horseback, like a bellicose goddess, in the myth-infused Hot Milk. The whole of August Blue hangs on striking images of horses: it begins with her character, the pianist Elsa, watching jealously as a woman she thinks might be her doppelganger buys a pair of mechanical dancing horses in an Athens flea market.

Levy laughed when I asked her about her equine enthusiasms. “That’s a case for Dr Freud!” she said. She ponders, in Real Estate, what it is to be a woman “on your high horse”. Sometimes, she writes, you might find yourself incapable of controlling your high horse; at other times, people are all too eager to to pull you off it. She imagines a friend riding her high horse “down the North Circular to repair her smashed screen at Mr Cellfone”. When I think of Levy’s horses, I also think of her adoration of her small fleet of e-bikes, now famous from her living autobiographies, which she stables by her London flat and lends to friends when they visit; she bought her first when she moved out of her marriage and into her new life. When they start up with a little equine surge of power, she told me, “it’s hard not to whoop every time”.

When Levy was a small child in South Africa, and her father, Norman Levy, was imprisoned for his anti-apartheid activism, she started to speak so quietly that her voice became barely audible. What saved her from this state of virtual silence was her imagination: the dawning understanding that she could write other realities. “It was a question,” Levy told me, “of finding avatars.” The avatar she created for her nine-year-old self was a cat with wondrous powers of flight – perhaps unconsciously imagining freedom for her father, as well as liberation for herself. (In Real Estate, The Flying Cat is the name she gives to the ferry that brings her daughters to her for a holiday on a Greek island.) The characters in her fiction are still her avatars. “I’m in every one of them,” she said, “including the cats and including the horses.”

For a long time, in adulthood, she resisted writing or even talking about South Africa. The difficulties of her family felt irrelevant, when set against the struggles of black South Africans. But since she had decided to base the structure of Things I Don’t Want to Know on George Orwell’s headings in his essay Why I Write – one of which is “historical impulse” – she found herself obliged to tackle those repressed memories. Using a child’s eye view, she said, “I tried to convey, without using the old language of ‘the bloodstained regime of apartheid’, what it’s like to be told that you’re supposed to respect adults, while there are white adults who are clearly doing very cruel things to children of colour my age.”

Her mother, Philippa, through her husband’s imprisonment, coped alone, earning a living through a succession of secretarial jobs. Levy remembers her as capable and glamorous. “I loved the way she cooked, with her cigarette holder, and the way that she’d dance a bit to the record she’d put on when she came back from work.”

When Levy’s father was released in 1968, he was banned from working, and the family – Levy has an elder half-brother from her mother’s first marriage, as well as a younger brother and sister – had little option but to emigrate. Her father found work lecturing at Middlesex University, among other places. Money was tight. Her parents’ marriage ended in 1974.

After the “blue sky, and the bone-white grass of the garden” in Johannesburg, arriving in London felt “as if someone had pulled the plug out”. But despite England’s greyness, she loved it. She made, for the first time, proper friends. “I don’t have that narrative of exile, of wanting to return to the place that you left”. She adored the way people spoke, and she still delights in English turns of phrase: “Hello pet, hello lamb, hello duck.” As for her accent, “I had to lose it very quickly in the playground not to be beaten up.”

She often plucks her characters out of their familiar environments, partly in order to see their psychological foibles magnified on foreign shores. (She herself likes very much to be in a hot country, in southern Spain or a Greek island, swimming in the sea.) Sometimes these characters, like her, have been swept on the tides of 20th-century history – like the English poet Joe in Swimming Home, who is really Jozef, smuggled out of Łódź in 1943; or Lapinski in Beautiful Mutants, whose mother was “the ice-skating champion of Moscow”. Levy recalled of an interview in the news that moved her recently: it was with a Ukrainian woman from Kherson who had been lying in bed, thinking, when she was blown into her kitchen by a Russian shell. “Those were her words: ‘I was lying in bed, thinking,’” said Levy. “I do not take a place of calm, a place that is agreeable to think in, for granted.” Levy’s senses are finely tuned to the fragility of things.

After her A-levels, in the summer of 1978, she would walk past the Gate cinema in Notting Hill, timidly noting the thrilling, eccentrically dressed people who hung out there. One day, she saw an ad in the Evening Standard for front-of-house staff. For the interview, she put on a pair of big, gold platform wedges; as she left the house, her mother yelled, “‘You’ll never get a job dressed like that.’” Those gold wedges are the ancestors of the shoes that have carried her female characters on to victory, or else to triumphant defeat: the silver gladiator sandals that Ingrid, like the goddess Athena, straps high up her calves in Hot Milk; the sage-green Parisian tap shoes that get her into a scrape in Real Estate; the brothel creepers that, to her younger self, “marked me out for a meaningful life”; and the “scuffed brown leather shoes with high snakeskin heels” that we meet on page three of August Blue.

She got the job at the Gate. Her new colleagues were “either at drama school or off to university, and all way cooler than me. I was a nerdy writer” – of poetry, at the time – “with a great love of Bowie.” The cinema was screening Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee, “and he would come in, and he was curious and charismatic and friendly and cultured and he didn’t feel above talking to this 18-year-old making the popcorn, tearing the tickets and scooping the ice cream”. It was Jarman who told her she should apply not to university but to Dartington, where she’d learn about improvisation and dance and avant-garde theatre and art.

It was at this time, not having the kind of parents who dragged her round galleries at weekends, that she encountered contemporary art for the first time. It was an exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys. She remembers, a grand piano muffled and covered with cloth marked with a cross; other objects made of gold leaf; dried plants tacked to the wall; things scribbled in pencil. “I remember almost not being able to breathe. And there was this voice inside my head, saying, ‘This is it. This is it.’ And I had no idea what it was.”

The Cost of Living opens with the narrator witnessing an encounter between a young woman and an older man in a bar in Colombia. The man, whom Levy calls “the Big Silver”, invites the young woman to his table. After she tells him a strange story about a perilous diving expedition, he remarks that she talks a lot, and carelessly knocks her book off the table. Levy writes: “It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character.” It is a very Levy-ish story, in its wry observation of dynamics between men and women, and with its implicit call to arms to women who have, as the critic Dwight Garner has put it, “come to sense they’re not locked into their lives and stories”.

Levy herself is without doubt a major character – and is intent on expanding the role. She has an immense appetite “for experiencing the strange dimensions of living and the absolutely practical dimensions”, she said. We were sitting, at the time, outside a cafe near the Panthéon in Paris after a good lunch, and Levy was smoking a roll-up. “I’m not endlessly open to experience. I am easily bored and impatient. I want to keep things moving, keep thought moving. I want to make something new of the old story. How do you make the novel as complicated as life, as interesting as life? That’s what I want to do.”

She has many plans. She wants to adapt her two most recent novels for the screen. (Swimming Home and Hot Milk are in other scriptwriters’ hands.) She knows exactly, how the opening scene of August Blue will go, and she has the perfect idea of how to tackle the temporal complexities of The Man Who Saw Everything, which slips, through its main character’s fractured consciousness, between the Berlin of 1988 and the London of 2016. In The Cost of Living, Levy fantasises about living in California and writing scripts by her pool. When I teased her lightly about the unlikelihood of this, she said, “You never know. I just might be there in my swimming costume at 80, writing films. I’d have a river now – with a little rowing boat tied to the jetty, and I’d smoke, drink coffee and write my scripts, I think probably in France.”

In the meantime, now that her daughters are in their 20s, she comes from her London flat to work in her Paris studio for weeks at a time. She is taking French lessons, though presently her literary enthusiasms outstrip her linguistic ability. “I say, ‘Shall we translate this poem of Apollinaire together?’ and my teacher says, ‘I think today, Deborah, we will try to master être and avoir.’” Her most natural creative affinities are in fact French – Godard, Duras – rather than British. To her evident delight, Levy has won one of France’s most important literary awards, the Prix Femina Étranger. She has not yet won a major prize in Britain, despite multiple short listings, perhaps because British prizes tend to favour large, self-sufficient, discrete slabs of fiction.

She begins her days early, with a walk by the Seine. After work there might be an exhibition, or dinner – which she might depart, more than one friend told me, with sudden decision, announcing that she is back off to work. She looked abashed when I mentioned this habit, worried she might appear rude to her friends. “I’m immensely sociable and then I really need to be on my own. I do like to write after a dinner party,” she said. (She herself loves to cook – “delicious mountains of cream and garlic, and the kitchen is like a bomb site,” Charlotte Schepke said, “but it’s like being in the finest restaurant. Her presence makes it an occasion”.)

At the moment, in a sharp change of gear, she is researching a biography of the young Gertrude Stein, to be titled Mama of Dada. She is concentrating on the writer’s early training under psychologist William James, brother of the novelist Henry. Levy wants to think about how this academically brilliant American – who’d be late for her medical lectures because her bustled skirts were weighted down by horsehair-stuffed hems – moved to Paris, ditched the corset and became the pioneering modernist who dressed in monk-like robes and filled her house with Picassos.

It’s a characteristic way for Levy to build character. But while the books are rooted in the physical, they also make room for the uncanny and the unexplained, for the sudden intrusion into a person’s consciousness of unwelcome memories or dark imaginings. “It would be very sad to have all the possibilities of the novel, this hot-air balloon, but to say, ‘I only write social realism and the hot-air balloon must never leave the ground,’” she said. “That’s not how people’s minds work: people have very strange dreams, and thoughts, and daydreams, and associations.” She is, she said, very careful not to let her hot-air balloon float away into the clouds of fantasmagoria. It is all in the balance and control.

What also earths Levy’s work is her wit. “She is so amused, diverted and delighted by life,” said the actor Tilda Swinton, who is a fan. Her jokes, often wryly commenting on her own failings, make for a kind of intimacy, even complicity – “the kind of complicity that many of us can only relate to the dry land of childhood companionship”, said Swinton. Levy’s women, especially the “I” of the living autobiographies, fail as well as succeed; they have good days and bad. They are neither “feisty” and “gutsy” – those tiresome cliches – nor are they self-saboteurs, who put themselves down to ingratiate themselves with the reader. They are both real and offer an example of how to live well. When Levy was finding a way to write her living autobiographies, she searched for a voice that “was immensely powerful, immensely vulnerable; immensely eloquent and totally inarticulate. Because that’s all of us.”

In March, I went back to Paul Heber-Percy’s house to see her portrait finished. It renders Levy’s face in triplicate, as if seen through a kaleidoscope, and her hair, piled on her head, soars upwards like Medusa’s snaky locks, dissolving into abstract, Rorschach-like patterns and repetitions. It gave the impression of a presence with many selves, in constant movement of thought. In the portrait, Levy has five large, wide-open, scrutinising eyes; but one of her tripled faces disappears into the world outside the frame, and the sixth eye is unseen.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[caelstyx]

Gaza 10/27/2023

I am copying over @inejmydarling twitter thread. I captured 20 tweets but the thread is updating in real time

[ID: A tweet by 🇵🇸🔮 noorii | wraith 🔮🇵🇸 @inejmydarling that reads "In this thread I will be translating the biggest takeaways from Al Quds Radio 102.7 on Radio Garden Live (it’s blocked in the UK btw). This station is live from Gaza and it’s in Arabic."]

Subsequent tweets:

Right now I’m hearing a lot of explosions, one on top of the other. Israel is heavily bombing Gaza. The radio presenter says this is an “unprecedented aerial attack.” Eye witnesses say that the area around Al Shifa Hospital has been bombed. The hospital itself hasn’t been bombed, yet. Also very populated areas on Yafa Street are being bombed. This is in Eastern Gaza near the border. Israel is bombing the area around the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza.

Explosions are ongoing, heard live on-air. I’m hearing an explosion every minute at least. Ambulances aren’t able to reach people due to the communication blackout instituted by Israel. There are unverified reports that Israel hasn’t been able to breach Gaza by land and has retreated from a land invasion for now. Again, this isn’t verified, according to the station. Aerial strikes are ongoing. People in Gaza are doing their best to shield their dead and injured. Ambulances cannot reach the people. The radio station’s guest says we will not know the extent of the deaths and injuries until dawn. There are news reports that say the Israeli ground invasion will take place in stages, and not all at once. Again, the radio presenter said this is an unprecedented attack on Gaza. Israel is aiming to take control of Northern Gaza bit by bit. It will not cede any land it takes. Al Shifa Hospital: footage is coming in to the radio presenter of the damage done to the area surrounding the hospital. Extensive damage.

Israeli air strikes are targeting Al Bureij Camp in Gaza. It has thousands of refugees. More than 46,000 refugees reside in Al Bureij Camp according to the UNRWA. The camp is being heavily targeted by Israeli air strikes. In the past half hour, Khan Yunis has been heavily bombed. Khan Yunis has a population of over 280,000. Wael Al Dahdouh: bombing is unprecedented - Israel is bombing many areas, from east to west. The bombs are reaching even the coastal area on the west. Israeli war planes are constantly flying overhead. Zeitoun, Tufah (Apple) areas have been targeted in past 3 minutes.

Wael Al Dahdouh: “This night is different than anything Gaza has ever experienced.” “Most neighborhoods in Gaza are being bombed right now. This includes northern areas, and neighborhoods of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and Beit Lahia” Beit Hanoun has experienced intense bombing. Israel is hoping to enter Gaza by land through there. Palestinian EMT says there is no way to help patients. Those who need help will need to walk to ambulance stations and hospitals as ambulances can’t reach since EMTs can’t get calls due to communication blackout. People are transporting those injured in their personal cars to hospitals - audio from a hospital in Khan Yunis shows a sense of chaos and overwhelming trauma.

North and Central Gaza are being heavily targeted by air strikes. Israeli rockets are launching from the ocean. This is a “massacre.” “These tactics and weapons aren’t usually used against neighborhoods. They’re used between two armies. This is an unequal war.”

[themattress]

Pokémemories: The Crown Tundra

The second and final DLC expansion pack for Pokémon: Sword/Shield, set in a new Wild Area north of the main Galar region where you accompany the eccentric Peony and his daughter Peonia look for adventures based around old myths and legends, such as discovering the lost royal Pokémon, Calyrex, or hunting down the three Galarian forms of Kanto's Legendary Bird trio. This, IMO, is the strongest that Sword/Shield has ever been, and is reflective of what it really ought to have been from the beginning. There was mythic stuff in the main game, but it was drowned out by obnoxious sports culture commentary and a misaimed critique on unchecked capitalistic power. Personally, when I think of the potential in a Pokémon version of the UK, stuff like what's found in The Crown Tundra is what I envision.

[usafphantom2]

IMAGES: USAF sends B-52 bombers to Indian Ocean base

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 03/26/2024 - 16:00 in Military, War Zones

U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortresses bombers were deployed on March 22 at the Diego Garcia Naval Support Center in the Indian Ocean.

The Bomber Task Force deployment offers the U.S. Air Force Global Attack Command a presence in the Indo-Pacific, with relatively easy access to the Middle East as well.

The B-52s fled to Diego Garcia from Barksdale Air Base, Louisiana, after a 30-hour direct flight. This is the first time that USAF announces a Bomber Task Force for Diego Garcia - a small island that is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory that serves as a fundamental base for the U.S. and UK military, which has hosted American troops since the 1970s. The B-1 landed there in 2021, and the last time a B-52 landed there was in 2020.

"This deployment aims to improve the readiness and training needed to respond to any potential crisis or challenge around the world, demonstrating the credibility of our forces to face a global security environment that is more diverse and uncertain than at any other time in recent history," the Pacific Air Forces Command (PACAF) said in a statement.

Although the island is in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the U.S. Air Force used the island in the past as a base to send bombers to the U.S. Central Command's area of operations.

This latest deployment of PACAF bombers follows in the footsteps of the B-52 of Minot Air Base, North Dakota, deployed in Guam at the end of January and operating there until March 6.

Tags: Military AviationBoeing B-52H StratofortressBTFUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air ForceWar Zones - Indo-Asia-Pacific

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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A Stealth F-117A fighter aircraft refuels from a KC-10 Extender aircraft from the 22ª Air Refueling Wing during Operation Desert Shield.

MILITARY

"Retired" F-117 jets will be certified for REVO with the KC-46 Pegasus

25/03/2024 - 21:57

[theculturedmarxist]

The US has used its veto at the UN security council to block a resolution calling for Israel to allow humanitarian corridors into the Gaza Strip, a pause in the fighting and the lifting of an order for civilians to leave the north of the besieged territory.

The text – supported by 12 of the 15 members of the security council on Wednesday – contained criticism of “heinous terrorist crimes by Hamas” and made no direct reference of Israel. In an attempt to win US support, the draft resolution did not explicitly call for a ceasefire, instead referencing a “humanitarian pause”.

But the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the resolution, carefully crafted by Brazilian diplomats, was unacceptable because it made no mention of Israel’s right to self-defence. The UK abstained, saying the resolution lacked mention of the way Hamas was using ordinary Palestinians as human shields.

The US ambassador said she was horrified and saddened by the loss of life, but that the actions of Hamas had brought about the humanitarian crisis. She also called for time to let Joe Biden’s diplomacy play out.

Israel thanked the US for using its veto. China described the move as “nothing short of unbelievable” while Russia said it was an example of US double standards.

Two members of the G7 on the council – Japan and France – broke with the US by backing the motion.

The draft resolution also called for “humanitarian pauses to allow full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access for United Nations humanitarian agencies”. Its failure to pass represented another blow to the authority of the world body.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the 59-strong Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh accused Israel’s forces of targeting al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza.

Tuesday’s explosion, which killed hundreds, was blamed by Palestinian officials on an Israeli airstrike. Israel said it was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied responsibility.

Israel has been using media and diplomatic channels to try to convince leaders of Arab countries that blast was caused by militants, after even its regional allies rushed to blame it for the explosion.

In the only sign of a reassessment by Arab states, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the UN, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, called for an independent investigation into the hospital strike and said anyone found guilty should be held to account. But she said regardless of the culprit, the death toll of Palestinians was unacceptable.

The dispute over responsibility may have little resonance among the Arab public. A former French ambassador to the US, Gérard Araud, said: “The truth about who was responsible for the Gaza hospital strike is now irrelevant. Public opinion has decided: Israel is the culprit. All the explanations won’t do anything. This is a major defeat for Israel. It will have political consequences.”

Arab state foreign ministries have issued individual statements condemning Israel for the explosion, including Bahrain, which established ties with Israel in the Abraham Accords of 2020.

Morocco, another country that recognised Israel in 2020, also blamed it for the strike, as did Egypt, which became the first Arab country to normalise relations in 1979.

Saudi Arabia, which has ended talks on potential ties with Israel since the Israel-Hamas war flared, called the blast a “heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces”.

The rapid apportioning of blame coincided with angry rallies across the region, with more planned on Wednesday after calls for a “day of rage”.

A mini-summit between Joe Biden and Arab states, as well as the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was due to be held in Amman on Wednesday, but has been cancelled. The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said the summit would be held only “when the decision to stop the war and put an end to [the] massacres” was taken.

The authority of most Gulf monarchies is secure, but they know what they risk if they are seen to be siding with Israel’s version of events at present. The popularity of Abbas, seen as a security subcontractor for Israel by some Palestinians, was already at a low ebb.

Years of patient work trying to build a new relationship between Israel and some Arab states looks set to be undone, a trend that will delight hardliners in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine. Some extremists in the Israeli government also have no interest in a relationship with Arab states if it involves compromise over the Palestinian question.

The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, issued a warning that he could unleash protests inside Egypt if Israel did not back down.

He again said Israel was seeking to expel Palestinians over the Gaza southern border into the Sinai peninsula and said to Israel: “The Negev Desert [about 4,500 sq miles of land in southern Israel] is before you if you want to displace Palestinian citizens, but not Sinai, and then Sinai will not become a base to attack you and for you to use it as an excuse to attack Egypt.”

He has been demanding Israel allow aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, but only with US-backed Israeli assurances that Israel will not attack the convoys. Israel fears the convoys will contain ammunition for Hamas, a central issue in the talks between Israel and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

[skinnyscottishbloke]

Some housekeeping of shows I want to watch over the winter. More below the cut.

SHOWS TO FINISH

1. Black Sails (2/4)

2. Peaky Blinders (5/6)

3. Brooklyn 99 (5/8)

4. The Mentalist (4/7)

5. Justified (3/6)

6. The West Wing (3/7)

7. Sex Education (3/4)

8. Cold Case (4/7)

9. OUAT (6/7)

10. MI-5/Spooks (4/10)

11. ANTM (22/24)

12. Outlander (6/8)

13. Grace and Frankie (5/7)

SHOWS TO WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME

1. Ted Lasso

2. Our Flag Means Death

3. Foundation

4. Staged

5. Young Royals

6. *continue DT’s filmography*

7. Love Victor

SHOWS I’VE STARTED BUT WILL (PROBABLY) NEVER FINISH

1. Reign

2. Agents of Shield

3. The 100

4. Friends

5. House

6. Arrow

7. Queer As Folk (US)

8. Weeds

9. How to Get Away with Murder

10. Attack on Titan

SHOWS I’M CURRENTLY WATCHING/ RE-WATCHING

1. Buffy (via reaction)

2. Leverage (w/ Rowan)

3. Fellow Travelers (currently airing)

4. Good Omens (via reaction)

5. DW (13’s seasons)

6. catching up on Taskmaster (s08-11, s13-16)

7. catching up on Drag Race (Mexico s01, Brazil s01, UK s05, Germany s01)

SHOWS I HAVE SEEN ALL OF THAT ARE DONE

1. The Tudors (4/4)

2. The White Queen/The White Princess/The Spanish Queen/The Serpent Queen (all 1/1)

3. Buffy (7/7)

4. Angel (5/5)

5. Pillars of the Earth (1/1)

6. HIMYM (9/9)

7. Psych (8/8 + movies)

8. Bones (11/11)

9. Broadchurch (3/3)

10. North and South (1/1)

11. BBC Merlin (5/5)

12. BBC Robin Hood (3/3)

13. Downton Abbey (6/6 + movies)

14. Sense8 (2/2 + special)

15. Jessica Jones (2/2)

16. Daredevil (3/3)

17. The Defenders (1/1)

18. Luke Cage (2/2)

19. Iron Fist (2/2)

20. Game of Thrones (8/8)

21. BBC Sherlock (yes it’s done LOL) (4/4)

22. ATLA (3/3)

23. LOK (5/5)

24. Vicar of Dibley (3/3)

25. OG Gossip Girl (6/6)

26. Leverage (5/5)

27. Versailles (3/3)

28. Veronica Mars (3/3 + movie + reboot)

29. Firefly (1/1 + movie)

30. Castle (8/8)

31. 1995 P&P (1/1)

32. Glee (6/6)

33. Agent Carter (2/2)

SHOWS I’M CURRENT ON BUT ARE STILL ONGOING

1. Heartstopper (2/?)

2. Good Omens (2/ prob 3)

3. Wheel of Time (2/?)

4. Rings of Power (1/?)

5. Drag Race US (15/?)

6. Drag Race All Stars (8/?)

7. Leverage: Redemption (2/?)

8. Queer Eye (7/?)

SHOWS I’VE HEARD OF BUT NEVER WATCHED MORE THAN AN EP OR 2 (AND PROBABLY WON’T)

1. Supernatural

2. any of the Star Treks

3. Breaking Bad

4. NCIS

5. JAG

6. Dexter

7. Chuck

8. Grey’s Anatomy

9. Community

10. The Office (UK or US)

11. Parks and Rec

12. Orange is the New Black

13. Black Mirror

14. Sons of Anarchy

15. One Piece

16. Dragon Ball Z

17. Full Metal Alchemist

18. The Vampire Diaries

19. The OC

20. Dawson’s Creek

21. Gilmore Girls

22. Teen Wolf

23. 24

24. Emily in Paris

25. CSI

26. 911 or any spin offs

27. Scrubs

28. Family Guy

29. The Simpsons

[wub-fur-radio]

The Lion Under the Lemons

March plays against type and goes out like a lion in this lively, tuneful, and eclectic early spring mix of contemporary indie folk/rock/jangle/pop/etc. Featuring a score of fine tunes from Hollow Hand, Calexico, Robert Forster, Tony Molina, the Woolen Men, Edwyn Collins, Cat Power, and a baker’s dozen more artists who know it’s better to be a lion for a day than a lemon for your whole life.

▶︎🎶 Play on  Mixcloud –or– Apple Music (or scroll down to use an embedded player below)

Running Time: 1 hour, 2 seconds

Tracklist

Hurdy Short (1:16) — TJO | California | 2021

All My Love (3:55) — Hollow Hand | Brighton, UK | 2023

Star Vehicle (3:26) — Pale Blue Eyes | Totnes, UK | 2022

Song For Friends (Slight Return) (1:03) — Tony Molina | San Francisco, CA | 2022

Turquoise (2:49) — Calexico | Tucson, AZ | 2022

There’s a Reason to Live (2:31) — Robert Forster | Australia | 2023

Love Is the Frequency (Acoustic Version) (2:49) — Andy Bell | London, UK | 2023

Unspoken Promise * (2:59) — Plankton Wat | Portland, OR | 2023 * Apple Music version subsitutes “A Window in the Mirror” (3:03) also by Plankton Wat | 2022

Little Sign (2:51) — Edith Frost | Austin, TX | 2020

I Guess We Were Young (3:22) — Edwyn Collins | Helmsdale, UK | 2019

Emmanuel Head (3:31) — Hector Gannet | North Shields, UK | 2023

A Rumor (0:24) — Whitney’s Playland | San Francisco, CA | 2023

Forgotten 45 (3:45) — Woolen Men | Portland, OR | 2023

Waiting on a Ghost to Haunt You (2:46) — The Reds, Pinks and Purples | San Francisco, CA | 2023

Old Perfume for a New Day (3:29) — Tommy and The Ohs | Nashville, TN | 2022

Rising Moons (2:20) — Immaterial Possession | Athens, GA | 2023

Useless Feeling (3:49) — Spice World | WA, Australia | 2023

Good (4:31) — Ghost Woman | Arizona | 2022

When I Think of You (3:13) — Noa Mal | Philippines | 2023

Here Comes a Regular (5:13) — Cat Power | Miami, FL | 2022

🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋 🦁 🍋  

Embedded Mixcloud Player

Embedded Apple Music Player

If you’re not seeing an embedded player it’s probably because you’re reading this on Tumblr, in which case you can click here to open this post directly on the Wub-Blog.

[pacifymebby]

babe what were the riots in shields in the 90s??

Okay so I'm not actually sure but I'm presuming it's this? One of the worst riots in British history apparently. Started in an estate over the deaths of two lads who were in a car crash when fleeing the police.

The historic context, from what I can tell, is the same as most unrest in UK. Was fuelled by hatred for the police that had been brewing since Thatcher and the miners strikes.

The estate was built as spillover when they overhauled all the slums (they did this in Scotland too and created some of the most miserable places you've ever seen). Mostly what you find with spillover estates is that they're just like a box to put the poor people in out of sight out of mind to kind of keep them contained so you can forget about them? They end up being derelict, poverty stricken, often quite lawless dangerous places to live, people who grow up there end up trapped there by their circumstances, there's quite commonly high suicide rates in these places. Billy Connolly talked about the Glasgow ones in a documentary and described the problems quite well, they build all these tiny houses and move as many people into them as they can, get them out the slums, but they don't build shops or cinemas or cafes, no parks or green spaces, nowhere for anyone to go, nothing for them to do, no jobs for them to work etc, they just leave you there to rot kinda thing.

Then you combine this with the context of 90s north east, the miners strikes and thatchers police/military violence against the working class is still an open wound, anger against the authorities is already high and probably for the people in those estates, getting more tense day by day. Because it's the government and the police that keep you trapped in those places.

I saw this stat from 2021 (but this issue has been a problem for a long time, probably since before thatcher but certainly exacerbated tenfold by her)

(and it gives you context for songs like Dead Boys too)

This is the data for suicide rates across the country, London and the East/South east have the least which is honestly no fucking surprise at all. Generally those are the most affluent areas of the country. There's still jobs and an economy and it's where ALL the money goes.

Once you get to West Midlands and up you're above the average suicide rate for the country too which is not fucking surprising either.

Anyway the reason I added this to useful context about the riots in the 90s is that like, for all that there was a keep quiet don't talk about it culture (I say was because it was worse then) about suicide, it wouldnt mean people weren't angry.

So like when two lads died in a police car chase (which is awful anyway but also the police have a duty/responsibility not to risk loss of life even to suspected criminals obviously) it wouldn't just have been anger about that which set of the chain of events if that makes sense? Like general anger among a disillusioned and downtrodden demographic which is then sparked by one inflammatory incident is usually what causes a riot.

Anyway the riots were really bad, derelict houses, and shops (there was a lot of racially motivated hate crimes too apparently) were burnt down, the high street was left in ruins. The rioting spread quite far too.

"the fallout" from the riots is probably like, intensified tensions with the police in that area, a lot of fear and anger in a community, a fuck tone of people went to prison, governments punish towns for this shit and the Tories would have been making so many cuts to every kind of social service and giving the money to the cops instead, like just generally economic downturn and stuff. When he talks about cranes being static like, Thatcher destroyed most UK based industry, there were no jobs anywhere. But also right and this is something I think people forget to consider, the fallout post these strikes and riots was a sense of crushing hopelessness because we didn't win. The police and the government won and crushed the communities who had rebelled. Ultimately the fallout is an overwhelming sense of loss, grief, anger and the knowledge that there's no point fighting it cause when you fight the government come down harder, threaten your families.

The whole of the estate ended up being either rebuilt or refurbished and theres a new community center too now, so he could also remember seeing stuff being rebuilt, but I don't get the impression that's what he's talking about somehow.

Theres a TV show called boys from the blackstuff set in Liverpool (I think) that's kind of about this, how there was no industry and everyone was on the dole which wasn't enough to feed a family on, so people would try to work sneak jobs on the side (which lead to so much abuse of workers, kids in unsafe environments, deaths) because if you aren't even like 10p your dole would get stopped. Again all of it leads to suicides and violence. You can watch it on ITV player I think and if this stuff is something you're interested in beyond a Sam Fender lyric you should watch it, it's really emotive and like makes you angry but it really shows you how evil the Conservatives are and how their evil really remains everywhere. (and it explains so much about the north South divide and why there are kids being raised right now up north who will not forgive and forget for the sake of making friends with a southerner when they go to uni)