#ODESSA stamp

[ventureswife]

i made overwatch stamps! i picked charcters that i can nvr find stamps for and i'll make more soon!

[queen-scribbles]

Hey. Hey, Darth Edgelord.

I don't think she's impressed.

[pupsmailbox]

ACADEMIC ID PACK

NAMES︰ adeline. agatha. alastair. alex. alexander. alexandria. alisa. amber. ambrose. ambrosia. amorette. andrew. annabel. annabeth. annalise. anya. arden. artemis. arthur. ash. ashford. aspen. athena. atlas. atreus. augustus. avery. beatrix. blair. blake. blythe. bram. bronwyn. caspian. charles. charlotte. christopher. circe. claude. coraline. crimson. damian. damien. damon. daphne. darcy. demeter. diana. dorian. durant. ebony. eden. edgar. eleanor. elenor. elizabeth. elvira. emberl. enid. eris. everett. fantine. felix. fern. genevieve. george. grey. griffin. haven. hazel. hecate. henry. hester. holmes. hyde. inkesse. inkette. inkie. inky. isolde. ivie. ivy. james. jane. journalle. julian. julius. juno. kane. killian. lenore. lilith. lorelei. luna. magnus. malachi. mallory. maude. meredith. naomi. narissa. nicodem. nightesse. nightwing. nimue. noire. noiresse. noirette. odessa. odette. oliver. ophelia. orion. percy. persephone. peyton. phineas. phoebe. quill. quille. quinn. raven. ravenesse. ravenette. ravenne. remus. romero. rory. rosalind. rose. rowan. rowena. rufus. salem. scriptesse. sebastian. stoker. sylvain. tanith. theo. theodore. theodosia. trista. tristan. victor. victoria. vincent. virgil. wilhelmine. willow. wynona. xanthe. zoltan.

PRONOUNS︰ acade/academia. amber/amber. an/antique. arch/architectself. arch/archive. art/art. art/artist. arti/article. arti/fact. artifact/artifact. baro/baroque. bea/beauty. bis/bisque. book/book. bookworm/bookworm. calligraphy/calligraphy. can/vas. candle/candle. cer/ceramic. char/charcoal. chess/chess. clas/classic. clay/clay. clock/clock. co/collect. coco/coco. cocoa/cocoa. cof/coffee. coffee/coffee. col/color. coll/collection. collage/collage. con/cept. crea/cream. crow/crow. cur/curate. dra/drama. dust/dust. essay/essay. fea/feather. feather/feather. fig/figure. fil/film. flicker/flicker. gal/gallery. glaze/glaze. globe/globe. gold/gold. hazel/hazel. his/history. history/history. hon/honey. hue/hue. hypo/hypothesis. illus/illustrate. ink/ink. journal/journal. ki/kiln. knowledge/knowledge. le/letter. learn/learn. letter/letter. li/library. lig/ligature. lit/literature. mar/marble. mur/mural. murder/murder. muse/muse. muse/museum. night/night. no/note. novel/novel. page/page. paint/brush. paint/paint. paint/painting. paper/paper. para/dox. pen/pen. pho/photo. pi/pigment. piano/piano. poe/poet. poem/poem. por/trait. porcel/porcelain. print/print. qui/quill. quill/quill. raven/raven. rea/read. read/read. ren/renaissance. rev/revolution. scrapbook/scrapbook. script/scripts. scroll/scroll. sculp/sculptor. sculp/sculpture. sketch/sketch. speci/specimen. spine/spine. sta/stamp. stai/stain. stamp/stamp. statue/statue. story/story. stu/dy. study/studie. study/study. surreal/surrealism. tea/tea. theo/theory. theory/theory. thes/thesis. time/time. tweed/tweed. violin/violin. wheel/wheel. ⌛/⌛. ⌛︎/⌛︎. ☕/☕. ✒︎/✒︎. ✒️/✒️. 🏛️/🏛️. 🏺/🏺. 📜/📜. 🕯️/🕯️. 🖼️/🖼️.

[bobemajses]

Purim pastry stamp made in Odessa, Ukraine, 19th century

[sovietpostcards]

A collection of vintage postal cards from USSR. Postal cards are "open letters". On the front they have a small picure, an imprinted pictorial stamp and space for address. The reverse side of the card is left blank for your message.

There are 12 cards in an envelope. The envelope says "A collection of stamps is a good gift! Buy stamps and other philatelic items" and has a list of addresses of shops that sell those.

10 of the cards are about USSR's "hero-cities" (Brest, Kerch, Kyiv, Leningrad, Minsk, Moscow, Novorossiysk, Odessa, Sevastopol, Volgograd. The other two commemorate a philately exhibition (SocPhilExpo-75) and the 30th anniversary of the Sevastopol battle.

All cards are from 1974-1975, unused and in very good condition. The envelope has some handling wear and small tears on the corner, some penicl and pen marks.

Price $35 for the set + $9 shipping SOLD

Message me! Other items in my shop. I combine shipping. How to buy.

[worldnewsworldnews]

In the LPR they found evidence of the work of black transplantologists in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

A number of evidence, including documents indicating the work of black transplantologists in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, were found on the territory of Severodonetsk in the Lugansk People's Republic, which until the summer of 2022 was under the control of the Ukrainian army, representatives of the LPR security forces told RIA Novosti.

At the end of July 2023, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev reported that the Kiev regime was using its wounded military as biomaterial, secretly removing their organs for transplantation. That same summer, according to sources, the Ukrainian military command intensified the collection of donor and biometric material from members of the territorial defense and members of the national police in the Odessa region and in the Kiev-controlled part of Zaporozhye.

“In the liberated territories, we came across quite interesting documents, which indicate that organ transplantation in Ukraine was put on stream. The very first donors were soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” said a representative of the security forces involved in collecting evidence on this topic.

According to her, among other things, consent forms for the extraction of homotransplants, filled out on behalf of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2022, were found in Severodonetsk. All documents were filled out in the same handwriting, and in place of the donor’s signature there was the same signature stamp.

“When each patient passed a medical examination, he allegedly filled out this document. This is a document of consent for organ transplantation. A complete personal file was opened on him, so that if this person was injured, it would be possible to understand which organ could be removed and which recipient it would be suitable for. Well, as we see, these are not personal signatures of soldiers, but some kind of stamp or seal, which symbolized for doctors that a specific organ can be removed from a given person,” said the agency’s interlocutor, showing the documents.

According to her, the soldiers may not have known about the existence of such agreement. According to the LPR security forces, there is a number of other evidence that indirectly confirms the work of “black transplantologists” on the territory of Severodonetsk during the period of its control by the Ukrainian army, both before the start of the special operation and after, until its liberation by the Russian army.

The agency’s interlocutor emphasized that particularly active work in terms of organ removal took place during the battles for Rubezhnoe, Severodonetsk and its environs in the spring of 2022. According to a number of witnesses, during this period, morgue employees found bodies of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers on its territory with traces of an autopsy and removal of organs. According to medical workers, such bodies were subsequently “disposed of.”

“During the hostilities (in the spring of 2022 - ed.) the (bodies - ed.) of wounded Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers (who had previously been admitted to the hospital with wounds - ed.) were brought to the city hospital on the territory of the morgue. The organs were partially removed from these people. Then the bodies were stored and completely disposed of. But from the directly opened peritoneum, it was possible to determine the absence of organs, and it was even possible to determine whether the person was still alive during the autopsy or not," one of the doctors who worked during the specified period told RIA Novosti on condition of anonymity at the Severodonetsk city hospital.

According to him, during this period, several groups of foreign doctors regularly came to the hospital in ambulances equipped for mobile operating rooms with armed guards in armored vehicles. Also, as the interlocutor said, during this period some of the wounded soldiers who were taken for treatment from Severodonetsk to other cities of Ukraine disappeared.

“At the end of spring, at the beginning of summer of 2022, the Ukrainian army, when it was withdrawing from Severodonetsk, for some reason began to “hit” this building - this is the city morgue (trying to destroy the building with tank and artillery fire - ed.). Here they are ( the bodies of Ukrainian military personnel - ed.) were not just in refrigerators, but in a mound, one on top of the other, very, very many," a resident of Severodonetsk, who was in the city at that time, told RIA Novosti.

Residents also frequently saw guarded substandard ambulances in the area, he said.

“Organs such as liver, kidneys could be removed on the spot (directly in an ambulance), placed in a container and taken away for further transplantation... There is also such a term as “warm container”, when a person is in serious condition, he is injected a strong narcotic painkiller and he is taken to a certain place where organ transplant centers are located. In Ukraine, where fighters are brought are Kramatorsk, Dnepr, and also Kharkov," said a representative of the security forces.

In 2021, Ukraine passed a transplant law providing for the transplantation of human organs without consent. The law talks about simplifying the procedure for removing organs from deceased people who did not give lifetime consent to donate their organs after death.

[thebardostate]

I might quibble with the article over why Hannibal was defeated in the Second Punic War (it had more to do with Scipio Africanus taking Spain away from the Carthaginians and leaving Hannibal's overextended armies to slowly starve in hostile occupied Italy) but what happened to Cybele is part of a homogenization that befalls all religions over time. Consider:

Judaism soon stopped practicing the Year of Jubilee, which (in principle) eliminated private ownership of the land, freed all slaves, and cancelled all debts every 49 years (Leviticus 25);

No sooner did the Roman Emperor Constantine convert to Christianity than he directed the Church to stamp out all interpretations of the Bible other than those serving the interests of the Empire;

Japanese Zen Buddhism became so corrupted by government subsidies in Imperial Japan that it provided a religious justification for war against China, the birthplace of Zen (1895-1945), regularly excused war crimes, and actively assisted in training the IJN and IJA officer corps;

The Patriarch of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church fully supported the war of aggression against (among others) the Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church, and blessed the missiles that destroyed a historic cathedral in Odessa.

In time, all religions eventually become priestly bureaucracies that align with existing secular power structures to preserve and promote their own power. Revolutionary aspects of the creed are systematically discouraged if not actively suppressed, while conservative factions who are supportive of the secular establishment are promoted and endorsed.

What happened to Cybele is happening all the time. Most establishment religions are <1% wisdom and >99% tribalism.

Followers of the mother goddess Cybele were famous for whipping themselves into religious ecstasies. Modern historians love to use the word “orgiastic” to describe her worshippers and their rituals.

One of the stories associated with Cybele is that of Attis, a shepherd whose love for Cybele was so great that he castrated himself under a pine tree in a fit of religious enthusiasm and died. Many of the rituals associated with Cybele attempted to recapture both the intensity of Attis’ devotion and the bloodiness of his act.

All this struck the normally staid Romans as a bit too, well, eastern. They tended to look down on the Persians, Egyptians, and so forth as too emotional, too effeminate, and too undisciplined.

Powerful Romans worked to mainstream Cybele, turning her from a wild mother of nature into a placid Roman matriarch. Cybele was incorporated into less intense new rituals — games, animal sacrifices, that sort of thing — orchestrated by powerful Romans; her priests were not invited to these events. The wild rites associated with her seem to have faded away over time.

Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, was especially interested in using Cybele. Though he had overthrown the Roman Republic, he positioned himself as a traditionalist, someone who would bring back “traditional” Roman values. In doing so, he promoted a vision of Cybele as the “Magna Mater” — the great mother of Rome. She was now portrayed as a virtuous Roman matriarch, often without her lions:

Here’s another Roman depiction from around the same time, which attempts to incorporate all of the symbolism associated with Cybele. We have the lion, which signifies her power over nature; a cornucopia, symbolizing her role in providing abundant harvests; and her crown, representing her role in protecting Rome’s cities.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

[pulptv]

⠀⠀𝗣𝗨𝗟𝗣𝘛𝘝₁₉₉₉ ) :⠀ CHRIST, LOOK WHO'S WANDERED IN ! thank you for applying abby. sen mitsuji and olivia cooke as the sawayama capo and moreno associate is all yours. you have twenty four hours to send in an account and read over the checklist. get ready, new york is one hell of a city . . .

*  \̲\̲  sen mitsuji,  genderfluid  +  he/they  ] ⠀★ ,   no   way,   haven’t   you   ever   heard   of   takeshi   sawayama?   perhaps   you   know   them   best   as   the   toothless   dragon.  spotted   under   new   york's   city   lights,   i’ve   heard   they’re   a capo   and   financial   advisor   /   risk   assessor   that’s   protected   by   the   sawayama   family,   spilled   blood   for   loyalty   is   thicker   than   water.   the   rumour   goes   that   the  thirty-three   year   old   is   known   to   be   two-faced   and   short-tempered,   yet   meticulous   and   pragmatic.   it’s   envy   that’s   their   biggest   vice,   but   hey,   what   do   i   fuckin’   know?   their   favourite   song   on   the   job   is   wage   wars   get   rich   die   handsome   by   the   mountain   goats   and   are   never   seen   without   a lobster   claw-shaped   cigarette   case,   hard   to   believe   in   superstition   in   such   a   godless   city.   ask   the   right   people   and   they’ll   tell   you   that   they   remind   them   of:   a   knife   wiped   clean   on   black   trousers,   dripping   from   bespoke leather   gloves   flush   on   skin;   glass   crunching   underfoot   and   little   blue   pills   beneath   glass;   shoot,   reload,   shoot   again   and   shoot   until   the   target  smolders.   so   whatever   you   do,   and   may   vengeance   have   mercy   on   you,   do   not   fuck   with   them.    ⸻    abby,  26,  any,  pst.

   *  \̲\̲  olivia cooke,  cis woman  +  she/her  ] ⠀★ ,   no   way,   haven’t   you   ever   heard   of  odessa   lavan-grieco?   perhaps   you   know   them   best   as   van.  spotted   under   new   york's   city   lights,   i’ve   heard   they’re   an associate   and   er   nurse   that’s   protected   by   the   moreno   family,   spilled   blood   for   loyalty   is   thicker   than   water.   the   rumour   goes   that   the   twenty-eight   year   old   is   known   to   be   judgemental   and   arrogant,   yet   prudent   and   persuasive.   it’s   pride   that’s   their   biggest   vice,   but   hey,   what   do   i   fuckin’   know?   their   favourite   song   on   the   job   is   bury   me   by   friday   pirates   club   and   are   never   seen   without   a   field   notes   book  of   children's   doodles,   hard   to   believe   in   superstition   in   such   a   godless   city.   ask   the   right   people   and   they’ll   tell   you   that   they   remind   them   of:   a   perfect   manicure   caked   over   with   blood,   dirt,   and   grime,   the   impression   of   a   ring   stamped   into   the   meat   of   her   palm;   endless,   desperate,   chest   compressions.   it's   too   late,   it's   too   late,   try   anyway   and   keep   trying. they're   gone,   they   aren't,   they   are;   this   isn't   my   mess.   well,   it's   yours   to   clean   up.   so   whatever   you   do,   and   may   vengeance   have   mercy   on   you,   do   not   fuck   with   them.    ⸻    abby,  26,  any,  pst

[thewoonerffiets]

Combating Food Scarcity in Cincinnati

Subscription based produce service can be provided as a way to make local, fresh produce accessible and affordable for citizens. At local farmer's markets I observed one farmer bringing a large truck each week full of their produce that people would should up and just take boxes of. Customers would pay upfront for the season and then would be able to attend the market and pick up their weekly produce as it was available. Being an unorthodox practice, implementing it will spark curiosity and bring additional to farmer's markets and hopefully increase the traffic they receive. This practice also empowers local farmers to have ownership over their product and connect more directly with customers. To make the service more accessible to many income types the farmers can partner with the local government to allow food stamps to be used to purchase the goods.

In urban areas, there’s an opportunity for individuals with unused yards to rent out their yards to other people who would put in the effort to cultivate and plant on the land. This allows the individual to benefit from the produce grown on their land and lets them harvest and eat the produce, giving them healthy options during the season. Individuals are also given the opportunity to sell the produce at a farmer's market or give it away to people around them potentially giving their neighbors good options nearby. Another major plus is that it's better for the environment than keeping regular grass in your yard.

City subsidized grocery stores, whose goal is to serve the surrounding community with affordable, healthy food would be a fantastic solution to combat food deserts. These city run markets with their low prices could force bigger grocery chains to compete by lowering their prices or tailoring each store to the specific community to which the store serves.

For example in the city where I (James) grew up, New York, each neighborhood has different items available in their grocery stores which cater to that neighborhood’s tastes. In Brighton Beach, supermarkets have many Russian and Ukrainian goods because of the high number of Russians and Ukrainians who live in the area. The same applies in Flushing and the high amount of East Asian food available. Here in Cincinnati, it seems that each grocery store is the same, and it also seems to be the same brand: Kroger. Driving a diversity of food options through city run markets would be great for neighborhood diversity and character.

The Taste of Russia Market in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY. Photo taken from the Guardian: Russian flags come down in New York’s Little Odessa: ‘Putin has turned it into a fascist symbol’

I was inspired by the town of St. Paul, KS, who decided, after two decades without a grocery store, to open a city-owned and operated supermarket in order to attract new residents and revitalize the town. During the two decades without a grocery store in town, the nearest full service grocery was a 34 mile round trip away. The town now has access to fresh food right at its doorstep serving the town's 614 people.

The St. Paul Market in St. Paul, Kansas. Photo and statistics from this website.

James McDermott, RT Atkins, AJ Earlywine, and Dylan Gomez.

[odessa-archives]

The lovely @sirenibe has made me an Odessa stamp! Feel free to use ! Crediting Bella for the edit would be appreciated~!

[ilookattextile]

19th century Purim pastry stamps from Odessa, Ukraine. Pisces and Fish symbols are associated with the Jewish calendar month of Adar in which Purim occurs.

The Jewish Museum, New York City

[odessaconcrete]

Concrete services in Midland TX

If you have a business or are hoping to begin a business, you should set aside the effort to locate a decent contractual worker who can assist you with building your venture. An expert can thoroughly take care of you from start to finish of the undertaking with the goal that your accounts stay at their ideal levels.Contractual workers for development services deal with an assortment of activities including finishing, plumbing, material, arranging, and home improvement ventures. You may decide to have somebody do the structure of a home or you can decide to recruit a person to deal with the entirety of the home remodels and fixes. Notwithstanding, of whether you need an organization to fabricate a home or simply need to renovate the outside of it, employing a

concrete worker in Midland TX

can get you out.

How solid temporary a worker can help you in your business

Recruiting a concrete worker for your task implies that you get the best quality help accessible. At the point when you recruit a contractual worker for your home improvement or home structure venture, you get a gathering of individuals who have cooperated on an undertaking previously. Much of the time, you will have a general vision of what you need, however, contractual workers are exceptionally talented at executing an arrangement that will meet your details.

Concrete workers are prepared to deal with extending and furnish you with expert help and you can recruit them for a task. Development contractual workers are completely authorized and guaranteed and have amazing information on all the guidelines and guidelines that concern them and all the parts of the development procedure. They additionally realize how to function with you and furnish you with the administrations you need at a moderate cost.

Contractual workers offer various administrations, including solid leveling, blazing, canals, finishing, pipe cutting, and the laying of blocks. Temporary workers additionally can expand the life of your current cement by furnishing you with the best possible wrapping up. This is particularly significant when you have a pool.

Contractual workers are instructed on the materials they will use in your venture and they can clarify the parts of a structure. These incorporate encircling drywall, dividers, roofs, floors, and rooftops. If you have questions, contractual workers will have the option to offer you the best help they can in settling any inquiries you may have concerning the development procedure.

Concrete workers realize how to work with enormous associations and they can finish extends rapidly. This implies you can hope to get an agreement that is exact, finished, and with the subtleties you need. They are not just proficient at finishing the venture; they are additionally skilled at arranging terms and conditions that are advantageous to the two gatherings.

Subcontractors are a significant asset for both you and the temporary worker. These subcontractors give materials, work, and the expert administrations that are required to finish the task. Temporary workers offer you the chance to diminish your remaining task at hand and subcontractors give the aptitudes you may need to finish the venture.

With renovating your venture will have an expert look. At the point when you recruit a temporary worker, they will make a definite diagram for you and they will give the materials and work to the venture. From the earliest starting point as far as possible of the undertaking, your contractual workers are there to assist you with finishing your venture and they will do it conveniently and expertly.

[soleminisanction]

First thing I should probably establish here is that this happened pre-9/11, sometime in the late 90s, though I don’t remember exactly when. My family is Christian, but we were the sane kind of Christian; our church was adjacent to local university and mostly attended by its faculty. A few years after this story took place I would receive some legitimately forward-thinking sexual education from this church, including contact information for the nearest Planned Parenthood, and a few years after that some of the church elders would lead an ultimately futile campaign against the local school board’s decision to teach Bible classes in public schools.

My best friend at the time, however, was Baptist. I don’t know for certain if she was certified Deep South Baptist™ but they were undeniably one of the bigger churches in town. They held a lot of events for kids and my friend often invited me along, so I got to know quite intimately that their church building was huge, three stories tall plus a basement in a town where basements were practically non-existent. They had a gymnasium with a bounce house that the church owned, plus a playground that could be accessed from the building by way of a plastic tube slide that extended straight out of the third-story wall, its entrance just sitting at the end of a Sunday School hallway with a little hatch over it for safety.

This was a big, fancy church, is what I’m saying, and a lot of the people who went to it were rich, but y’know, not rich enough to not be living in Odessa fucking Texas. And if you know anything about Odessa fucking Texas beyond Heroes, Friday Night Lights, and that one post with the pickles, you know it is a miserable little scrap of a place in the ass-end of the desert, and not even the pretty or interesting parts of the desert. It’s 300 miles away from anything interesting and 500 miles away from the nearest ocean.

I set all of this up so you can properly understand the depth of the surreal confusion that swept through me when I, at approximately ten or eleven years old, arrived at this church for a sleepover “lock in” with my best friend, climbed out of her mother’s car, and looked up at a god damn boat that was taking up half the parking lot. It was a full sized, one hundred percent real yacht, one of those that’s designed for you to spend days out on the ocean in, just sitting there on a trailer with zero explanation.

See, the theme for this lock-in experience thing was international travel. Once we’d left our sleeping bags in our designated gender-and-age segregated sleeping rooms, we and our roommates were guided around the building by an adult minder to activity stations themed after various world cultures. Each of us had a little paper passport, and once we completed each station, we’d get a rubber stamp saying we’d been through that place in the world.

I don’t remember most of the activities too clearly. One involved us eating fake McDonald’s fries, but I don’t remember why. Another was just an excuse to give our group thirty minutes in the bounce house, because they used literally any excuse to bring out the bounce house and to be fair it was the best part.

There’s only two parts I remember super strongly, because in retrospect they were both pretty fucked up. The first came at midnight, when they gathered all of the groups together into the basement, where they’d set up a “bazaar” where each stand sold a different kind of snack – one had juice, another apples, another crackers, bananas, cookies, etc. They gave us all Monopoly money, but not enough to buy one of everything at their listed price. If we wanted one of every snack, we had to haggle for it – they told us that explicitly. And the entire time, the adults manning the booths were dressed like and pretending to be stereotypical… I think Asian or African? merchants. Despite all being white people.

This did not work for me. I was an extremely picky eater, and shy, and knew in my gut that asking a merchant to lower their prices when I could obviously afford to budget for exactly what I wanted anyway was both a waste of time and extremely rude. And so despite the merchants trying to pressure me into haggling, I just paid for my food and sat down to eat it, hoping the sugar would wake me up a bit. Because see, at the time, I was a morning person who was usually in bed by 9, a stark contrast to my night owl bestie. I had known that the goal of this lock-in was to stay up all night long but I was already fading fast.

So by the time we got to the final station of the night, I was exhausted. And this is the other one I remember because it was then, and only then, that I learned the purpose of the yacht in the parking lot.

It’s three thirty in the morning. The adults lead us out into the florescent-lit parking lot and have us climb the ladder to reach the deck of the yacht. I think most of the group find benches to sit on but I can’t say for certain because by that point I'm too tired to open my eyes; I find a spot in the corner, curl up and close my eyes, and thus remember most of this through touch and sound.

They pass out life vests and make everybody put them on. One of the adults gets behind the wheel of the boat and starts operating a sound effects tape, while the other mom starts talking us through an imagination session of traveling across the ocean to visit a foreign country. We “arrive” and a third mom climbs onto the boat, talking in a deep voice with a heavy accent. I crack open my eyes to see her wearing a fake beard, a towel, and a bathrobe. I close my eyes again.

Bathrobe mom is giving a speech welcome us to “her country” when a bell sounds, which she declares signals that it’s time to get down on your knees and pray to Allah and Mohammad, a ritual which by law everyone in the country including visitors must participate. She insists that all of us join in as well.

"No!" declares one of the literal ten-year-olds, with a fervor that feels suspiciously like this is a favorite game she's played a lot and thinks she's really good at. "We could never do that! We only pray to God and Jesus!"

Before Bathrobe Mom can pull together a response to that, this girl whips all the rest of the ten-year-olds into a mob, all of them chanting, "We love Jesus! We love Jesus!" in unison.

I am not participating. I have pulled the life jacket over my head and am trying to smother both my ears and my eyes in its padding.

Bathrobe Mom finally manages to restore order, getting everyone to calm down and shuts up. She declares that if we will not obey the country’s laws, then she cannot grant us entry to that country, which is of course the correct course of action to take. Half the crowd of white ten-year-olds complains anyway. She goes around to each of us and stamps a big red “REJECTION!” onto the passport page, ruining our collection, as I’m sure the narrative of the evening was intended to convey.

Bathrobe Mom then presumably gets off the ship and the other moms congratulate the group on making the good Christian choice. They then explain very seriously that sometimes, in the real world, the punishment for disobeying the law in countries like that isn't just getting kept out, it could mean prison time, or even execution. We have to ask ourselves, if we were in that situation, could we be brave enough to stick to our guns and do the right thing?

They don’t bother to roleplay taking the ship back to town, it just kinda stops, and then the game of pretend is over. We finally go to bed, and I pass the fuck out, not to reexamine this memory and realize how fucking weird it is for fifteen years.

Have I ever told Tumblr the story of the time my friend's church made us (a group of approximately 10-year-old white American children) roleplay traveling to a Muslim country and refusing to follow their laws in the name of Jesus?

[iblamethenubbins]

I've been trying to understand what is going on in Ukraine since last Thursday, like most of us, I believe . But the more I read about it the more I realize how complex the situation is.

I have been inclined to side with Ukraine as a country against Russia the invasor from the start, and of course I still do. However, there is a dark side to Ukranian nationalism that I hadn't known until now.

I can't claim to know a huge lot about it, only what I have gathered reading old newspaper articles and Wikipedia pages about the Euromaiden revolution in 2014 and the consequent war in the Donbass region. It's all information I should already have, but somehow it had completely bypassed me. So as I'm trying to wrap my thought around this, I'll try to summarise what I've gathered so far:

Ever since the end of the USSR, Ukraine has never truly been a united country. Its eastern part wished the Soviet Union never ended and kept on speaking Russian, while western Ukraine tried to get into the European Union from the start. When in 2014 a pro-Russian president was elected, Ukranian nationalists rebelled and ousted him, replacing him with the pro-EU candidate. Some people claimed this was a US-backed"coup" but I didn't find any credible sources to back this up. Anyway, this revolution took the name of Euromaiden, and it was quite violent. Ukranian nationalists didn't just fight against government forces, but also against pro-Russian people. Ukrainians fighting Ukrainians. The most horryfying event I've read about is what's reported on the Italian wikipedia as the Odessa massacre. The English page is quite different, so I don't know what I should believe, but it's undeniable that a lot of anti-Euromaiden were killed, either by Ukrainian nationalists and / or by neo nazi groups. I've read of people lynched when they tried to escape, and of women raped and tortured.

Moreover, during this time, a lot of the symbols of the Soviet era got removed (understandably), replaced by dubious national icons, including a statue of "national hero" Stepan Bandera, a ultranationalist, pro-nazi war criminal who swore allegiance to Hitler. In 2009 Ukraine even issued a stamp commemorating his birth.

Following the Euromaiden, a group of eastern pro-Russian territories known as Donbass declared their independence. I've also read some people claiming rebellion was fabricated by the Russian government but again, I haven't found any credible sources to back this claim either. Anyway, they held their unofficial referendum, which established that the vast majority was in favour of declaring independence, so I'm inclined to believe the rebellion was real.

This started a civil war in 2014 because the Ukrainian government didn't recognise their independence and tried to reinstate order in the region. This was has never ended, despite numerous efforts to do so. Both sides have committed terrible atrocities, as in all wars. Kiev has been bombing Donbass, causing immense suffering to civilians too, while anti-Kiev separatists have also been killing and kidnapping Ukrainian nationalist supporters, including journalists and international observers.

I've also read how there was a "foreign legion" of European (Italian, Spanish, French, British, Serbian, Polish...) supporters who joined either side to fight in the war: Neo nazis and other far right representatives in support of Kiev while people on the far-left showed up in support of the Donbass separatists.

Now, I find it hard to see a reason why Kiev shouldn't have recognised the independece of Donbass, whether it was backed by Russia or not. They don't want to be part of Ukraine so why should they be forced to?

All of this makes me come to the conclusion that:

1) Maybe, if Ukraine had recognised Donbass its independence, Putin wouldn't have had any excuse to invade now.

2) Kiev's army has been at war with Donbass for years now for reasons I find hard to justify and have been doing their fair amount of killing civilians, so knowing this I don't feel 100% comfortable supporting them right now.