#also totally ignoring syria

[werewolfmack]

The craziest thing a client ever said to me has been newly surpassed. the hot tea this woman spilled was (summarized) "the earthquake in turkey was not natural. It was manmade and set off in turkey on purpose, to punish them. Because erdogan was talking about leaving nato and had to be put in his place. And the USA government did it."

🫥🫥🫥 get me out of here... 🫥🫥🫥

[necarion]

According to a study by the Watson Institute at Brown University, civilian airstrike deaths in Afghanistan increased by 330% during the Trump presidency. And the Watson study largely credits this increase to a Trump regulation that relaxed the rules of engagement for airstrikes at the beginning of his presidency. As a result, the US military bombed more indiscriminately and more civilians died. Or, as the Watson study says quite bluntly, “When the United States tightens its rules of engagement and restricts air strikes where civilians are at risk, civilian casualties tend to go down; when it loosens those restrictions, civilians are injured and killed in greater numbers.” This wasn’t exclusive to Afghanistan. Airstrikes under Trump increased sixfold in Yemen, and there were more civilian deaths from airstrikes in Somalia under Trump than under Bush and Obama combined. Trump also oversaw a 200% increase in airstrike deaths in Iraq and Syria. In another move demonstrating how little Trump cared about airstrikes striking civilians, he removed an Obama-era rule that mandated reporting on civilian deaths from airstrikes. Conversely, Biden reversed Trump’s free-for-all airstrike policy, and tightened strike rules to ensure a “near certainty” that any strike does not injure civilians. He also banned signature strikes, a form of drone strike that targets groups of people and that is frequently cited as the form of airstrike resulting in the highest civilian casualties. As a result, in the first year of his presidency, Biden “nearly ended the drone war.” Biden did increase airstrikes in Somalia in 2022 in response to a wave of fighting from al-Shabaab militants. But overall, deaths from airstrikes have plummeted under Biden from the historic peaks they reached under Trump. Again, this isn’t an issue that receives substantial coverage. But airstrikes are a significant part of modern US military operations. More humane policies that lessen the impact airstrikes have on civilian populations make a major difference.

(From one of the linked articles, from the end of 2021):

Where Trump oversaw more than 1,600 air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria during his first 11 months in office, Airwars reports just four during Biden's term so far. Strikes in Somalia fell from roughly 75 last year to fewer than 10 this year, with no civilian casualties. And in Yemen, the annual total dropped from about 18 to maybe four, with fewer than 10 casualties of any kind. (Precise figures are unclear because some strikes are classified.)

I didn't know how stark these statistics were. Obviously there have been additional strikes in Yemen since this this was published. But also, I think there have been almost zero civilian casualties, which is an astounding difference from Trump, and even from Obama. (Also, Trump stripped away rules that prevented indiscriminate drone strikes on civilian areas or on things like weddings, which Biden almost immediately restored).

Just, like, on every possible foreign policy axis, Biden has been so much better for peace than Trump: ignoring the Rohinga Genocide, pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council, not just stopping tracking but censoring any reports of human rights abuses or sexual violence in other countries, pulling out of the Iran deal which could have brought them into the Western sphere (with benefits for Iranian citizens and all the victims of militant groups, including Russia, that it has been funding).

[d1n0m1te]

I know I rarely come on here and post stuff, but this is something serious that I think needs to start being boosted onto this platform if it hasn’t already. It’s everywhere on TikTok but that is not enough, so hopefully I can start a wave of awareness that is just as strong here as it is on TikTok.

In the rare instance that you don’t know, I will explain now;

Today I wish to bring light to the Genocide that is going on in Gaza, as well as many other Genocides that, only now, are being brought to light.

As of right now of writing this (November 14th, 2023), there has been an ongoing Genocide in Palestine that is being lead by Israel and started on October 7th of this year when a conflict occurred between Israel and Hamas/led Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip. Palestine has been under attack from Israel for longer though, since 1947 and, from 2006, there were a total of five wars between Hamas and Israel.

This year it has continued to worsen, now reaching large media coverage from journalists - many of which have been killed in the bombings as well as its citizens. In total a number of 11,100 and counting have been killed since October 7th, a large majority of the deaths being women and children, children including babies who have ranged from two years old to just being born, their lives ended before they can even walk.

People around the world, including those in Palestine themselves have demanded a ceasefire and for help from governments across the globe. Yet no help has been given to them, why? Because they side with Israel, these governments include and are not limited to the ones listed in this video:

Incase you can’t watch it for whatever reason at the moment, I will list here the major countries that, as of writing this, are pro-Israel;

- U.S.A/United States America

- Germany

- Guatemala

- India

- Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Croatia(Within Europe)

- France(Though they voted against Israel in the Humanitarian Truce Vote, they are still worthy of adding into this list)

And now for those who are AGAINST Israe/Pro-Palestinel:

- Iran/The Taliban

-Syria

- Chilli

- Columbia

- Bolivia

- Turkey

- Qatar

Please do keep in mind that things like this are possible to change, only time will tell but regardless it is important to keep note of who is supporting who.

Now this may be the part where I ask you to please go and support Palestine and do what you can. But that’s not it, not yet, for Palestine is not the only country under threat of Genocide. Unfortunately, there are more.

Congo and Haiti are also under going silent Genocides, both countries being extorted for their mineral resources to benefit western countries: Congo for example, their people being forced into slave labour to mine sources - one such resource being the ones to make iPhones and laptops, probably what you’re using right now to read this. The resource are called Tatalum and Coltan, and they are stained with the blood those forced to mine them.

Haiti is under a constantly corrupted and unstable government management with a rise of gang activities to go with it. No help has been given to them.

And western countries have done absolutely JACK SHIT to help.

That has to change. We cannot simply just demand for only Palestine, Congo or Haiti be freed and helped, but instead we demand ALL countries be helped. It’s obvious by now that our governments could care less about the people, they care about historical affiliations and keeping good connections for the sake of financial and resourceful of benefits.

Hope is not entirely lost, though, as many have taken to protest against and raise awareness to the inhumane cruelty that had been put into the light. I strongly encourage you to do the same. I am not asking that you go and fight the wars and fox the economies by yourself, I am asking that you merely acknowledge and SPREAD THE WORD.

Ignorance is a privilege we shall not let anyone have when it comes to atrocities like these.

What can you do to help?

Again, you just spread the word; repost, post, talk to friends or family about it, do whatever you can to so read awareness. Donate to charities(Be sure to do your research before doing so as, unfortunately, they are many who would take advantage of tragedies such as these for financial gain. Please be sure to research who or whatever you are donating money to so you know for sure where your money will be going.)

We are right now in the midst of a historical event, history is repeating and we are doomed if we stay quiet and do nothing. Hope is not lost.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. So will Congo and Haiti.

[mariacallous]

Among all Arab civil society organizations, the Nobel Prize-winning Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) has arguably done the most to defend the ideals of democracy in the region. It was a key guarantor of Tunisia’s transition to democracy after 2010 and continues to stand up to authoritarian President Kais Saied, refusing to support the sham parliamentary elections he orchestrated last December and January.

What is less well understood is that the UGTT has contributed to the fiscal and economic crisis that enabled Saied’s authoritarian rise. It has defended the interests of relatively privileged insiders on the labor market—public sector employees—while doing little or nothing for Tunisia’s vast army of unemployed and informally employed outsiders who work in the private sector without formal contracts or social security. This has contributed to economic inequality, social frustration, and pervasive economic inefficiency.

The situation is typical of a general economic ailment throughout the Arab world outside of the oil-rich Gulf: static systems by which the state protects shrinking groups of insiders while exposing outsiders to the brute forces of the market, thereby encouraging inequality and undermining economic dynamism, productivity, and growth. Countries as diverse as Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco share this lopsided approach to capitalism.

In all these cases, the state protects insiders not only on the labor market but also among businesses, which are broadly divided into crony firms with deep connections to the state on one hand and marginal, informal firms on the other. The latter receive little state support and, if anything, try to avoid the government’s heavy bureaucracy.

As I argue elsewhere, the Arab world’s economic development issue is not simply one of “too much state,” as many pro-market reformers argue, or state withdrawal, as leftist critics advocate, but instead of the state’s very uneven presence: overprotecting some while neglecting and marginalizing others. This uneven system is ensconced through vested interests that form key political constituencies: namely, state employees and crony networks in business.

Outsiders, by contrast, are much less well recognized as political constituency as they are socially marginal, busy with daily survival and badly organized. The static nature of Arab economies gives few incentives to firms or workers—whether insiders or outsiders—to upgrade productivity or skills, leading to stagnant economies.

To reach a more inclusive social contract and a new growth model, the region needs a form of egalitarian liberalization: a transformation of insider privileges into general social safety and support mechanisms that might be less generous but are more broadly available, safeguarding social inclusion as well as fair competition and economic dynamism.

For the time being, such fundamental change is not in sight. The region’s insider-outsider divides have deep historical roots in the ambitious, state-driven economic development programs of the post-World War II era. Especially in populist republics such as Algeria, Egypt, and Syria, these programs involved control over the private sector as well as larger state apparatuses and more extensive state employment than in any other region of the global south, a legacy that is difficult to change.

Public sector workers are a core historical constituency of Arab regimes and their relative privileges have survived successive rounds of austerity and partial liberalization surprisingly well. Across the region, government payrolls maintain a state-dependent middle class. The shares of public workers in both the total workforce and among workers with a formal contract are far above the levels in other developing regions, the result of historical promises—sometimes enshrined in law—to offer state jobs to all graduates.

Most insider jobs in government allow at best a modest lifestyle, and in some cases public sector workers have experienced substantial declines in real incomes. Yet hourly wages remain higher than in the private sector (including private employees with formal contracts), which is unusual in comparison to other regions. In Latin America, for example, a more fluid labor market means there is no systematic public sector wage premium. Job security in the Arab public sector is very high and welfare benefits, especially pensions, are much better than in the private sector.

Politically driven insider employment can impose large efficiency costs in the public sector. Overemployment is particularly rampant in state-owned enterprises: In 2021, Tunisair owned 26 aircraft, of which only seven were operational, while employing 7,600 people—more than 1,000 per functioning plane. The UGTT has resisted all attempts to consolidate the payroll.

Maintaining such insider constituencies is expensive. Tunisia has one of the world’s highest spending ratios for public salaries, reaching 15.1 percent of GDP in 2022. At the same time, fiscal constraints restrict new hiring, which means that young jobseekers have scant chances of getting a government job. Given weak job creation in the private sector, most young Arabs are either unemployed or stuck in precarious and badly paid informal jobs such as street vending or driving. Labor force surveys show unusually low mobility between insider and outsider status: The informally employed remain so for a very long time, while public sector insiders almost never leave their jobs.

High spending on insider benefits leaves few resources to support private labor market outsiders, who receive little or no social assistance. Spending on benefits not tied to formal employment is lower than in all other world regions. Non-contributory pensions, unemployment benefits, and cash grant systems are underdeveloped, leaving the weakest behind.

The frustration of outsiders has shaped Arab politics. In Tunisia in particular, outsiders have been prominent in social protests. Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation triggered the Arab uprisings of 2010-11, was a quintessential outsider. Yet political feedback loops have kept the current system in place: Regimes are afraid of touching insider privileges given their long-standing reliance on the state-employed middle class as a core political constituency.

To the extent that political mobilization is possible, insiders are also better organized—most notably in Tunisia through the UGTT, but also in Egypt during its brief liberal window after the fall of then-President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, when newly emerging independent unions mostly represented state employees.

Even when military dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took over Egypt in 2013, the one law his docile parliament refused to ratify contained civil service reform measures. Outsiders stage occasional demonstrations, but they seldom demand systemic changes to labor markets or welfare systems. They rather tend to ask for government jobs—demanding to be made insiders rather than overturning the system.

Meanwhile, thickets of protective regulation inherited from the post-war era of state-driven development facilitate corrupt networks between state and business elites. Licensing and inspection requirements, state-controlled access to land and credit, discretionary subsidies, and trade protection remain pervasive.

State elites use such tools to protect insiders while making it difficult for the vast army of unconnected firms to compete. Empirical research on Arab cronyism shows the staggering scale of insider privilege. In Egypt, “politically connected” companies under Mubarak accounted for only 11 percent of total employment but held 60 percent of total net profits among listed firms.

The 2010-11 uprisings were in no small measure directed at corrupt business barons, yet they have done little to remove crony networks. Egyptian steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz worked as a widely despised political fixer for Mubarak and was one of most high-profile arrests after Mubarak’s fall. Yet he has since left prison, and his companies, which benefit from cheap state-provided energy, are reporting bumper profits.

As in Arab labor markets, there is very low mobility among firms between insider and outsider status. Arab companies stay small and informal for longer than in other regions, while large firms go out of business less often than elsewhere. Even more than in the case of labor, insider companies are better organized and able to influence state decisions. When markets are formally liberalized, notably in the context of international trade agreements, insider firms often manage to lobby for new discriminatory rules in other areas of regulation to safeguard their privileges.

Sheltered insider firms have few incentives to become competitive, while outsiders have little opportunity to grow and innovate. The static insider-outsider divides in the Arab private sector contribute to low productivity, weak innovation, and poor export performance. One byproduct of this structural weakness is the scarcity of good, formal jobs in the private sector, which in turn reinforces the Arab middle classes’ reliance on and demand for state jobs.

Together with weak state education systems, this results in weak skill levels across Arab economies. This further reduces the chances of outsiders to find good jobs—and makes insiders cling to their privileges further, given their lack of competitiveness on a more open market.

In sum, the widespread narrative that neo-liberal, pro-market reforms have led to inequality, corruption, and economic stagnation across the Arab world is at best incomplete. While mismanaged and self-dealing liberalization measures have contributed to all these problems, the abiding, deep protection for select groups of insiders from the market is just as problematic and distortive.

Unless a new social contract is found, the inefficiency of the current system will make everyone worse off in the long run, including insiders the state can no longer afford to support. Egypt has travelled the furthest down this road towards general pauperization. Repeat rounds of currency devaluation have started to bring insiders in the public sector workforce down to the level of outsiders (while generally preserving the interests of crony businesses).

While Sisi’s regime has made attempts to create more inclusive social safety mechanisms, these have remained modest due to the regime’s fiscal constraints and its inability to address the major inefficiencies created by cronyism in the private sector.

What the region instead needs is an egalitarian liberalization, under which insiders give up some or all of their privileges while the state steps up its support for outsiders through more systematic investments in universal social security, entrepreneurship, and training.

Public sectors could be downsized through voluntary golden handshake policies, early pension packages, and assistance programs for finding private jobs—all coupled with state wage support for lower earners in the private sector to reduce wage inequality and combat poverty more effectively. Crony insiders in the private sector must be exposed to real competition, with state elites building a broader support base among the private sector at large.

Negotiating a new social contract along these lines will require political leadership and the willingness to recognize outsiders who tend not to mobilize against the state—by now a majority in all Arab countries—as a key political constituency. This is harder in the region’s authoritarian environment, with its limited or absent party competition and tight controls over civil society. By contrast, in Latin America, new welfare policies with a stronger focus on informal workers often emerged in the wake of democratization.

Short of a miraculous return to democracy in the Arab world, one can only hope that its authoritarian rulers understand how the current system gradually erodes their own support base: They are increasingly unable to maintain the old social contract with labor market insiders, a shrinking constituency.

It would be in rulers’ own long-term interests to start devoting more attention to outsiders who, while not organized as a lobby, are capable of spontaneous unrest that has critically contributed to past unrest and revolutions. Rulers would also do well to remember that citizens’ hatred of unproductive crony capitalist insiders was a key factor that brought people into the streets during the last wave of uprisings.

[theculturedmarxist]

“The war in Ukraine is also a battle for raw materials. The country has large deposits of iron, titanium and lithium, some of which are now controlled by Russia.” That’s what the federally owned German foreign trade agency Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) reported on its website on January 16 under the title “Ukraine’s raw materials wealth at risk.”

There are trillions at stake. According to the GTAI, “raw material deposits worth $12.4 trillion” remain beyond the control of the Ukrainian army, “including 41 coal mines, 27 gas deposits, 9 oil fields and 6 iron ore deposits.” Ukraine has not only coal, gas, oil and wheat but also rare earths and metals—especially lithium, which has been called the “white gold” of the transition to new energy and transportation technologies. The country accounts for around one-third of Europe’s explored lithium deposits.

Only the ignorant could believe that this is irrelevant to NATO’s war aims. It would be the first major war in over 100 years that is not about mineral resources, markets and geostrategic interests. The World Socialist Web Site has pointed out in previous articles that deposits of critical raw materials in Russia and China, which are essential to the transition to electric mobility and renewable energy, are an important factor in the war calculus of NATO states.

Yet they go unmentioned in the media’s round-the-clock war propaganda. The media wish the public to believe that NATO is waging this war to defend “freedom” and “democracy”—and that after bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria back into the Middle Ages under similar pretexts.

Relevant trade journals, industry magazines and think tanks, on the other hand, rave about Ukraine’s mineral wealth and discuss how best to capture it. It was to this end that German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) even traveled to Ukraine at the beginning of April with a high-ranking business delegation.

According to the industry magazine Mining World, Ukraine has a total of around 20,000 raw material deposits, of which only 7,800 have been explored. Numerous other articles and strategy papers openly state that this is what the war is about.

On February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the largest German business magazine, Capital, published an article stating that “Europe’s supply of raw materials” was “threatened” by the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine was not only “the leading grain exporter” but also the largest EU supplier of iron ore pellets and “a linchpin for Europe’s energy security.” Among investors, the magazine said, there is “concern that the war will cut off exports of key raw materials.”

The GTAI article cited earlier reports that European steel mills were sourcing nearly one-fifth of their iron ore pellets from Ukraine in 2021. GTAI goes on to write that Ukraine is among the top ten producers of iron ore, manganese, zirconium, and graphite, and is “among the world leaders in titanium and kaolin.” In addition to “untapped oil and gas fields,” Ukraine’s lithium and titanium deposits, in particular, hold “enormous potential” for the European economy. In 2020, production volumes amounted to 1,681,000 tons of kaolin, 537,000 tons of titanium, 699,000 tons of manganese and 49,274,000 tons of iron ore.

Lithium for electromobility and energy storage

The price of lithium has increased more than eightfold in the last decade and is the subject of intense speculation. The metal is of strategic importance to the major imperialist powers because it is used in lithium-ion batteries installed in electric vehicles and off-grid renewable energy sources, and is also needed for lightweight aluminum alloys in the aerospace industry.

The largest lithium deposit in Europe is located in the Donetsk Oblast in the middle of the embattled Donbas region, only kilometers from the front lines. An article in the Tagesspiegel, published two months after the Russian invasion, points to untapped lithium reserves of 500,000 tons in Shevchenko near Potrovsk and at least two other Ukrainian deposits.

Western companies and Ukrainian oligarchs were already fighting bitterly for control of this “white gold” before the war. As the Tagesspiegel reports, “Ukrainian businessmen” (who stood close to the Ukrainian government of the time under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) with connections to Western mining companies obtained mining licenses, without a tender process, for the lithium deposit in Shevchenko as early as 2018.

The company in question, Petro Consulting—which was renamed “European Lithium Ukraine” shortly before the war began—is expected to be bought out by the Australian-European mining company European Lithium once its access to Ukraine’s lithium reserves is secured.

In 2018, when the Ukrainian Geological Survey refused to issue a “special permit” for Ukraine’s second largest lithium deposit at Dobra, likewise bypassing the tender process, Petro Consulting went so far as to sue the agency. After the Ukrainian Procurator General’s Office eventually launched an investigation into the allegedly illegal special permits, Petro-Consulting had its Shevchenko mining license revoked by the courts in April 2020 until further notice.

However, a spokesman for European Lithium told Der Tagesspiegel that the company bears “no risk in connection with the Ukrainian deposits.” He expressed confidence that the projects would be “made production-ready” after the end of the war.

Titanium for the Western arms industry

In a September 2022 article titled “Ukraine’s Titanium Can Armor the West,” the transatlantic think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) wrote: “Support for Ukraine has been driven by strategic concerns and moral-political values. But long-term Western help should also be based on solid material interests.”

“Ukraine’s substantial titanium deposits” are “a key resource critical to the West” because the metal is “integral to many defense systems,” such as aircraft components and missiles. Currently, the raw material for Airbus, Boeing and Co. is extracted “in an expensive and time-consuming six-step process” from titanium ore, which until then had been sourced to a considerable extent from Russia. This “dependence” on “strategic competitors and adversaries” is unacceptable from the West’s point of view and can be ended with the help of Ukrainian resources:

For example, Dnipro-based Velta, the largest private exporter of raw titanium in Europe, has developed a new production system that bypasses the intensive process of producing titanium sponge and could supply the US and European defense and aerospace industries with finished metal. Given there are only five countries in the world actively producing titanium sponge —China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan and Ukraine — Velta’s technology could be a game changer for the supply chain by cutting reliance on Russia and China.

CEPA is funded by US and European defense contractors and lists as members of its “scientific advisory board” Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor General H. R. McMaster, former German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and publicists Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama, and Timothy Garton Ash among others.

The CEPA article continues, “Reorienting titanium contracts to Ukraine would stimulate the country’s economy, even during wartime, not to mention during postwar reconstruction, and simultaneously strike another blow at Russia’s war machine.” The goal, it states, should be “cementing Ukraine’s integration into Europe.”

A January 28, 2023 report in Newsweek reports, “there is a nascent effort underway in the U.S. and allied nations to identify, develop, and utilize Ukraine’s vast resources of a key metal crucial for the development of the West’s most advanced military technology which will form the backbone of future deterrence against Russia and China.” The report adds, “If Ukraine wins, the U.S. and its allies will be in sole position to cultivate a new conduit of titanium.”

“Strategic raw materials partnership” between EU and Ukraine

The US and EU efforts to plunder Ukraine’s lithium and titanium deposits are part of the broader goal of tying Ukraine to the West as a strategic raw materials supplier. In particular, the EU is seeking to free itself from dependence on China—currently its most important raw materials supplier—against which the imperialist powers, especially the United States, are preparing to wage war.

On July 13, 2021, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Maroš Šefčovič, Vice President of the European Commission, signed a “Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials and Batteries” in Kiev to “integrate critical raw materials and battery value chains.” Ukraine’s inclusion in the European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA) and the European Battery Alliance (EBA) serves to “bolster Europe’s resilience and open strategic autonomy in key technologies,” the EU Commission said.

Referring to the list of critical raw materials in the EU’s associated “action plan,” Šefčovič told the press, “21 of these critical raw materials are in Ukraine, which is also extracting 117 out of 120 globally used minerals.” He added: “We’re talking about lithium, cobalt, manganese, rare earths—all of them are in Ukraine.”

Following the signing, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is also responsible for the defense and space industries of EU countries, praised the “high potential of the critical raw material reserves in Ukraine” that could help in “addressing some of the strategic dependencies [of the EU].”

Speaking at Raw Materials Week in Brussels in November 2022, Prime Minister Shmyhal stressed that Ukraine is “among the top ten producers of titanium, iron ore, kaolin, manganese, zirconium and graphite” and renewed his pledge to make the country an “integral part of industrial supply chains in the EU.”

The EU’s “strategic dependencies” are by no means limited to Russia or China and certainly not to Ukraine. A global race for strategic sources of raw materials has long since begun, in the course of which the US and the leading EU powers are attempting to divide among themselves the mineral resources and other resources of the “weaker” states. Although they are jointly waging war against Russia in Ukraine, this inevitably exacerbates conflicts between themselves as well.

The escalation of the war in Ukraine shows that the ruling elites are willing to go to extremes to enforce their profit interests. Only the working class can put an end to permanent war and the prospect of devastating nuclear war by bringing the resources of the entire planet under its democratic control on the basis of a socialist program and holding war profiteers to account.

[mutantbanner]

Bullies and purity police chased off most of the content creators I know in the bruce banner fandom. :( I'm starting to see a mass exodus in my other fandoms too.

I'm sorry you've been experiencing that. I've actually been taking a break from social media lately for very similar reasons. I don't intend to leave completely- just... exclusively come on a few minutes every week or so to post any of my new art or fanfiction.

Long rant incoming.

As much as I want to say "just ignore the assholes", seeing a constant barrage of harassment, name-calling, suicide-baiting, and just general dehumanization online - over fictional media, no less - really just... gets to you, after a while. There's a limit to how much you can desensitize yourself, I think.

I think it's so, so easy for people to forget that there's a human being on the other side of the screen. Most people would never say the type of terrible shit people say online to someone's face. But the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in people.

(I firmly believe that no one deserves to die no matter how horrible they are and that everyone deserves chances to get better. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to associate with terrible people, it just means that they shouldn't be harassed into suicide and have any chance at a normal life ruined, goddamnit.)

Cringe culture and purity culture both squash creativity, I think. Enjoy or create something too much? That's so cringe and weird. Enjoy or create something with problematic or shitty elements? Well, obviously you condone it in real life.

There's also a huge difference between "Hey, don't buy [x shitty product/piece of media/etc] because we want to send a message to the creators/CEO/whatever that it's harmful and not support it monetarily" and "You can't even pirate [x] or buy it secondhand or consume fan-content of the thing because that means you condone it, and if you do you're a horrible person".

Like, I've seen people shitting all over Marvel fans because Marvel receives funding from the military and thus has some military propaganda in it. Therefore, any Marvel fan must just love blowing up random villages in Syria and totally support the militarization of American police!!!

...I mean, come on, do they not see how ridiculous that is? Nuance, critical thinking, morals, etc, they all exist.

Anyways, ranting aside, I think this whole thing is a pendulum effect. There have always been people in fandom who harass others over everything. And some people will leave, or go quiet for a while. But I think the human love for fiction and celebrating storytelling and characters is something that will remain with us until our species goes extinct. Take heart.

[tawakkull]

ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 110

The meaning of Tasawwuf

Part 5

Perhaps the biggest challenge in learning Islam correctly today is the scarcity of traditional ‘ulama. In this meaning, Bukhari relates the sahih, rigorously authenticated hadith that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,

“Truly, Allah does not remove Sacred Knowledge by taking it out of servants, but rather by taking back the souls of Islamic scholars [in death], until, when He has not left a single scholar, the people take the ignorant as leaders, who are asked for and who give Islamic legal opinion without knowledge, misguided and misguiding” (Fath al-Bari, 1.194, hadith 100).

The process described by the hadith is not yet completed but has certainly begun, and in our times, the lack of traditional scholars—whether in Islamic law, in hadith, in tafsir ‘Qur'anic exegesis’—has given rise to an understanding of the religion that is far from scholarly, and sometimes far from the truth. For example, in the course of my own studies in Islamic law, my first impression from orientalist and Muslim-reformer literature was that the Imams of the madhhabs or ‘schools of jurisprudence’ had brought a set of rules from completely outside the Islamic tradition and somehow imposed them upon the Muslims. But when I sat with traditional scholars in the Middle East and asked them about the details, I came away with a different point of view, having learned the bases for deriving the law from the Qur'an and sunna.

And similarly, with Tasawwuf—which is the word I will use tonight for the English Sufism, since our context is traditional Islam—quite a different picture emerged from talking with scholars of Tasawwuf than what I had been exposed to in the West. My talk tonight, In Sha’ Allah, will present knowledge taken from the Qur'an and sahih hadith, and from actual teachers of Tasawwuf in Syria and Jordan, in view of the need for all of us to get beyond clichés, the need for factual information from Islamic sources, the need to answer such questions as Where did Tasawwuf come from? What role does it play in the din or religion of Islam? and most importantly, What is the command of Allah about it?

As for the origin of the term Tasawwuf, like many other Islamic disciplines, its name was not known to the first generation of Muslims. The historian Ibn Khaldun notes in his Muqaddima:

This knowledge is a branch of the sciences of Sacred Law that originated within the Umma. From the first, the way of such people had also been considered the path of truth and guidance by the early Muslim community and its notables, of the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), those who were taught by them, and those who came after them.

It basically consists of dedication to worship, total dedication to Allah Most High, disregard for the finery and ornament of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and retiring from others to worship alone. This was the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims, but when involvement in this-worldly things became widespread from the second Islamic century onwards and people became absorbed in worldliness, those devoted to worship came to be called Sufiyya or People of Tasawwuf (Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima [N.d. Reprint. Mecca: Dar al-Baz, 1397/1978], 467).

In Ibn Khaldun’s words, the content of Tasawwuf, “total dedication to Allah Most High,” was, “the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims.” So if the word did not exist in the earliest times, we should not forget that this is also the case with many other Islamic disciplines, such as tafsir, ‘Qur'anic exegesis,’ or ‘ilm al-jarh wa ta‘dil, ‘the science of the positive and negative factors that affect hadith narrators acceptability,’ or ‘ilm al-tawhid, the science of belief in Islamic tenets of faith,’ all of which proved to be of the utmost importance to the correct preservation and transmission of the religion.

[mpmetal]

Poor information.. the truth in damascus

Last year I was sent a link to an article on Damascus by the author I believe the intent was some cross promotion, normally I am all about that.. how ever the Article was SO full or miss truths miss understanding and just plan wrong information I could not link my self with it. so I went through (at the authors request) and corrected the content.. I just check the original post , a few of my corrections were used but most were totally ignored..   so I decided to post the original and my corrections here, maybe someone can use that information. 

What is Damascus steel? The term has several meanings, but for cookware, modern Damascus steel is a type of layered material that’s simultaneously sharp, hard, and flexible. These are all valuable traits in kitchenware, especially when frequent high-speed work can dull knives and make them hard or even unsafe to use.there is no performance difference in modern damascus, performance is dedicated by heat treat and steel selection, damascus is pretty and a show of skill for the maker. 

I’ve evaluated many knives in the kitchen, but I’ve seen a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about Damascus steel. Today, I’d like to correct some misunderstandings and talk about things like its history, what to look for, and what modern Damascus steel is all about.

Damascus Steel History

The metal we use today, modern Damascus steel, isn’t the same thing as the original metal that the name comes from. THis is incorrect, the name damascus has been used to describe steel with intentional patterning for centuries , 18c damascus gun barrels as an example are pattern welded.

“Real” Damascus uses Wootz steel, a type of alloy made from iron and wood chips that added carbon. The alloy usually had about 1% carbon, though it could go higher, making it very high-carbon even by modern standards.Wootz is a Made up word a poor translation/transliteration of a north Indian word meaning steel, in the modern knife community is refers to several types of steels that are hypereutectoid and show a watered pattern, it was never truly lost as Bulot is still being made in the old way in georgia and portions of russia, the west lost it and largely never really understood what it was. 

We roughly know the process for making Wootz steel today, but the original technique is lost and hasn’t been replicated fully since. Many scholars believe that genuine Damascus steel has certain impurities from the original iron ore that provide a specific balance to create better blades. There are several period descriptions of the process and it was made differently in different areas. There are a number of modernsmiths that are recreating the watered steel patterns. Wootz does not make a better blade than modern steels, it was a better material in that period when the alternative was bloomerly steels but those have not been used for over 100 years. 

The old types of Damascus steel have some of the same characteristics of modern-day blades, including sections that are sharp and brittle or softer and durable. Layering these sections together results in blades with all of the good properties and minimized negative properties, making them fundamentally superior to regular steel, much less iron or bronze. This is all wrong, the advantage of wootz over other period materials was that it is homogenous with small carbides that add in cutting ability.

The name itself likely comes from how Damascus blades and other equipment were made and sold in Damascus, currently located in Syria. The ore itself came in ingots from India, though. The name is lost in time this is one theory an other is it is an extension of the word Damascene a process of surface decoration common in the mediterranean, Some people prefer referring to it as Wootz steel to distinguish it from other metal items made and sold in Damascus. Many people also object to calling modern steel Damascus because it has different properties than the original blades, even if the surface pattern is similar. This is an argument that has no point , words mean what we think they mean in the knife world damascus means pattern welded steel, they are many subsets of this , IE canister damascus mosaic damascus multi bar etc. just as wootz has a specific meaning in the industry , academics refer to these materials differently and dislike the term wootz as it is a corruption of an Indian word that just means steel.. Preferring the more accurate local terms. 

 Damascus is also known in many languages as “water steel,” thanks to the ripple-like patterns on the blades. 

 How Is Damascus Steel Made?

Today, Damascus steel is made with several processes.The worst process is etching, which creates a ripple-like pattern on kitchenware. This is a cosmetic technique that doesn’t improve the actual knife, so I don’t think it’s worth looking at. However, it can be hard to tell if a blade is just etched or has solid ripples throughout, so amateurs often get fooled into thinking etched steel is real Damascus. All damascus is etched, it is revealing the difference in alloy of the steels used, if a resist is used it is not damascus. 

The cast Damascus process, a common technique, involves mixing iron and steel with charcoal under an oxygen-reducing environment. This believed to be  as close to the original process as possible. (steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. Wootz is made through controlling the trace elements and carbon content of the melt) The steel is then folded together in layers–creating the signature wavy patterns and increased strength.  wootz is never folded to make pattern the pattern is from chains of carbides that form in the steel  also called alloy or carbon banding. 

The other modern technique is known as pattern-welding. This also uses high-quality steel and iron, but instead of mixing the ores in a sealed environment, they’re hammered together at high temperatures to weld the metals together throughout the body. (Ores are never used in any for of wootz or pattern welding that is smelting and is a different process, rarely wootz is made by direct reduction from ore, but this is not efficient)

 Pattern welding gives the appearance of Damascus, but the primary quality of Damascus comes more from the metals than the forging process. Bad metal still produces bad blades, no matter how fancy you make it look. Some companies take things a step further by trying to create advanced alloys for casting or pattern welding. Creating these usually involves testing different ratios of impurities, which in this context means anything besides iron and carbon atoms. We often say that impurities are undesirable, but in metallurgy, they can add valuable characteristics. This is a misconception of the metalurgy involved. Metals used as alloy in steel and numerous all modern steels contain alloy other than carbon and iron. 

One of the most popular elements to add is vanadium. This atom is ductile and malleable in significant amounts, meaning it’s easy to shape and doesn’t break too easily. It also exhibits excellent corrosion resistance by itself. Vanadium is used because it is a strong carbide former and works to pin grain size, it makes steel finer grained to hold and keener edge. Nickel chrome are added for toughness manganese for depth of hardening . 

When present in the forging process, vanadium helps encourage the formation of bands of cementite in steel. Cementite is a molecule with three iron atoms and one carbon atom, and its presence is one of the primary components of the original types of Damascus steel. Creating the correct ratio of cementite in Damascus requires heating and cooling to specific ranges.(this is a misconception of what vanadium is doing, all steel forms cementite (Iron carbide) for a knife we don't want cementite we want martinsite Vandium forms vanadium carbide. 

Molybdenum is a frequent modern alternative. This atom tends to add hardness, toughness, and resistance to corrosion when it’s present at 1% or below. Molybdenum adds toughness I don't believe it will change corrosion resistance much, Nickel and chrome are generally added for that, not many knife steels use Moly as it increased ductility not a advantage in a knife

 Chromium is another impurity but is present in much greater quantities. Steel that’s 13% Chromium or more becomes stainless steel, which exhibits outstanding corrosion resistance and serves as the heart of many modern tools. Modern metallurgists often include several different impurities when making a steel alloy, then pattern-weld various alloys to create a Damascus-like blade. A key attribute for understanding the quality of Damascus steel is the Rockwell Scale. This is a widely-used rating for kitchen knives and other materials that indicates their overall toughness. Note that higher is not inherently better. Some people prefer the feel of softer blades, so you shouldn’t buy something based exclusively on this rating. Regular knives tend to fall in the 54-56 range on this scale. Premium kitchen knives can go as high as 66, which is noticeably tougher. Carbon steel can go up to 68, but most people don’t want to go that high because metal above 64 on this scale is probably brittle and prone to cracking. Hardness is not the same thing as toughness in a knife.65-67 is the max on most low alloy carbon steels , harder = a reduction in toughness but an increase in edge holding , it also changes the nature of the failure from being likely to bend to breaking (rolled edge vs chipped) 

Genuine Damascus steel from the past is usually 62-64 on the Rockwell scale, which is excellent performance. Modern versions of this steel are probably 58-60, which is still appropriate for most kitchen needs. Anything below 52 on the Rockwell scale is too soft for a kitchen knife, so you probably won’t even see those on shelves. wootz i have seen hardness testing on was mid 40 mid 50 HRC old french knives are high 40s most modern makers hover around 60HRC 

Modern Damascus Steel

Modern Damascus steel uses either the casting or pattern welding processes. Both of these produce viable blades for the kitchen, and they’re primarily the result of ongoing attempts to replicate the original high-quality blades.Etching is decorative and not true Damascus Steel. It’s just made to “look” nice.It’s worth noting here that Damascus steel isn’t necessarily the best option these days. The blades were exceptional for their time, but some modern options and alloys outperform Damascus. That doesn’t make Damascus a poor choice in the kitchen, but I want to dispel the mystique that it’s always going to be the best choice. That’s not true.Layering has a significant effect on modern Damascus steel. In most cases, having more layers is better, though it’s possible to go overboard and get so many layers that they’re functionally indistinguishable from each other. (layering only mattered when it was bloomerly based steel, now only what alloys are present matterns)

This type of Damascus steel mixes ingots of different characteristics to get a pattern weld, then folds it over to spread the characteristics throughout the knife better. A blade with several hundred layers is usually good enough for modern cooking. That said, steel with more layers often ends up a little thicker. Some people prefer fewer layers because that allows a knife to stay thinner and more flexible in the kitchen. Neither is the best choice for every chef, so the only way to decide between a thin blade and a thicker one is to test them out with your recipes.there is absolutely no truth to any of this. Higher layers= finer pattern lower layers=coarser pattern.. 

Advantages Of Damascus Steel 

The Damascus steel process has several advantages in modern kitchens. For clarity, most of these are well into the “optional” category for cookware rather than anything you absolutely need. Damascus steel, both original and modern recreations, has a distinctive wave or ripple pattern. Most people claim, and I agree, that this makes a knife look better and more interesting than having a single solid color along the entire length of the blade. Aesthetics matter in professional cooking, but they can also influence you at home. We like things that are fresh and new, but we dislike things that seem old or worn out. Top chefs don’t want to work in a cramped, dirty kitchen with a set of half-broken tools unless they have to. Damascus steel also tends to look nice when the knives are hung up or attached to a magnetic board rather than hidden in a cutting block. Here, I’d like to point out the distinction between laser-etching and true modern Damascus. Many knives sold as Damascus these days are purely aesthetic, with a surface-level treatment that creates a wave blade pattern. They’re functionally no different than a regular knife, so aesthetics is the only thing setting them apart. Almost any sort of knife can have a pattern like this, including high-quality carbon steel. Modern Damascus knives maintain this aesthetic but have genuine layers that give the knife different characteristics. This is harder to find but worth pursuing if you want anything besides a nice look for your knife. 

Quality Damascus blades tend to have high corrosion resistance. Since the blade itself has layers, any corrosion has to work through different materials instead of penetrating through one material. any non stainless damascus is just as prone to rust as any carbon steel.

 This is the other area where Damascus truly stands out because carbon steel, the main competitor, is a little vulnerable to rust. Carbon steel typically lacks a chromium content, which is the material that makes other types of steel resist rust. Kitchens can be quite wet, so there are some areas where carbon steel rusts out too quickly to be helpful. common pairings for damascus are 15n20 and 1084 or L6 O1  in both cases this is due to the Nickel and manganese continents of the two steels, chrome steels are rarely used as they do not play well with others being difficult to forge weld and being prone to cracking and warping in hardening .

 Some Damascus steel knives have a single hard center that gets sharpened, then patterns weld around the outside. These effectively sheathe the true knife and provide corrosion resistance, although their properties don’t continue into the blade.this is a japanese technique called SanMai (three layers) or GoMai (5 layers) not technically damascus

  Damascus blades tend to stay sharp for a long time. They certainly outperform regular steel, especially when the pattern welding extends down to the blade itself. This isn’t a minor consideration because sharpness is a significant factor in the kitchen. Sharp blades cut faster and easier than dull ones. That puts less stress on the chef and makes it possible to make more meals in less time. Home cooks don’t need to worry about this quite as much, but it’s still a good idea to sharpen your knives at least once a year. 

What To Look For In Damascus Steel Knives 

The primary things to look for if you want to buy Damascus steel knives are the metal content and the forging process. Remember, many knives sold as “Damascus” these days only have an etched surface. They’re just regular knives modified to look better and give you the impression that they’re somehow harder, sharper, or more durable than they are. There is a flood of junk knives on the market sold as damascus , many are made in the warzabad region of pakistan these are made from poor quality steel and generally of very low hardness, superficial etched knives are much rarer but are out there. 

Avoid knives like those unless you’re buying them as decorations, in which case they’re a cheap way to get an attractive blade. Pattern welding is generally better than casting, so knives made with this process usually turn out better. Make sure to check the overall structure of the knife, too. If the pattern stops before the cutting edge, the Damascus qualities are primarily decorative but offer some corrosion resistance. Almost no knives are made by casting.  drop forging is common as is stamping .

 If the pattern goes through the blade and it’s not merely etched onto the surface, you’ve found an actual modern Damascus knife. These are especially useful if you want a knife that’s just a little softer and more durable than carbon steel, complete with better corrosion resistance for working in wetter environments. My damascus chefs are harder than most commercial knives, geometry of the blade dictates cutting ability for more than hardness. Again miss conception of rust resistance. 

 If you’re looking for pure performance, though, a high-quality carbon steel blade outperforms any Damascus steel you can find on the market. Not at all true well made damascus will be 100% equal to a carbon steel blade and some of the newer stainless steels can out perform carbon steel 

Final Thoughts

You now know far more about Damascus steel, and especially how it affects kitchen knives. We’ve discussed the history of the metal, how chemical composition affects things, forging techniques, and even some processes that create “fake” (albeit attractive) Damascus steel. What I hope you learn from all of this is that it’s important to pay attention to the details when you’re buying kitchen knives. The forging process has a huge effect on the overall quality of a knife. Different people enjoy different things, so if you just want a cheap but attractive knife, that’s fine. Don’t hesitate to investigate a blade if you’re looking for quality or specific characteristics. If you haven’t tried a high-quality knife lately, go look for a true modern Damascus steel blade today and try it out in your kitchen. You might be surprised by how much better it cuts.

Link to the edited article https://clankitchen.com/what-is-damascus-steel/

[softest-epilogue]

my heart is aching. the US is a violent hegemony that funds genocide gleefully so that isnotreal can concurrently bomb Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. we just gave them another $8 billion yet there are thousands of people stranded in Appalachia after hurricane Helene tore through cities and towns, completely wiping some off the map — places that are hundreds of miles inland. a chemical lab in Georgia, which is also still partially underwater after the hurricane, just exploded and people are being told to either evacuate or shelter in place. we currently, and always have, been at the center of all destruction against the global south and swana regions for the sake of capitalistic bullshit. if I even see someone say “voting will change this” I want to just scream into your fucking face. where have you been? why are you choosing to willfully ignore that this has always been the design of this shithole fucking country. both parties, every president, every level of government. it is by design. nothing short of total collapse by the hands of the people will suffice. my heart and soul goes out to the millions of people both in this country and around the world who are being killed or abandoned for the sake of lining war criminals pockets. harrowing harrowing shit.

[onlinesikhstore]

Stunning Diamonte Silver Plated Indian OMPoppy Hindu British India Brooch Pin Stunning Diamonte Silver Plated Hindu Poppy Brooch Cake Pin

The Forgotten Heroes

Hindus are commonly distinguished as weak so therefore poor soldiers, yet they had been involved in fighting wars for others more than themselves. Among the first foreign forces were Hindus to fight for British on the Western front. In the war, India had hugely supported the British in most areas, these including: Politically, economically and also in military. At a time when majority of Indians were suffering from poverty and malnourishment, they gifted 100 million pounds for them to participate and strengthen the British in war. The support was in exchange also for the British’s understanding in giving India independence, which the British were in no hurry to fulfil. In total, approximately 1,338, 620 Hindus participated in the war. This number easily totals the number of army force from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa by 178,000. Hindu soldiers were involved in lands as diverse as, Palestine, France, Syria and Mesopotamia. Some historians say that it was the Hindu army which changed the course of the war by turning German soldiers at Marne. Hundreds of Thousands of Hindu soldiers lost their lives and no hero’s welcome awaited the survivors.

In the first World War, the Indian corps won 13,000 medals and 12 Victoria crosses and this is something that deserves broad recognition around the globe.

 It was Indian jawans (junior soldiers) who stopped the German advance at Ypres in the autumn of 1914, soon after the war broke out, while the British were still recruiting and training their own forces. Hundreds were killed in a gallant but futile engagement at Neuve Chappelle. More than 1,000 of them died at Gallipoli, thanks to Churchill's folly. Nearly 700,000 Indian sepoys (infantry privates) fought in Mesopotamia against the Ottoman Empire, Germany's ally, many of them Indian Muslims taking up arms against their co-religionists in defence of the British Empire.

The most painful experiences were those of soldiers fighting in the trenches of Europe. Letters sent by Indian soldiers in France and Belgium to their family members in their villages back home speak an evocative language of cultural dislocation and tragedy. "The shells are pouring like rain in the monsoon," declared one. "The corpses cover the country, like sheaves of harvested corn," wrote another.

 These men were undoubtedly heroes - pitchforked into battle in unfamiliar lands, in harsh and cold climatic conditions they were neither used to nor prepared for, fighting an enemy of whom they had no knowledge, risking their lives every day for little more than pride. Yet they were destined to remain largely unknown once the war was over: neglected by the British, for whom they fought, and ignored by their own country, from which they came.

We made this Poppy OM Brooch to commemorate the sacrifice of all Hindu Soldiers who participated and sacrificed their lives in both World War I and II.

#onlinesikhstore #onlinesikhstoreLtd #sikh #sikhsinuk #sikhsinkent #gurbani #gurbaniquotes #sikhquotes #SikhStore #SMARTFashionsUK #SikhArtefacts #sikhsoldiers #remembranceday #Sikhi #Sikhsirisahib #remembrance #onlinesikhshop #poppy #khalsa #singh #sikhs #sikhkara #khanda #singhs #sikhism #lestweforget #GuruNanak #khandapoppy Diamonte and Crystals Silver Plated Khanda Brooch Cake Pin for Jackets Shawls, Dupattas, Coats, Suits, Decorations, Wrappings, Sarees, Dcecoration of Wedding/Birthday/Anniversary Cakes and many other uses as described in the listing below.  Brand new and in sealed Packs  Properties: Diamonte Crystals, 3 dimension  Color: Silver Plated Description: Stunning, glitter, elegant, beautiful. It is the perfect accessory for party, gift, weddings, proms, pageants, causal wear or other special occasions.  Dimension: Approx. 3.5 cm x 2.7 cm x 1 cm  *****RRP of these brooches is £31.99 each.  Please note light sky blue shade in most of the brooches is due to a camera flash effect/light conditions. Email us at A or text/call 07883024604 for further information.  Please do let us know about any special requests about wrapping these brooches while ordering. 

[plethoraworldatlas]

For hundreds of years, the U.S. military has been killing people. It’s been a constant of our history. Another constant has been American military personnel killing civilians, whether Native Americans, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and on and on. And there’s something else that’s gone along with those killings: a lack of accountability for them.

Late last month, the Department of Defense (DOD) released its congressionally mandated annual accounting of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations globally. The report is due every May 1 and, in the latest case, the Pentagon even beat that deadline by a week. There was only one small problem: It was the 2022 report. You know, the one that was supposed to be made public on May 1, 2023. And not only was that report a year late, but the 2023 edition, due May 1, 2024, has yet to be seen.

Whether that 2023 report, when it finally arrives, will say much of substance is also doubtful. In the 2022 edition, the Pentagon exonerated itself of harming noncombatants. “DOD has assessed that U.S. military operations in 2022 resulted in no civilian casualties,” reads the 12-page document. It follows hundreds of years of silence about, denials of, and willful disregard toward civilians slain purposely or accidentally by the U.S. military and a long history of failures to make amends in the rare cases where the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocents.

Moral Imperatives

“The Department recognizes that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm respond to both strategic and moral imperatives,” reads the Pentagon’s new 2022 civilian casualty report.

And its latest response to those “moral imperatives” was typical. The Defense Department reported that it had made no ex gratia payments—amends offered to civilians harmed in its operations—during 2022. That follows exactly one payment made in 2021 and zero in 2020.

...

A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that most went uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses were interviewed while civilians—victims, survivors, family members—were almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to that report.

In the wake of such persistent failings, investigative reporters and human rights groups have increasingly documented America’s killing of civilians' its underreporting of noncombatant casualties; and its failures of accountability in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based air-strike monitoring group.

[at-the-end-of-days]

Russia has cut a pipeline and communications line between Estonia and Finland.

And Israel is continuing their attack against Gaza. Lebanon is involved.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finnish-government-hold-news-conference-suspected-pipeline-leak-media-2023-10-10/#:~:text=HELSINKI%2C%20Oct%2010%20(Reuters),Finnish%20government%20said%20on%20Tuesday.

But hey, what’s tying this to Russia? Just the Russian boat in the area.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20054699#:~:text=A%20ship%20tracking%20site%20has,at%201.20am%20on%20Sunday.

A ship tracking site has recorded a Russian cargo vessel near the damaged pipeline from Friday evening until 11pm Sunday, reports Helsingin Sanomat on Wednesday, citing Marine Traffic. Norwegian authorities registered "seismic waves" at 1.20am on Sunday.

I am deeply concerned about everything being taken to the next step.

I would invite you to watch this and draw your own conclusions.

But what stands out to me in this video is the line he says about “Israel’s five front war.” Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, the West Bank, Iran to the east, and Gaza in the west.

This whole thing is blowing up, and blowing up fast, with actions being taken by America and Russia to further tensions.

And Egypt..

What are we to think of this? That the warning was disregarded? Or that it was accepted, the loss of life accepted? I can only think of the men looking out at icebergs on the Titanic.

And this…

Hamas has called to all Muslims in the world to attack all Jews? Friday October 13th?? That’s horrifying. Will people answer such a bloody call? A world wide jihad?

The US has the second largest population of Jews to Israel. Are we going to see active shooters on Friday? This Friday? It’s October 11 2023 as of writing this. Hopefully this call to arms will be ignored and discarded.

I have already shared the words of Zechariah.

Now, I look to Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 38, the New International Version.

The Lord’s Great Victory Over the Nations

38 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of[a] Meshek and Tubal; prophesy against him 3 and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Gog, chief prince of[b] Meshek and Tubal. 4 I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army—your horses, your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields, all of them brandishing their swords. 5 Persia, Cush[c] and Put will be with them, all with shields and helmets, 6 also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you.

7 “‘Get ready; be prepared, you and all the hordes gathered about you, and take command of them. 8 After many days you will be called to arms. In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety. 9 You and all your troops and the many nations with you will go up, advancing like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land.

10 “‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On that day thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil scheme. 11 You will say, “I will invade a land of unwalled villages; I will attack a peaceful and unsuspecting people—all of them living without walls and without gates and bars. 12 I will plunder and loot and turn my hand against the resettled ruins and the people gathered from the nations, rich in livestock and goods, living at the center of the land.[d]” 13 Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all her villages[e] will say to you, “Have you come to plunder? Have you gathered your hordes to loot, to carry off silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods and to seize much plunder?”’

14 “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: In that day, when my people Israel are living in safety, will you not take notice of it? 15 You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding on horses, a great horde, a mighty army. 16 You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.

17 “‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: You are the one I spoke of in former days by my servants the prophets of Israel. At that time they prophesied for years that I would bring you against them. 18 This is what will happen in that day: When Gog attacks the land of Israel, my hot anger will be aroused, declares the Sovereign Lord. 19 In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. 20 The fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the beasts of the field, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence. The mountains will be overturned, the cliffs will crumble and every wall will fall to the ground. 21 I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Sovereign Lord. Every man’s sword will be against his brother. 22 I will execute judgment on him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him. 23 And so I will show my greatness and my holiness, and I will make myself known in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.’

Perhaps this is not the event written about, for Israel has little known peace in its time as a nation.

But perhaps there shall be an earthquake.

But as a Christian, despite the loss of life, I think that there is but one way this conflict can go. It will be painful, it will be horrible, many will die. But Israel will be standing when it is finished.

[dinaive]

An account of Jirjis

Ibn Babawayh and al-Qutb al-Rawandi have with documentation, narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas that Allah appointed Jirjis as his Messenger and sent him to the king of Syria called Kooraazaanaa and who was worshipping an idol. Jirjis told him: O king! Accept my counsel. It is unbecoming for us to worship anything or anyone except only one Allah and to ask any of our needs from others except Almighty Allah.

The king asked: Where are you from? He replied, “I am from Rome (Byzantine) and live in Palestine. Then the king retorted: You are under arrest. He had his holy body scorched with an iron comb so much so that his entire flesh was torn out, then vinegar was poured on his body and his body was rubbed with a harsh cloth. Then the king ordered that his body should be burnt (stamped) with red hot iron bars. When the Prophet still remained alive despite all this torture, large iron nails were prepared and hammered in his holy head so that his brain drained out. Thereafter molten lead was poured on him. There was an iron pillar in his prison which required eighteen men to shift from one place to another. That pillar was put on the belly of that holy person.

When night fell and everyone went away to their homes, the people of the prison saw an angel come to Jirjis and say: O Jirjis! Your Lord asks you to be patient and happy and not to fear as He is with you and will surely relieve you from the clutches of the king. They will kill you four times but I will remove your pains. The next day that oppressor took him from the prison to have him lashed. He was hit innumerable times on his belly and back. Then he was sent back to jail. The oppressor king then ordered his court men to collect all the magicians living in their cities. One of them was an expert sorcerer but none of his works affected the Prophet. Finally, the oppressor king fed Jirjis with a deadly poison. When the Prophet prayed: ‘Bismillah............’ the poison failed to have any effect on him.

Magician said, “Had I given this poison to all those living on earth everyone would have definitely become blind and worthless in every way. It would have totally altered their physique and all their joints would have been disbanded. So, O Jirjis! You surely are the light of Divine Guidance and a lamp in the dark world of ignorance. I testify that your Allah is the only True Allah and all others are false deities. I believe in your Allah and treat all of His Prophets as truth tellers and I repent for all of my past sins.” The king had the magician killed. Then he sent Jirjis back to prison and continued to torture him in various ways. His body was cut into pieces and thrown into a well. Then the king engaged in feasting and drinking. Allah ordered the air to raise up a black cloud. Lightning began to flash. Earth and mountains began to tremble and the people were frightened that they would die.

Allah ordered Mika’il to go to that well. At the well, the angel called out Jirjis to get up by the order of Allah. The angel then took him out of the well and asked him to be patient and gave him good tidings of Allah’s pleasure. Jirjis again went to the king and told him that Allah had sent him to conclude His evidence through him. Hearing this, the commander-in-chief of the royal army spoke up saying: I put faith in your Lord Who raised you alive after you were dead and I bear witness that He is True and all deities besides Him are false Gods. Along with him another four thousand men also became Muslims (believers) who testified to the Prophethood of Jirjis. The king became furious and killed all of them. He made a huge plate of copper, turned it red hot, laid Jirjis on it and threw molten lead in his mouth. He dug big steel nails in the eyes and head of Jirjis, took them out and filled the gaps with molten lead. Jirjis did not die even after all this.

Then he ordered that fire should be ignited on his body and his body turned into ashes, then he blew that ash into the air. Again, by the order of Allah, Mika’il called out to Jirjis to get up and he became alive and again approached the king. He preached Islam to the king in the assembly of his court men. One of the king’s misguided companions rose up and said, We have fourteen pulpits and a big tray of wood made from various kinds of trees. Some of the trees bear fruit and some do not. He asked Jirjis to pray to his Allah so that He may turn that wood into original trees with branches and leaves and fruits to make him believe in him. Hearing this Jirjis sat up on his knees and prayed to Almighty Allah. Instantly the wood turned into trees bearing branches, leaves and fruits. Seeing all this the angered king sandwiched Jirjis between two wooden planks and cut him vertically with a saw, brought a big cooking pot, filled it with oil, sulphur and molten lead, flung the body of Jirjis in that boiling pot and fanned the fire beneath it.

The holy body melted completely and mixed with other elements in the pot. The earth became totally dark due to this dark black deed of the king. Allah sent Israfil who raised a terrific shriek between them and all fell down faced. Israfil turned the pot upside down and said, O Jirjis! Get up by the order of thy Lord. He arose hale and healthy and again went to the misguided king and tried to give him guidance. The people were extremely surprised. a woman approached Jirjis and said, O dear slave of Allah! I had a cow. We were being maintained by her milk. Now she has died and I request you to make her alive.

Jirjis gave her his staff and asked her to put it on the corpse of that cow and to say: O cow! Jirjis asks you to arise by the order of Allah. The woman did so and the cow became alive. That woman became Muslim. The cursed king then said, If I let this magician go away alive he will surely destroy my kingdom. His people agreed with him and decided to kill Jirjis once again. The king told them to take Jirjis out of the city and decapitate him. When they took him out Jirjis prayed to Allah: My Lord! If you have decided to destroy this community, then pray make me and my memory a cause and means of patience and tolerance for those who want to please you in every hardship. In short, they decapitated Jirjis. When they came back to the city, they were hit by Divine chastisement and got killed en masse.

[sporadicarbiterearthquake-blog]

Please Remember Project Moses Colorado this Giving Tuesday, November 29th

PLEASE REMEMBER PROJECT MOSES COLORADO ON GIVING TUESDAY NOVEMBER 29th 2022

In less than two weeks, on December 29, 2022, it will be Giving Tuesday 2022.  This giving Tuesday, please remember the millions of persecuted and threatened Christian minorities in nations such as Pakistan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq.  It is the mission Project Moses Colorado to aid, assist, advocate for and, where possible, protect, persecuted and threatened Christian minorities.  

In 2021, after years of helping a threatened extended Pakistani Christian family of 17 Project Moses Colorado was able to help all 17 to receive asylum in Canada.  Annually, between 500 and 1000 young Pakistani Christian women are kidnapped, forced to marry their abductors and forced to convert to Islam. While technically illegal, Pakistani authorities generally overlook the practice. 

When, in 2013, a young Pakistani Christian man fell in love with and married a young Muslim woman from a militant family, who then became a Christian, however, it became a death sentence not only for the young Christian man and his wife, but also included all of the young man's brothers and sisters and their families, a total of 17 individuals.  The families abandoned their homes and businesses and fled to Bangkok Thailand, which has a United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) office at which refugees may apply for asylum.  

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistani Christians in Bangkok, as well as Sri Lanka.  UNHCR takes an average of eight to nine years to process asylum applications from persecuted Christians.  In the meantime their situations are often desperate.  They are not allowed to work legally (making some vulnerable to slavery and human trafficking) As they were only able to travel to Thailand using a short-term tourist visa, and because of the unconscionably lengthy period of time that the UNHCR takes to process their asylum applications, they are forced to overstay their visas making them vulnerable to arrest, where they are either given exorbitant fines or deported.  

It took until 2019 for UNHCR to rule on the group's application.  Asylum was only granted to the young man, his ex-Muslim wife, and the two children they had while in Bangkok.  The remaining 13 family members had no choice but to continue to live an underground existence in Bangkok.  Fortunately, strong advocacy from a Canadian church and Project Moses Colorado caused Canada to ignore the UNHCR ruling and grant asylum and relocation to all 17.  

Sadly, however, that happy result is not common.  Currently, Project Moses Colorado is aiding other Pakistani Christians in Bangkok and elsewhere, whose asylum applications have been rejected and/or those living in dangerous situations, to the extent we are able.   Even more sadly we have lost contact with others, for whom we can now only pray.

PLEASE REMEMBER PROJECT MOSES COLORADO ON GIVING TUESDAY NOVEMBER 29th 2022.  

Project Moses Colorado is a 501 (c) (3) tax exempt charity that you can help in one of three ways.  The first is to send a check to:

                                 Project Moses Colorado

                                 3879 E. 120th Avenue, #131

                                 Thornton, CO  80233

The second is to make Project Moses Colorado your Smile.Amazon charity, 

The third is to make Project Moses Colorado your Kroger Community Rewards charity.

The second and third do not require any monetary commitment. Instead Amazon and/or Kroger will give Project Moses Colorado a certain (usually 0.1%) percentage of the monetary value of your purchases.

GOD BLESS YOU IN THE COMING HOLY SEASON

Richard Roy Blake

President, Project Moses Colorado

[mariacallous]

U.S. President Joe Biden has taken steps to avenge the deaths of William Rivers, Kennedy Sanders, and Breonna Moffett, the three U.S. service members killed by an Iranian-backed militia strike in Jordan on Jan. 28. The United States launched strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria and Iraq on Feb. 2.

Yet, whatever further steps Washington takes, shipping in the Strait of Hormuz will be in even more dire straits. Merchant vessels are deeply dependent on the waterway—where Iran, which controls one side of the strait, already regularly harasses shipping.

The strikes will, the United States hopes, send a clear message to Iran without escalating the indirect conflict into a direct one. Other acts of retaliation may follow. It “won’t just be a one-off,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Jan. 31, adding that “the first thing you see won’t be the last thing.” Biden had already stressed that he doesn’t want escalation. “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for,” he said on Jan. 30. But even if the fighting doesn’t spread, the strait just got a whole lot riskier.

The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial body of water. In 2022, 21 million barrels of oil traveled through the strait per day, which corresponds to 21 percent of the world’s global petroleum liquids consumption. It is also a chokepoint, a narrow body of water divided between Iran and Oman where traffic can easily be disrupted by storms, accidents, or willful acts by interested parties.

During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Iraq began attacking ships bound for Iran, and after a while, Iran retaliated. Soon, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz were engulfed in what became known as the Tanker War. It was a wild war: The countries (especially Iraq) targeted merchant ships with rockets and land mines. Ships flagged in Cyprus, Greece, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, Liberia, Malta, Norway, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and other countries were hit.

But the ships kept sailing into the strait and the gulf anyway because the world needed oil. To get to the gulf and the oil, some ships “tried to slip through the Strait of Hormuz … at night, when the Iranian capability to attack ships is curtailed. Others, upon being challenged by Iranians at sea, attempted to ignore the challenge or misled the Iranians about their intended ports of call. One ship carried a false name on her hull,” Ronald O’Rourke wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine in 1988, as the war was ending. But the Iranians weren’t fooled. Determined captains then resorted to staying close to Western naval vessels, “preferably by joining a Western-led convoy traveling through the Gulf,” O’Rourke noted.

By the end of the Tanker War, more than 320 merchant mariners had been killed, injured, or were missing, while 340 merchant vessels had been damaged, some more than once. Some 30 million tons of shipping had been damaged, 11 ships had been sunk, and three dozen had been declared total losses. Though the Tanker War wasn’t Iran’s idea, the Iranians learned an obvious lesson from it: As long as the world needs oil, ships will need to go to the Persian Gulf, and that gives Iran a perfect opportunity to target ships of its choosing. That is, in fact, what it has increasingly been doing for the past five years. Last August, these attacks on merchant shipping prompted the United States to dispatch a task force of sailors, Marines, an amphibious assault ship, a dock landing ship, and other vessels to the strait.

They’re there to protect shipping because for as long as the world needs oil, ships will need to enter the Persian Gulf. And now that Washington will respond to the killings of the three U.S. service members, Iran can retaliate by harming ships in the Strait of Hormuz. “The loss of Persian Gulf oil would not affect the U.S. that much, but it would affect our allies,” said retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, who commanded the Second Fleet until 2021.

The shipping industry is already evaluating the risk of more attacks in the strait. “We’ve discussed this at length,” said Svein Ringbakken, the head of the maritime insurer DNK. “Regardless of whether this is the extent of the U.S. response or the U.S. also decides to retaliate against the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the Iranians can attack merchant vessels. That’s what they’ve been doing for several years, and we’ve no reason to think they won’t use this opportunity.”

Indeed, Ringbakken noted, the Iranians could opt to do so surreptitiously: “They can hide behind plausible deniability and pretend that an intervention is linked to a previous accident, smuggling or the like, or perform attacks outside their own waters like in 2019.” That May, four tankers were attacked off the Emirati port of Fujairah near the Strait of Hormuz’s southern end; the United Nations subsequently found that the attacks had been perpetrated by an unidentified state actor. The following month, two tankers were attacked nearby.

As long as Iran doesn’t declare war on the United States or other countries linked to vessels traveling in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, there isn’t very much the U.S. or other countries’ navies can do to protect shipping there. “If it’s not a declared war, there are limits based on [the United Nations Convention on] the Law of the Sea,” Lewis said. Ringbakken added: “The navies can monitor and perhaps intervene in international waters, but apart from that, there isn’t a lot they can do.”

That gives Iran attractive opportunities. “Iran has proven capability, but it wouldn’t benefit from closing Hormuz, which is why it has been careful to keep its past actions limited,” said Neil Roberts, a secretary of the maritime insurance industry’s Joint War Committee, which assesses maritime risks. Indeed, Iran won’t need to try to shut the strait. It can just communicate that risks to merchant shipping there are about to increase. “The decision of whether oil will keep being transported from the Persian Gulf won’t be made at a national level but at a corporate level,” Lewis said. “The Strait of Hormuz will or will not shut down depending on how the industry reacts.”

Of course, if Iran were to escalate so massively that a new tanker war unfolded, the shipping industry and its insurers would have to make dramatic calculations. The Houthis’ attacks in the Red Sea have already increased risks for seafarers, but stepped-up attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz would be far more dangerous.

In the 1980s, the industry was willing to tolerate not just sunk and totaled ships but also loss of life. Would that be the case today? It’s hardly a soft-hearted industry—just look at the more than 400,000 seafarers stranded on ships during the COVID-19 pandemic because countries wouldn’t let the ships dock—but 300-plus deaths might be a little much even by shipping’s standards.

“The question in case of a new tanker war would be whether modern sensibilities would be secondary to the need for supplies,” Roberts said. Whether global energy supplies matter more than seafarers’ lives may soon be a very concrete question. For now, Ringbakken said, “we have to live with the risk that the conflict will escalate.”

[loudlytransparenttrash]

It's been embarrassing watching this latest political narrative about America reeling from the latest expression of white supremacy: Anti-Asian hate. The shooting in Atlanta had the media in desperate spin mode to declare that the root cause of the shooting was a white male perpetrating a supposedly all too common hate crime against Asians. And of course, the reason for the shooting and all this anti-Asian violence is... Donald Trump, because he referred to a virus which originated in Wuhan, China, as the ‘’Wuhan virus’’, or ‘’China virus.’’ There is nothing at all to connect this shooting to the practice of naming a viral outbreak after the location of origin. The shooter also had no history of animus towards Asians, and authorities have found not a single piece of evidence to suggest the victims were targeted for being Asian. The loser had a sex addiction, for which he had already been in rehab, and had frequented the same massage establishments he targeted which he blamed for contributing to his addiction problems. Yet the media still continue to push the “blame Trump” and “white supremacy” narrative, as they have done from the moment they started reporting on the tragedy. 

We heard repeatedly how this shooting was an extension of the steep rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, a figure said to have spiked by 150 percent last year. While that 150 percent rise sounds jarring, when looking over the figures, it’s appropriate to point out the numbers were significantly low to begin with. This ‘’spike’’ in hate crimes has been described as ‘’soaring’’, ‘’jumping’’, and any other dramatic adjective. In 2019, the nationwide total was 49 anti-Asian hate crimes, which includes using “racist words,” while last year it soared to an additional 79 cases. While of course that’s concerning, it’s hardly a national epidemic, let alone a product of “white supremacy.” In the latest recorded FBI statistics of victim/offender race, it was black Americans (at just 13 percent of the population) who committed the large majority of violent crime against Asian Americans. Wouldn’t white Americans, being the majority of the population, be the greater violent offenders against Asian Americans, if the media were telling the truth about Trump and “white supremacist anti-Asian racism”? 

They rely on us going blindly along with whatever they tell us. The only examples of violence against Asians the media can use to prove “white supremacy” and “Trump bad”, are assaults and murders against Asian Americans committed by black Americans, the media just leave the race of the perpetrator out of their story to keep the narrative alive. Look at this New York Times article: “The videos are graphic and shocking. In January, a local television station showed footage of a young man sprinting toward, then violently shoving to the ground, a man identified as Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, who had been out for a morning walk in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco. He later died.” The Times piece never reveals the name or race of the perpetrator: Antoine Watson, a 19-year-old black man. Look at some other of the most recent violent attacks on Asian Americans: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Who’s really behind this anti-Asian hate? The evidence is the complete opposite of what we’re being told. This is standard social justice practice in today’s clownish journalism. 

In Boulder Colorado, where ten people were killed, these same race-baiting assumptions were prevalent early on. A huge tweet thread was made laying out a lengthy list of certified accounts who jumped at the chance to call the shooter a ‘’white man’’ and justify their own hatred and racism. Then the bad news landed - the shooter was a Muslim migrant from Syria. You could hear the deafening sound of disappointment, deletions and abandonment. It once again exposed the depth of the depravity seen in our media complex today. If you are outraged at the actions of a man who would take the lives of strangers because he is a different race to his victims, why would you not be equally outraged when the same thing happens to victims of a different race, committed by a person of a different race? Why does the media fabricate evidence from thin air of victims being targeted for their race in one shooting, while completely ignores the evidence of victims actually being targeted for their race in another shooting?

This is one way the press has been exposed as craven opportunists in the treatment of the victims. In the Atlanta shooting all we heard about was the racial makeup of those who died because that led to some form of proof of racial bias. The media could then demonize the shooter accordingly, and likewise Donald Trump, by extension. But note the stark shift in the Boulder case. We have heard very little about those all white victims. Now that the killer is known to be Arab and Muslim, identifying the racial makeup of those he killed is notably avoided and is unlikely to ever be mentioned. This means the press is extremely selective in their recognition of those killed and in how they report that information. If their race interrupts the narrative intended, they are not worth mentioning, and if their race fuels a scripted reaction, then those deaths are to be exploited for the intended political hit. In both examples, you have heartless efforts behind the treatment of those lost in these violent events. 

Our media is evolving more and more into a degenerate industry, one willing to use victims in any way they see fit to drive forward a false narrative. The less afraid we are to hear and speak the truth, the less they can get away with it.