#isis richards.

[oldshowbiz]

January 1968.

Psychedelic band Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck opened for Richard Pryor in Vancouver.

[majestativa]

He says to her: “I’ve come to claim the oasis of my soul [...] My blue flame, O Isis!”

— Tristan Corbière, Oysters, Nightingales and Cooking Pots: Selected Poetry & Prose, transl by Richard Hibbitt & Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe, (2018)

[beautyarchive]

Isy Suttie has such a lovely face.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group with a network of sources on the ground, documented the deaths of 503,064 people by March 2023. It said at least 162,390 civilians had died in that same time, with the Syrian government and its allies responsible for 139,609 of those deaths.

But Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq War, viewed it all as a “regime-change war” fueled by the West and aimed at removing the dictator from power. She saw Assad – and Russia, when it entered the conflict – as legitimate defenders of the state against an extremist uprising.

In 2015, when Russia entered the Syrian war on the side of the dictator Assad, Gabbard expressed support for the move, even as the civilian toll from Moscow’s devastating airstrikes grew into the thousands.

“Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911,” she wrote on Twitter.

It was precisely because of her support for Assad and Russia’s war that Moustafa was keen for her to attend the congressional delegation to southern Turkey to meet the victims of the conflict.

“From experience, everyone that we bring over to the border, and they see the victims, they always come back with a realistic view of what’s happening and who is behind the mass displacement and killing and atrocities and so on, and so that was the objective,” he said. “What was shocking was her lack of empathy. She’ll sacrifice the facts, even when it came to little girls in front of her telling her they got bombed by a plane – it didn’t matter.”

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who testified twice on Syria to the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Gabbard was a member, spent years debunking her various conspiracy theories about the war.

“Her consistent denial of the Syrian regime’s crimes is so wildly fringe that her potential appointment as DNI is genuinely alarming,” he told The Independent.

Lister said her views “appear to be driven by a strange fusion of America First isolationism and a belief in the value of autocratic and secular leaders in confronting extremism.”

They included a suggestion that Syrian rebels staged a false-flag chemical weapons attack against their supporters to provoke Western intervention against Assad — something the US intelligence agencies she will soon lead had concluded was false. She declined to call Assad a war criminal when pressed, despite masses of evidence, and used a video of Syrian government bombings to criticize US involvement in the war.

“Her descriptions of the crisis in Syria read like they were composed in Assad’s personal office, or in Tehran or Moscow – not Washington,” Lister added.

Gabbard was not swayed by meeting the victims of Assad’s airstrikes in 2015. In fact, two years later, she went to Damascus to meet the Syrian president in person and came away even more convinced of her opinions.

The congresswoman said her visit to meet Assad – the first by a sitting US lawmaker since the conflict began – was aimed at bringing an end to the war.

“I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace,” she told CNN at the time.

Fire rises following a Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo in 2016 (AP)

Gabbard was forced to defend her embrace of Assad and other dictators during her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. During the Democratic primary debate, she clashed with Kamala Harris, who accused her of being “an apologist for an individual – Assad – who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.”

“She has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal. I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously and so I’m prepared to move on,” added Harris, who would subsequently drop out of the race and later be selected as Joe Biden’s running mate.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard again defended Russian aggression.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter in 2022.

Gabbard appeared to fall for various conspiracy theories about the conflict that were promoted by Russia, as she had done in Syria. One of those conspiracy theories was a Russian claim about the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that were supposedly producing deadly pathogens.

She later walked back on those remarks, suggesting that there might have been some “miscommunication and misunderstanding.”

Gabbard’s frequent echoing of Kremlin talking points has earned her praise in Russian state media. Indeed, an article published on 15 November in the Russian-state controlled outlet RIA Novosti went so far as to call Gabbard a “superwoman.”

The possibility that Trump would tap someone with Gabbard’s history to be America’s top intelligence official shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who followed the president-elect’s first four years in the White House.

During his 2018 summit with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the then-president was asked if he believed the US intelligence community’s assessment, which stated that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf.

That assessment was based on analysis of what was determined to have been state-sponsored campaigns of fake social media posts and ersatz news sites to spread false stories about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as cyberattacks targeting the Democratic National Committee and prominent operatives associated with the Clinton campaign.

But Trump, who’d just spent several hours in a closed-door meeting with Putin, stunned the assembled press and the entire world by declaring that he trusted the Russian leader’s word over that of his own advisers.

​​"President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be," he replied.

Trump would go on to repeatedly clash with his own intelligence appointees during the remainder of his term. He sacked his first DNI, former Indiana senator Dan Coats, after Coats repeatedly declined to back away from the government’s assessment of what Russia had done during the 2016 presidential race.

Larry Pfeiffer, the director of George Mason University’s Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security, said Gabbard’s apparent susceptibility to foreign disinformation and her affinity for strongmen will give pause to American allies with whom the US routinely shares intelligence on common threats.

Intelligence services, he explained, are notoriously territorial and tight-lipped on sources and methods – particularly when it comes to so-called human intelligence, or Humint, which refers to information collected by and from spies and sources within hostile governments.

Pfeiffer said foreign allies are likely already concerned about how a second Trump administration will handle intelligence, given the president-elect’s record. He also predicted that Gabbard’s confirmation as DNI would cause even more problems among skittish partners.

“I think they wouldn’t feel like they’ve got an American confidant that they can deal with on a mature level,” he said. “I can guarantee you that the foreign intelligence services of Europe, including the Brits, are all having little side conversations right now about … what is this going to mean, and how are we going to operate, and what are we going to do now.”

Gabbard has taken the side of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as the Russian president (AP)

The former US intelligence veteran also said Gabbard’s record of spreading foreign talking points calls into question whether she will be able to carry out the DNI’s important responsibility of briefing the president on threats to the nation.

He told The Independent: “Somebody like Tulsi Gabbard, you look at her long history of statements that seem to come out of the Kremlin’s notebook, her propensity to be influenced by their viewpoint – [it] raises questions as to whether she has the ability to present the intel community’s perspective as it is, or is she going to be one who’s going to want to discount it, influence it, color and change it, or ignore it and just present her own view?

“I think it also raises questions of judgement. You know, here’s an individual who seems very prone to misinformation, prone to conspiracy theory. That should worry anybody who’s worried about America’s national security,” he added.

Trump’s selection of the former Hawaii congresswoman could be a problem for the senators tasked with confirming her, on several different levels. For one, the position is unique among cabinet agencies in that there are strict requirements for who can serve in the director’s role.

The text of the 2004 law which established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and the intelligence community’s failures leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, specifically states that any person who serves in the DNI job “shall have extensive national security expertise.”

The first person to serve as DNI, John Negroponte, was a widely respected foreign service veteran who had served as US ambassador to Iraq, Mexico, Honduras and the Philippines, as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations, and as a deputy national security adviser during the Reagan administration. The next three people to hold the office were flag-rank military officers with significant intelligence experience.

Pfeiffer, a US intelligence veteran of three decades’ standing who once ran the White House Situation Room and served as chief of staff to then-CIA director General Michael Hayden, told The Independent that Gabbard’s experience in the House and her military service, while admirable, do not match the standards envisioned by the authors of the 2004 law which established the office.

“That’s national security experience … but she was a freaking military cop … operating at a largely tactical level, not that strategic, long-term national security perspective that one would expect,” he said.

Gabbard may have left the Syrian conflict behind, but Moustafa still works with its victims every day. And he believes the connection between her views on Syria and Ukraine is clear.

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

[transmutationisms]

do you have any reading recs (books, ~scholarly articles, whatever) in the same vein as this post? (doesn't need to be a super long list, i'm content to branch off with the works cited of whatever you come up with...) as always, love your blog!! :-)

yes :3 split roughly by subtopic, bolded some favs

Evolution in England prior to (Charles) Darwin

Cooter, Roger. The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organisation of Consent in Nineteenth Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1985).

Desmond, Adrian. The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1989).

Elliott, Paul. “Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the Origin of the Evolutionary Worldview in British Provincial Scientific Culture, 1770–1850.” Isis 94 (1): 1–29 (2003).

Finchman, Martin. “Biology and Politics: Defining the Boundaries.” In: Lightman, Bernard (Ed.). Victorian Science in Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1997), 94–118.

Fyfe, Aileen. Steam-Powered Knowledge: William Chambers and the Business of Publishing, 1820–1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2012).

Harrison, James. “Erasmus Darwin’s View of Evolution.” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (2): 247–64 (1971).

McNeil, Maureen. Under the Banner of Science: Erasmus Darwin and his Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press (1987).

Ospovat, Dov. “The Influence of Karl Ernst von Baer’s Embryology 1828–1859: A Reappraisal in Light of Richard Owen’s and William Benjamin Carpenter’s ‘Palaeontological Application of Von Baer’s Law.’” Journal of the History of Biology 9 (1): 1–28 (1976).

Rehbock, Philip F. The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press (1983).

Richards, Robert J. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behaviour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1987).

Rupke, Nicolaas. Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2009 [ 1994]).

Secord, James. Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2001).

van Wyhe, John. Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. London: Ashgate (2004).

Winter, Alison. “The Construction of Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in the Early Life Sciences.” In: Lightman, Bernard (Ed.). Victorian Science in Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1997), 24–50.

Yeo, Richard. “Science and Intellectual Authority in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain: Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.” Victorian Studies 28 (1): 5–31 (1984).

Edinburgh Lamarckians and Scottish transmutationism

Desmond, Adrian. “Robert E. Grant: The Social Predicament of a Pre-Darwinian Transmutationist.” Journal of the History of Biology 17 (2): 189–223 (1984).

Jenkins, Bill. Evolution Before Darwin. Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804–1834. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2019).

Secord, James. “The Edinburgh Lamarckians: Robert Jameson and Robert E. Grant.” Journal of the History of Biology 24 (1): 1–18 (1991).

Corsi, Pietro. ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians? The Authorship of Three Anonymous Papers (1826–1829)’, Journal of the History of Biology 54 (2021), pp. 345–374.

Darwin and Darwinism

Desmond, Adrian and James Moore. Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company (1994).

van Wyhe, John. “Mind the Gap. Did Darwin Avoid Publishing his Theory for many years?” Notes & Records of the Royal Society 61 (2007), 177–205.

Sloan, Philip R. “Darwin, Vital Matter, and the Transformation of Species.” Journal of the History of Biology 19 (3): 369–445 (1986).

Phillip R. Sloan, “The Making of a Philosophical Naturalist.” In: Hodge, Jonathan and Gregory Radick (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009), 17–39.

Sponsel, Alistair. Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2018).

Young, Robert M. “Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory.” Past & Present 43 (1969): 109–45.

Young, Robert M. “Darwin’s Metaphor: Does Nature Select?” The Monist 55 (3): 442–503 (1971).

Bowler, Peter J. The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1988).

Bowler, Peter J. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades Around 1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1983).

Hale, Piers J. “Rejecting the Myth of the Non-Darwinian Revolution.” Victorian Review 41 (2): 13–18 (Fall 2015).

Lightman, Bernard. “Darwin and the popularisation of evolution.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 64: 5–24 (2010).

Richards, Robert J. The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin’s Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1992).

Ruse, Michael. The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1979).

Lamarck and Lamarckism

Barthélemy-Madaule, Madeleine. 1982. Lamarck, the Mythical Precursor: A Study of the Relations between Science and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burkhardt, Richard. 1970. Lamarck, Evolution, and the Politics of Science. Journal of the History of Biology 3 (2): 275–298.

Burkhardt, Richard. 1977. The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Corsi, Pietro. 1988. The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790–1830. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Corsi, Pietro. 2005. Before Darwin: Transformist Concepts in European Natural History. Journal of the History of Biology 38 (1): 67-83.

Corsi, Pietro. 2011. The Revolutions of Evolution: Geoffroy and Lamarck, 1825–1840. Bulletin du Musée D’Anthropologie Préhistorique de Monaco 51: 113–134.

Jordanova, Ludmilla. 1984. Lamarck. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Spary, Emma C. 2000. Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[lizardsfromspace]

Richard Dawkins' meltdown in the early 2010s was so prophetic for what would happen to *gestures at every old British celebrity* in the past few years. Within just a few years he went from quietly respected to giving interviews where he ranks which types of rape are the worst, calling a Muslim teen wrongfully arrested for playing with a clock a "ISIS child soldier", and repeatedly trying to shut down feminists by using Muslim women as a blunt object to say they don't have it so bad so stop complaining, all while doing a lot of "I don't believe [bad thing], I'm just asking questions, y'know" on the side

Confirming all that I learned that he promoted a conference run by evangelical Christian Nationalists in 2019 since, while he "didn't support their religious beliefs", he did support their speaker's rants about "post-modernism", which. That checks out tbh

[kristies-mewis]

📸 Richard Callis/ISI Photos

[phoenixyfriend]

* Is, not isIs

Context: For this question, assume that it's the standard for the area, not just A Random One where you happen to know the school ID number.

Schools in NYC are usually known solely by the number code (PS91Q = Public School 91 Queens).

I didn't even know my elementary school HAD a name until five minutes ago. I just knew that the code was what they told me to put on the heading of all my homework papers.

[humanrightsupdates]

Afghanistan’s Hazara Community Needs Protection

Islamic State Armed Group Kills 14 Civilians in Daikundi

The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), affiliated with ISIS, has claimed responsibly for killing 14 men in Daikundi province this week, the latest attack on the Hazara community in Afghanistan.

The killings took place in a remote border district between Daikundi, which has a predominantly Hazara population, and Ghor provinces, in central Afghanistan. The men were returning from a pilgrimage to Shia holy sites in Karbala, Iraq when gunmen opened fire on the group.

Since emerging in Afghanistan in 2015, ISKP has killed and injured thousands of Hazaras and members of other religious minorities in attacks targeting mosques, schools, and workplaces. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, ISKP has claimed responsibility for at least 17 attacks against Hazaras, killing and injuring more than 700 people.

In October 2021, Human Rights Watch concluded that ISKP bombings and other targeted attacks against the Hazara community amounted to crimes against humanity. Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has called for investigations into ISKP attacks. This latest attack underscores the urgent need for the Taliban to take effective measures to protect all at-risk communities in Afghanistan, including Hazaras and other Shia Muslims.

Governments engaging with the Taliban should also call for better protection for these communities and encourage and support mechanisms to strengthen accountability for international crimes committed in Afghanistan.

[panelshowsource]

britcom comedians & panel show personalities who share your sign

AQUARIUS ♒ dara ó briain • frank skinner • glenn moore • guz khan • hugh dennis • lucy porter • maisie adam • mark watson • phil wang • vic reeves

PISCES ♓ aisling bea • alan davies • dave gorman • ed gamble • jenny eclair • katy wix • michael mcintyre • rose matafeo

ARIES ♈ andy parsons • desiree burch • ed byrne • gary delaney • jamali maddix • john kearns • josh widdicombe • josie long • roisin conaty • romesh ranganathan • rory bremner

TAURUS ♉ al murray • alex brooker • catherine tate • greg davies • joe wilkinson • john robins • mae martin • milton jones • morgana robinson • rhys james • rob brydon • sally phillips • sandi toksvig • sean lock • stephen mangan

GEMINI ♊ alan carr • bob mortimer • david baddiel • fern brady • judi love • julian clary • london hughes • mel giedroyc • noel fielding • paul sinha • rich hall • richard ayoade • sara pascoe • sarah millican • shappi khorsandi • sindhu vee • tom allen

CANCER ♋ adam hills • alice levine • david mitchell • katherine ryan • harriet kemsley • ian hislop • jack whitehall • joe lycett • paul merton • peter serafinowicz • phill jupitus • rosie jones

LEO ♌ bridget christie • cariad lloyd • chris ramsey • daisy may cooper • frankie boyle • isy suttie • lee mack • jo brand • nish kumar • victoria coren mitchell

VIRGO ♍ alex horne • dane baptiste • darren harriott • ivo graham • jimmy carr • johnny vegas • lolly adefope • miles jupp • nina conti • stephen fry • sue perkins • tim key

LIBRA ♎ diane morgan • harry hill • jack dee • jon richardson • limmy • nick helm • rhod gilbert • robert webb • tiff stevenson • zoe lyons

SCORPIO ♏ angela barnes • chris addison • elis james • ellie taylor • holly walsh • liza tarbuck • jonathan ross • kerry godliman • kevin bridges • matt forde • mike wozniak • sofie hagen • susan calman

SAGITTARIUS ♐ adam riches • david o'doherty • jessica knappett • larry dean • miranda hart • richard osman • seann walsh • simon amstell • steven k. amos

CAPRICORN ♑ ahir shah • angus deayton • bill bailey • claudia winkleman • james acaster • mark lamarr • paul foot • rob beckett • suzi ruffell

[apollo-enthusiast]

The world must know

The atrocities committed by hamas are too horrible to imagine, and certainly for me to put into words. So instead, here's a translation of a report containing a testimony of a Zaka man. Zaka is the organisation taking care of people's dead bodies.

Shipping containers, one by the other, 44 bodies of murdered and fallen in each one of them. They're laid one on the other in silver shelves, partially piling on one another - these are the sights in the military base Shura, to which the bodies from the massacre in the Gaza Envelope communities arrive. The bodies get to the shipping containers after a series of identification tests of the teeth, as well as DNA tests.

According to lieutenant colonel Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesman:

"We brought the international community here. We've spent three days with the foreign press so the scope of the ISIS massacre that was here will be understood. Starting tomorrow we'll be accused of being war criminals. The IDF hurts only Hamas, not civilian population. The whole world needs to see. Hamas is ISIS. This is not what we usually do. We don't attack children. Hamas uses children as human shields. We don't do that. The world must see that."

In the camp there are currently 900 bodies of civilians and hundreds more of soldiers and members of the security system. Trucks keep coming, and unload more and more bodies that have been through the identification process wrapped in bags. The smells here are extremely harsh, but the people in charge of the craft of identification and the care of bodies are, among others, the people of Zaka. One of them is Levy Wilhelm.

"I was recruited to the north, but for this purpose we got here for the weekend." He tells. In his words, "My job is to transport bodies from cooling containers that passed teeth and DNA tests. Due to the large amount we couldn't transport them one by one, so we put them in cooling containers. The bodies pile on top of each other and evacuated to certain shipping containers. Sometimes the situation is so bad that we have to put the bodies on top of each other. We got preparation on the mental level, but the situation is really catastrophic because sometimes the bag might rip and sometimes cloth of body parts peek out. We're in a completely crazy atmosphere and we really hope it won't affect us. When you see it with your own eyes you understand to what a despicable and humiliating situation we got, when tiny little kids are in bags. Right now I feel bolstered and I'm willing to continue and work hard because the situation calls for us all. We learned to dissociate for them, for us and for the people to do the job. Sometimes we'll discover a mortifying sight, but we must get strong immediately and if someone feels weakness you talk to him and get the situation under control so we're ready to work. We're happy that we got to put a hand under those sacred stretchers."

Benny Shechter, another volunteer for identifying bodies:

"Since yesterday night I'm here. A whole night you transport bodies, pick up a burnt child. There are 51 children without heads here. We pick up a child. The bag is big and the body is small. Sometimes you pick up a leg on it's own. Rockets were shot at houses and they took down bodies from trees. They found 20 men in one house. I'm a 60 year old person, and I'm falling apart. You pick up a body and see it's a child. There are people here that picked up a child and next to them put their heads."

Source: Ynet article by Adir Yanko

[oldshowbiz]

October 1969.

Richard Pryor kicked out of Vancouver.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by David Solway

Despite all the pitfalls on the long journey to statehood, on May 11, 1949, the UN General Assembly, by the requisite two-thirds majority, approved the application to admit Israel to the UN by General Assembly Resolution 273. We should consider, too, aside from the legal documentation we are examining here, that Israel is replete with stories, memorial scriptures and artifacts from pre-Biblical times and possesses a calendar that dates to 5783. Israel’s existence is not only official but immemorial.

Following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and its acquisition of territory, anti-Zionists demanded that Israel return to its shrunken 1967 borders, proclaiming their opposition to “the immoral and impractical policies that deny Palestinians equal rights,” calling for an end to “the siege on Gaza” and for “a permanent ceasefire,” and putting the onus on Israel to comply. Jimmy Carter’s mendacious book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is worth examining in some detail. Among the weave of falsehoods that bind its pages, we find that UN Resolution 242 demands that Israel return to Palestinians all land captured in the 1967 war.  

This is utter fiction. Carter and his ideological descendants have probably never heard of or paid much attention to Eugene Rostow, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and one of the leading architects of UN Resolution 242. Rostow explained in The New Republic for Oct. 21, 1991, that the Resolution allows Israel to administer its conquered territories until a just and lasting peace in the Middle East is achieved and that “the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.” 

Further, no Palestinian leader and few Western pundits have acknowledged the raw fact that there are no 1967 borders to which Israel is required to return. In fact, there are only armistice lines that have no bearing on future negotiations to determine final borders. The late Hugh Foot, Lord Caradon, formerly Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations and, along with Rostow, one of the drafters of Resolution 242, stated in the Beirut Daily Star on June 12, 1974, that “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.” 

Lord Caradon’s account of the meaning and history of the Resolution is supported by the remaining two framers, Arthur Goldberg and Baron George-Brown, who are equally explicit in asserting its original intention. Resolution 242 is a pro-Israel and not, as constantly misreported, a pro-Palestinian article. Yet in the interests of peace, Israel has fruitlessly surrendered much of its war gains in Gaza and the West Bank, creating unnecessary misery for itself.  

It follows that Israel’s enemies, and antisemites in general, are either credulous or savage or both. Generally speaking, their leaders are political operators with gelatinous souls, concerned mainly for their personal safety and privilege and cathected on the Islamic voting bloc. Moreover, far too many ordinary citizens are unable to distinguish between a forgery (e.g., "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion") and a scrupulous work of historical documentation (e.g., the aforementioned "From Time Immemorial"). They are culpably deaf and blind, as Richard Ibrahim indicates, to the purport of an ISIS audio recording titled And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (Koran 9:5) that pronounces the jihadist worldview of Islam: “The battle with the Jews is a religious one and not a national or populist one! It is not a battle for land, soil, or borders! In fact, it is a war that is legitimized by the Book and the Sunnah.”

[beatheturtleandearthling]

Any ship name ideas?

So, if you've been keeping up with my blog or saw the thing in the note on my AO3 fic Fall Weight, you know im going to start writing the AU little me wrote with the HHAC to put on AO3 as a series. But one problem came up when little me added tons of shipping: What other ship names than Ratherine I can think of? Long story short: NOT A LOT😭. So, I'm going to leave the names of the characters in the fic: Savage Stone Age Caveman: Ugg (Shipped with the troublesome 20th century) Awful Egyptians Lady (OC): Isis (shipped with the rotten romans) Rotten Romans soldier = Wackus Bonkus (shipped with the awful egyptains)

Cut-Throat Celt warrior(name by @heabybepponsboy): Niall Ó Mocháini (Asexual)

Smashing Saxons lady: Matilda Withabuga (shipped with the smashing saxons dude)

Smashing Saxons warrior(name by @heabybepponsboy): Beorhtnoth the Hammer (shipped with the smashing saxons)

Vicious Viking(name by @heabybepponsboy): Ragnar Sverre (married to Ragatha, yes little me thought of the name RAGATHA) Measly Middle Ages peasant: Richard (shipped with terrible tudor lady)

Terrible Tudors Lady (high class): Catherine (shipped with measly middle ages) Roundhead officer(Canon name): Victory (Aroace)

Gorgeous Georgians lady: Georgiana (or Georgia) (Shipped with Vile Victorians) Vile Victorian commoner (sometimes called the rat prince for being rattus's adopt son/rattus being his father figure): Jabez (shipped with the gorgeous georgian lady) Frightful First World War British soldier: Blenkinsop (Shipped with the woeful second world war captain) Woeful Second World War captain: Douglas (Shipped with frightful first world war british soldier) Troublesome 20th Century hippie: Susan (shipped with Savage Stone Age Caveman)

[rayrex0fartemis]

Artemis Quick Facts

Some of my notes from the books and papers I've read about Artemis.

In the 2nd century at the capital of the Roman province of Asia, Ephesus, Artemis was publicly declared to be "forever the greatest of all the gods".

Her name's etymology is unknown, likely pre-Greek. Her name was popularly believed to mean "healthy", meaning she makes people feel safe and healthy.

Artemis was extremely popular goddess, one of the most popular Greco-Roman gods.

Pausanias notes: "But all cities worship Artemis of Ephesus, and individuals hold her in honor above all the gods…" (4.31.8)

Dr. Rietveld described Artemis Ephesia as an "universal goddess".

Artemis subsumed and was amalgamated with many goddesses, including Kybele, Hekate, and Isis.

She was widely seen as a compassionate and loving god, as she’s always willing to listen and respond to the needs of her people.

She was popularly seen as a goddess of protection and life.

She was famous throughout the Roman Empire for her vivid manifestations, in real life and in dreams.

Hence many sanctuaries, shrines, altars, and temples were built in her honor.

From countless thanksgiving writings she was called "Our Lady".

Her sanctuaries and temples were typically asylum sites.

She's the only Greco-Roman god with the Zodiac on her cult image.

Hence as "Queen of the Cosmos" she has transcendent powers over the cosmos, and Fate.

As Mistress Salvation, Artemis can save her people from their unfortunate fate. It's possible that through the mysteries she can give people a blessed afterlife.

The relationship between Artemis and her worshippers was a divinely directed covenant relationship, born out of genuine affection towards Artemis.

Popularly Called: Queen of the Cosmos, Heavenly Queen, Savior, Our Lady, Mistress Salvation, and Fate Goddess.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy this and learned something new about Artemis.

Sources:

James Rietveld’s “Artemis of the Ephesians”

Mary Gabrielle Galvin "BIOΣ ~ APTEMIΣ"

Richard Oster’s “The Ephesian Artemis as an Opponent of Early Christianity”

Margaret C. Mowczko’s “The Regalia of Artemis”

Paschidis' "Artemis Ephesia and Herakles"

Chaniotis' "Megatheism"

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-must-can-and-will-win-hamas-defeat-rafah-war-gaza-22e9a19d

By: Ophir Falk

Published: Mar 14, 2024

Jerusalem -- Mounting international pressure to end the war won’t weaken Israel’s resolve to accomplish its mission of destroying Hamas, freeing the hostages and guaranteeing that Gaza will never pose a threat to Israel again. Detractors dismiss total victory as implausible, but the facts on the ground indicate otherwise.

Israel has already dismantled 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions, incapacitated more than 21,500 Hamas terrorists—about two-thirds of its force, including two of the top four leaders—and destroyed significant terror tunnels. By contrast, it took U.S. military forces nine months to take out 5,000 ISIS fighters in Mosul.

John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at West Point, described Israel’s achievements as “unprecedented,” especially given the complex combat conditions above and below ground. Mr. Spencer says that Israel is setting the “gold standard” for avoiding civilian casualties.

Israel doesn’t need prompting to provide humanitarian aid or to act with caution. According to retired British Col. Richard Kemp, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in Gaza is about 1 to 1.5. This is astonishing since, according to the United Nations, the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in urban warfare has been 1 to 9. Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas seeks to maximize civilian casualties and use them as a propaganda tool. We cannot let Hamas’s strategy pay off.

Hamas has four terror brigades in Rafah. That city is Hamas’s last stronghold, and its defeat is a prerequisite for victory. Whoever pressures Israel to refrain from entering Rafah is preventing the destruction of Hamas and the freeing of Israel and Gazan civilians from Hamas’s stranglehold. Gen. David Petraeus, who led the 2007 American surge in Iraq, said last week that the “key now is to not stop until Hamas is fully destroyed.”

Asking Israel to stop the war now is akin to telling the Allies to stop halfway to Berlin in World War II. If Hamas isn’t eradicated, genocidal terrorists will continue to emerge. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told new Israel Defense Forces cadets last week, “when we defeat the murderers of October 7, we are preventing the next 9/11.” Global leaders should take note.

High-intensity combat will wind down after Rafah, humanitarian aid will no longer be hijacked by Hamas, and safety for civilians can be realized. Total victory is within reach. Israel will finish the job. Anything less will endanger the rest of the civilized world.

[ Via: https://archive.today/aioGF ]

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the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in Gaza is about 1 to 1.5. ... the average combatant-to-civilian death ratio in urban warfare has been 1 to 9.

The Palestinian "genocide," ladies and gentlemen. The lowest combatant-to-civilian ratio of any urban warfare.