#little beirut

[arrgh-even-more-whatever]

[a-typical]

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé (2006)

[11300043]

the zionist terrorist entity struck beirut. my first thought was worry for a comrade of mine who’s visiting family in lebanon. but i also feel really fucking guilty for thinking that. like, they’ve killed tens of thousands of gazans (at the least) over the past 9ish months, and i’ve become numb to that, but i get intensely worried about this relatively minor attack that’s absolutely nowhere near my comrade, just bc the comrade is someone i personally know. and like i KNOW that our brains are wired to prioritize the people we know but like. still.

[irhabiya]

yeah dude that egyptian vendor who got harassed multiple times in ny, getting called a terrorist isn't affected by this at all. visibly middle eastern/north african people and/or muslims in the west are not affected by this even a little bit. lebanese people are not affected by this it's not like israel has been bombing southern lebanon for a few months now and threatened them that beirut would be next. yemenis are not affected by this, the un didn't cut off humanitarian aid to them when they're in dire need of it because of their support for palestine. damascus hasnt been bombed at all and the golan heights don't exist wdym. these ay-rabs are centering themselves🙄

[dozydawn]

“A young Palestinian girl carries a little baby in the ruins of West Beirut. 27 May 1985.”

Photographed by Joel Robine.

[metamorphesque]

Monte Melqonyan/Մոնթե Մելքոնյան (1957-1993)

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin. He's one of those extraordinary individuals about whom countless books could be written and numerous movies could be made, yet still, so much would remain untold. You might wonder, "He's a National Armenian Hero—cool, but why should I know about him?" My answer is simple: if the world had more people like him, especially in today's times, it would be a much better place. He fought for justice, embodied culture and education, and radiated a deep love for his people and humanity as a whole. I believe everyone should aspire to have a little bit of Monte's spirit within them, regardless of their nationality.

Now, it's important to note that some things written about him in the Western press can be questionable and inaccurate. So, I would advise taking most of the information from those sources with a grain of salt.

Monte was born on November 25, 1957, into an Armenian family in Visalia, California, that had survived the Armenian Genocide. From 1969 to 1970, his family traveled through Western Armenia, the birthplace of his ancestors. During this journey, Monte, at the age of twelve, began to realize his Armenian identity. While taking Spanish language courses in Spain, his teacher had posed him the question of where he was from. Dissatisfied with Melkonian's answer of "California", the teacher rephrased the question by asking "where did your ancestors come from?" His brother Markar Melqonyan remarked that "her image of us was not at all like our image of ourselves. She did not view us as the Americans we had always assumed we were." From this moment on, for days and months to come, Markar continues, "Monte pondered [their teacher Señorita] Blanca's question Where are you from?"

In high school, he excelled academically and struggled to find new challenges. Instead of graduating early, as suggested by his principal, Monte found an alternative - a study abroad program in East Asia. The decision to go to Japan was not random. He had been attending karate clubs and was the champion of the under-14 category in California. He also studied Japanese culture, including taking Japanese language courses. After completing his studies at a school in Osaka, Japan, he went to South Korea, where he studied under a Buddhist monk. He later traveled to Vietnam, witnessing the war and taking numerous photographs of the conflict. Upon returning to America, he had become proficient in Japanese and karate.

Having graduated from high school, Monte entered the University of California, Berkeley, with a Regents Scholarship, majoring in ancient Asian history and archaeology. In 1978, he helped organize an exhibition of Armenian cultural artifacts at one of the university's libraries. A section of the exhibit dealing with the Armenian Genocide was removed by university authorities at the request of the Turkish consul general in San Francisco, but it was eventually reinstalled following a campus protest movement. Monte completed his undergraduate work in under three years. During his time at the university, he founded the "Armenian Students' Union" and organized an exhibition dedicated to the Armenian Genocide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey.

Upon graduating, he was accepted into the archaeology graduate program at the University of Oxford. However, Monte chose to forgo this opportunity and instead began his lifelong struggle for the Armenian Cause.

In the fall of 1978, Monte went to Iran and participated in demonstrations against the Shah. Later that year, he traveled to Lebanon, where the civil war was at its peak. In Beirut, he participated in the defense of the Armenian community. Here, he learned Arabic and, by the age of 22, was fluent in Armenian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, and Kurdish.

From 1980, Monte joined the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA – I promise to tell you more about them later) and quickly became one of its leaders. In 1981, he participated in the planning of the famous Van operation. In 1981, he was arrested at Orly Airport in France for carrying a false passport and a pistol. During his trial, Monte declared, "All Armenians carry false passports—French, American—they will remain false as long as they are not Armenian." Over the following years, he perfected his military skills at an ASALA training camp, eventually becoming one of the group's principal instructors.

Monte with his wife Seda

After being released from a French prison (once again) in 1989, Monte arrived in Armenia in 1991, where armed clashes between Armenians and azerbaijanis had already begun. He founded the "Patriots" unit and spent seven months in Yerevan working at the Academy of Sciences, writing and publishing the book "Armenia and its Neighbors." In September of the same year, he went to the Republic of Artsakh to fight for his fatherland and its people. Due to his military expertise, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Martuni defense district in 1992. His sincerity and purity quickly won the love and respect of the local population and the Armenian community as a whole.

Throughout his conscious life, Monte fought for the rights of Armenians, recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and the reclamation of Armenian homeland.

There are various versions of Monte Melqonyan's death circulating in both Armenian and azerbaijani media. According to official Armenian information, Monte was killed on June 12, 1993, by fire from an azerbaijani armored vehicle.

Monte remains a lasting testament to the incredible potential unleashed when the Armenian patriotic heart unites with sharp intellect.

In case you'd like to put a voice to the face and hear about the Artsakh struggle directly from Monte, here he is speaking about it in English.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

What did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti Lupone upset? Sorry, saw your tags and i was curious

Oh.

Oh honey.

You sweet child.

Anyway, get ready for one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, with the guy who writes the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, two three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

So, Andrew Lloyd Webber was basically kind of a boy genius in his prime - he met his future collaborator Tim Rice when they were 17 and 20 respectively, he wrote his first big hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics. And it was kind of a big deal at the time because the topic was controversial (you know, the Passion with rock music), but also because Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. It was basically the Rent/Hamilton of its time. (Yeah, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with I Dreamed a Dream for Les Misérables. Or Memory from Cats.

Evita tells the story of Eva Peron, the wife of an Argentinian dictator, who basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Peron and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. It was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of Equity issues, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, because the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts, but most female singers have a two-octave range (yes, you got Julie Andrews who used to have a three-octave range, and many others, but they're exceptions), so she struggled a lot. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and it got a lot easier later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she wrote in 2007 - 8 years after shit with ALW went down. With all that said, she won a Tony Award for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He's basically associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that show a big spectacle but aren't ultimately substantial. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for Phantom, it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly. This is what I mean:

Yep, that was Phantom before any of the people I mentioned above (and Michael Crawford) were really involved.

Remember how I said Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work was bringing musicals to a whole other level. Without Sondheim, you wouldn't have Jonathan Larson, and you wouldn't have Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am convinced ALW is resentful of that, and when you stop and think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's so obvious he REALLY wants to be Sondheim or at least command the same level of respect, but that's a story for another day.

So, after Phantom, ALW had other musicals that followed that either got a meh reception or outright flopped. Then there was Sunset Boulevard, which is based on the movie of the same name with Gloria Swanson. Despite all of her griefs for Evita, Patti LuPone agreed to partake in the musical as Norma Desmond, for its production in London, with the promise that she would transfer to Broadway once that production would open. And overall, after a string of flops, Sunset was actually doing pretty well.

HOWEVER. One day, while reading the gossip column of a newspaper, Patti found out that contrary to what she was promised, Glenn Close, who was meanwhile starring as Norma in the Los Angeles production, was to play Norma on Broadway. That was a complete surprise for her since no one on the production team had bothered to tell her it was happening - and keep in mind that for the news to come up the way it did in a gossip column, it probably would have necessitated a delay of a few weeks between the producers and the newspaper, which would have given them plenty of time to break the news to Patti. And Patti kind of needed the leg up because she was pretty bitter that a) Madonna was cast in the Evita adaptation instead of her; b) they actually lowered the key to fit Madonna's voice range, and she still had to expand her own to be able to sing the (lowered) score. And trust me, Patti is mad about it to this day.

So of course, she trashed her dressing room, the cast and crew weren't even mad about it because they were as shocked and angered as she was by the news. Patti sued Andrew Lloyd Webber for breach of contract, namely for 1 MILLION DOLLARS (yup, those are the real numbers), won, used the money she got from the lawsuit to get a swimming pool, which she called (and I SHIT YOU NOT) the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Since then, Webber is dead to her, to the point rumor has it she had part of a building blocked during an event so she could get out of it without coming across Webber, because she hates him so flipping much she doesn't even want to be in the same building as the guy.

(There's also drama that happened with Faye Dunaway who was supposed to replace Glenn Close after she went from Los Angeles to Broadway, except they abruptly closed the show down after Close left, but that's a story for another day)

So with all the bad press, and with ALW forced to pay 1 million dollars for Patti's lawsuit, that led Sunset's productions to close earlier than expected. ALW has stayed around since, with... mitigated output, so to say. The lowest point for a lot of people is Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, which some people love, and that's fine, but it didn't do well with either critics nor fans of the original show, which ALW is EXTREMELY BUTTHURT ABOUT. And like, there are so many stories I could tell about LND alone, but I will share my own crack theory about it, since it does relate to the ask.

Anyway, buckle up.

So. There have been jokes going around for years that the Phantom in LND is basically ALW's self-insert, where he displays to the world that he's totally not over Sarah Brightman leaving him (in part because making Phantom kinda ruined their marriage lmao), despite, you know, having married since. (Aaaaaakward.) So LND basically becomes this really uncomfortable therapy session where a man writes a self-insert musical about how his ex-wife made a big mistake of leaving a sensitive artistic soul such as himself. The characters from Phantom who appear in LND are all more or less unrecognizable as a result, and one who gets it worse (in my humble opinion) is Meg Giry, who was basically Christine's sweet and loyal ballerina friend who basically went into the Phantom's lair on her own to save her friend despite the danger. In LND, she's basically a bitter hag (because ALW hates women, guess Patti was right about that), who really likes the swim and even has a stripping vaudeville number about it, written in universe by the Phantom, no less.

For comparison, here's Don Juan Triumphant (the Phantom's opera in the original):

And here's Bathing Beauty (the vaudeville number):

Yeah, so... do you see why people hate LND already?

And that's not the only thing with Meg! She's also pining for the Phantom to pay attention to her and threatens to drown the Phantom and Christine's secret love child when he makes it clear that he's gonna love Christine for EVA AND EVA.

So, with everything we learned today about ALW, would someone like him view someone like Patti LuPone as some sort of crazy, bitter diva who's obsessed with him for whatever reason? Absolutely. Would he be petty enough to insert Patti LuPone into his self-insert musical, which gave us the version of Meg Giry we got in LND? Of course. Why does Meg love to swim so much and why does she drag Gustave out ostensibly for a swim? Is it a dig at Patti's Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool? Maybe.

I kind of hope we find out one day if that theory is true. And maybe start a kickstarter so Patti can add this painting from the 2004 movie in her collection.

Fun fact: during the process of casting for the 2004 movie adaptation of POTO, ALW allegedly suggested Patti LuPone to play Carlotta... only for Joel Schumacher to have to awkwardly remind him that they were not on speaking terms. The idea was therefore promptly dropped.

[cicerfics]

Random headcanon

Re: this post -

Whenever someone finally pins Bond down long enough to make him fill out his AARs properly, this is the type of terminology he gleefully uses to explain whatever wreckage he's left behind.

'My contact in Beirut proved to be a dead end' - Contact had been turned by the enemy so I garrotted him with his own tie

'Once I made contact with the target, I disabled his mobile phone via a lithobreaking maneuver' - I kicked his hand and he dropped it off the edge of a ten-story building

'During the ensuing pursuit, the car provided by Q-branch underwent rapid unplanned disassembly' - I jumped out of it so I could tackle the target off his motorcycle, and the abandoned car crashed into a wall

Bond HATES political euphemisms and scientific jargon...UNLESS he can use it to make the vein in Mallory's temple throb or cause Q to do his cute little angry-hands-on-hips-scowly-face pose.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The context of the Hamas attack on Israelis, however, is completely different from the context of the attack on Jews during the Holocaust. And without the historical context of Israeli settler colonialism since the 1948 Nakba, we cannot explain how we got here, nor imagine different futures; Biden offered us, instead, the decontextualized image of “pure, unadulterated evil.” This weaponization of Holocaust memory by Israeli politicians runs deep. In 1982, for instance, in the context of Israel’s attack on Lebanon, the Israeli PM, Menachem Begin, compared the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Adolf Hitler in his bunker in Berlin at the end of the war. Three decades later, in October 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu took this weaponization to new levels when he asserted in a speech to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem that the Palestinian grand mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini planted the idea to murder Jews in Hitler’s mind. And last Tuesday, Netanyahu described Hamas in a press conference, together with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as the “new Nazis”. The Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant said: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” Nissim Vaturi, a member of the Israeli parliament for the ruling Likud party, to take another example, called for “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth”. There are many other such expressions by Israeli politicians and senior army officers in the last few weeks. The fantasy of “fighting Nazis” drives such explicit language, because the image of Nazis is one of “pure, unadulterated evil”, which removes all laws and restrictions in the fight against it. Perpetrators of genocide always see their victims as evil and themselves as righteous. This is, indeed, how Nazis saw Jews. Biden’s words constitute therefore a textbook use of the Holocaust not in order to stand with powerless people facing the prospect of genocidal violence, but to support and justify an extremely violent attack by a powerful state and, at the same time, distort this reality. But we see the reality in front of our eyes: since the start of Israeli mass violence on 7 October, the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has surpassed 4,650, a third of them children, with more than 15,000 injured and over a million people displaced. Israel has also escalated the violence against Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank, including the killing of more than 95 people and an intensification of expulsions, including the destruction of whole communities. Hamas wields no power in the West Bank, but the reality that we can all see means little for Israelis fighting, in their minds, Nazis.

[muddyorbsblr]

let me hear you part 1: acting like a stranger

Series Masterlist See my full list of works here!

Summary: Your world comes crashing down when you finally start feeling the full weight of the 'name curse' that was placed on a world a few years ago.

Pairing: Loki x Reader (eventually); Steve Rogers x Reader (briefly)

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: cheating (not Loki he would never); language; angst

Things to be aware of: pining…yearning…

The whole world considered it a bane, a devastation even, when a few years ago a sorceress from another realm walked through a portal and into your world and placed a curse upon everyone who inhabited it. No matter if they were human or otherwise, it touched everyone.

The curse? Only the people that irrevocably love you can say your name. People who have proven themselves deserving of your trust, regardless of your reciprocation. And once that trust was broken, your name would be erased from their mind completely.

They would know who you are and what you meant to them, but the blatant proof of their betrayal would be on display for the world, and yourself, to hear. Or in this case not hear. They would have no other name to call you by, and you would not be able to utter their name in turn. The curse would act as if it held your tongue captive if you attempted to do so.

Studios fell quiet. Chanted names in stadiums became player numbers and monikers. Offices became buzzing cubicles of people calling each other by their employee numbers.

Relationships were shattered.

But the way you saw it, it was a blessing. Because in its wake, a culture of unmitigated honesty was established. You watched how couples proudly said each other's names as a way to show the world, and to one another, that their devotion knew no bounds. They stayed loyal and true to one another and much as others would look upon them with a bitterness in their eyes for they no longer heard their names, seeing such couples brought a smile to your face.

Because you still constantly heard your name every day in the Avengers Compound from the lips of your boyfriend, the team's fearless leader, Steve Rogers. You two did away with your casual friendly nicknames for each other the day he walked into the kitchen one day and said "Good morning, Y/N." And you'd been inseparable since.

You were in such a blissful state that it seemed as if nothing could bring you down, and nothing outside your rose-tinted bubble could even barely register to you. Such as a briefly wandering eye whenever one of the new recruits walked by, the lingering touches, the excessive praise. You had no reason to doubt him, after all. He hadn't broken your trust. You would know if he had. Everyone would know if he had.

There was another that noticed it, however. Perhaps it was simply his keen observational skills and his predilection for gathering and storing away potentially scandalous intel for a rainy day. Or perhaps it was that he'd consistently butted heads with the Captain due to their clashing personalities and beliefs. Or perhaps it was that he so deeply coveted something that Rogers had.

Perhaps it was that Loki had fallen so irretrievably in love with you that he'd shocked even himself a few weeks after you'd begun your relationship with the ridiculously star-spangled spandex clad soldier, and he found himself needing to hold his tongue from uttering your name when he was simply bidding you goodbye after a successful mission in Beirut. He could feel every ounce of blood in him turn to ice as he waited for you to start making your way to Rogers' apartment before he attempted to whisper your name into the dark.

Since that night five months ago, he'd given into the fantasy that every time he called you 'little mortal' or 'darling' that he was truly calling you by your name. And that perhaps if you listened closely enough, beyond the words he uttered, you could hear his heart calling out to you.

Much like it was doing now as the god walked into the kitchen area of the compound and found you on your lonesome, nursing a cup of coffee. "Good morning, little mortal."

You looked up from your handheld library, giving him a smile made even more brilliant with the way the rays of morning sunlight struck you at just the right angle. It had his mind racing down a dangerous path. One where he imagined how you would look illuminated by the sun in the halls of Asgard, dressed in robes set in his colors as you walked hand in hand so that he may introduce you to his mother.

"Good morning, Mischief." You raised your cup in his direction. "There's about half a pot left. Better hurry before your brother gets a whiff of it."

"No Captain today?" he queried as he poured out his own cup before occupying the seat next to yours, fighting against the urge to lean in closer to you.

"Nah, he's out on a solo recon mission Downtown. Pulled an all-nighter. Should be back soon."

The cheery tone in your answer and the information you imparted simultaneously had chills running through his body and made his ache to hold you that much worse. You deserved to have someone comfort you through what was coming.

"Darling…there was no reconnaissance mission last night," he told you slowly, trying to keep his tone even despite the rage that was steadily building in him. How could Rogers have done this to you? You, that greeted him with the brightest smile of all ready with an embrace and a kiss whenever he'd return from legitimate missions.

That sat dutifully by his side in the medical wing whenever he'd return with injuries that couldn't be slept off so easily despite his enhanced physique. Even if you had to sleep in uncomfortable positions that had you wincing the next morning from the aches throughout your body, you took it all without complaint.

Dread had settled into the pit of Loki's stomach as the smile dropped from your face, the seeds of doubt beginning to creep in to your features. Doubt that he surmised was pointed both at Rogers as you questioned the validity of this 'mission', and at himself for even planting the idea in your head.

"Mischief, what are you implying?" You'd placed your device face down on the counter, lacing your fingers together in a tight grip as if you were trying to hold yourself back from saying or doing anything too rash.

"I'm simply saying that as of last night, there were no missions on our side of the board. At least any reconnaissance missions that only needed an Avenger."

"That's impossible," you breathed out, the smile on your face looking more forced than when he first saw you just moments ago. The sight of the evident strain in your eyes filled him with the bitter taste of guilt. "Maybe you just didn't see it."

"Are you insinuating I've made an error?" he prodded you in a jesting tone, attempting to alleviate even a fraction of the tension that he'd started to see creeping into your system.

You shrugged at him, the smile warring with a grimace and contorting your features in a way that physically pained him to see. "I'm just saying maybe there's a first time for everything, I don't know…" The clear uncertainty in your tone had Loki physically aching to hold you. To assure you that no matter what happened, you would not have to face your impending heartbreak alone. That you had him.

He was seconds away from reaching for your hand when the near soundless footsteps of the Widow walking toward you gave you something else to focus on. "Morning, babes." She walked over and pulled you in for a quick embrace and pecked a kiss to your cheek. "What's with the gloom and doom? America's Ass fall asleep on you too quick? You frustrated? I know a guy that can get you some toys to help--"

"No no, babes. Nothing like that," you answered with a bit too much snap in your tone and the way that you shook your head. As if you were trying to physically shake the denial off of you. "Just a solo recon mission Downtown. I miss him is all."

"What recon mission?"

He heard your pulse quicken, the fragile skin of your neck moving frantically with the beat of your heart. "The…the one that came up last night. Downtown. The solo mission," you repeated. Your voice had become smaller, your doubt and lack of confidence seeping in to every syllable you uttered and worsening the ache in the god's heart, every nerve in his body screaming to wrap you in his arms to keep you from falling apart.

The Widow's expression began to mirror the rage he was fighting to keep at bay, the corner of her jaw twitching as if she was holding back from hunting down the traitorous Rogers. "I didn't see any recon missions on our board last night, babes. On any board, actually." The sound of the doors to the common area bursting open called everyone's attention, the sounds of Rogers' motorbike engine powering down making you sit up straighter, as if you were on guard.

"Listen I'm sure this'll all be cleared up when he gets here," you stated with an evidently plastered on confidence, back straight and ready to greet the soldier as he walked into the common area with an obvious unease about him as well. Eyes scanning the room frantically until he met yours. "How was the mission?"

"Same old same old. Just another Tuesday," the blond exhaled, relief seeming to take over his features as he made his way to you and proceeded to pull you towards him for a kiss that looked to be more possessive and harsh than perhaps even he intended. It made the god that still sat mere feet away from you begin to taste bile in the back of his throat from just witnessing it, and made his ears twitch at the sound of your wincing from the force of the impact. "I'm just happy to be back home and see you again, angel face."

Whatever hope still illuminated your face shattered at the mention of the nickname; anyone watching even from a distance could see how the light significantly dimmed in your eyes and the sheer strength it was taking for you to keep your smile from fading. "Wh…What's with the nickname? You haven't called me that in months."

Rogers shoulders were practically made of tightly coiled wire as he rubbed his neck trying to ease some tension that had made its presence felt while he walked to the coffee pot. "I just think it might be making everyone a little sick of us if we keep using it, you know? Rubs in the loneliness more than we need to."

Your face contorted into a pained expression that Loki never wished to see again. It was as if he could see your heart shattering in real time. "You're not making any sense. Why are you acting like this, St--" When your voice fell muffled at the attempt to say his name darkness fell over your features. Suddenly regardless of the harsh light of the morning washing over the floor, it was as if that light didn't dare touch you. Afraid you would snuff it out if it even got too close.

"You fucking idiot," Romanoff seethed, squaring her shoulders and approaching the soldier with pure murder in her eyes. "Don't even try to deny it. The look on her face says it all."

"Hey hey wait a minute what's going on here? Sun's barely up and we have an assassin ready to commit murder on the kitchen floor?" The Winter Soldier had walked into the area ready to defend his best friend at a drop of a hat until he spotted you, hunched over in your seat with your arms around yourself as if you were physically trying to hold yourself together.  Or make yourself smaller. "What's wrong, little doll? Why the tears?"

"I ca--" you choked out, fat tears falling from your lashes and darkening the fabric of your pajama bottoms. "I can't say his name."

The expression on Barnes' face eerily mirrored the Widow's when he looked up at the blond super soldier. "Make that two assassins ready to commit murder," he seethed, glowering at his friend. "We were raised better than this, you goddamn punk. If your mother were here she'd make sure her pots and pans held an indent of your stupid face for what you just did."

"I didn't do anything!" he lied through his teeth, jerking his hands up as if in surrender.

"Then say my name," you said simply, a coldness taking over your demeanor as you stood and approached them. "If you didn't do anything, and whatever's happening between us right now is my fault? Say my name."

"You're putting too much faith in that curse, come on! It's me! Angel face please--"

"You can't say it, can you?" To an untrained eye, with your back facing them, you seemed the picture of cold calmness, as if you were simply being informed that your contract had been terminated and now you were simply settling mere semantics because of protocols. But if they looked close enough then they would find the violently shaking hand, hear the tremble in your voice as you spoke. Your shortness of breath as if you were fighting with all your strength for every inhale. "You can't…because you don't know it anymore."

"Of course I know it!" You tilted your head ever so slightly, as if telling him you'd wait until he could prove it. Instead the buffoon looked around at his friends' faces as if in expectation of a defense from one of them. The defense never came, and the hideous truth of what he'd done made quick work to deal its consequences devoid of subjectiveness.

Your name had been wiped from his mind.

The sound of your hand clapping over your mouth, followed by a muffled sob, caused a part of Loki's heart to splinter. That sound may very well haunt him for the rest of his days. You turned to face him, your other hand clutching your stomach as if you were about to be sick. "You were right," you said with a squeak. "I'm sorry that I doubted you."

Your words squeezed violently at his heart, your name practically fighting to fly out of his mouth as you stood before him with your eyes drowning in the sorrow that Rogers' betrayal had wrought. "Little mortal," he said shakily, fingers twitching, aching, to reach for you. "You need not apologize you did nothing wrong--"

"So it was you," the soldier seethed, charging in this direction before Barnes blocked the way and pinned him in place with his metal arm. "You poisoned her mind against me, that's why she can't say my name anymore!"

"Then explain why you can't even remember it, you goddamn punk," the other soldier retorted, pressing his arm harder against the fidgeting blond. "This isn't her fault and it turns my stomach you even tried to blame the consequences of your dumbass decisions on anyone other than yourself. I'm embarrassed to know you right now." He pointed his other hand in your direction. "She's better than you will ever deserve. And you threw it all away because what? That junior agent batted her eyelashes at you? God damn it you're pathetic--"

"Serge," you broke through Barnes' tirade, brown pitying eyes with rage swimming just beneath the surface meeting yours. "Stop. Before you say something that brings you two to the end of the line."

"You didn't deserve this--"

"If you really wanna do something about it, Serge, keep that one away from his apartment for three hours." Your tone was deceptively calm, the only indicator of your pain was the slightest waver in your voice when you referred to your former lover. Then you turned to face Rogers, your stance mirroring that of when you were preparing yourself for battle. "All traces of me will be gone from your place by then…Captain."

You made your exit from the common area so swiftly that Loki nearly felt a gust of wind from your path. The monotonous chimes of the compound's AI affirming that it will sound an alarm when the three hours were finished followed shortly after a door slammed in the general direction of the Captain's residence. Your former lover let out a whiny disapproval at the sound. "She broke my door! Come on, you two, at least let me make sure she didn't throw a fit and trash my place!"

"You'll be fortunate if that is all she does, you insipid blubbering excuse of a man," the god seethed, storming toward him, conjuring a blade in his hands ready and more than willing to draw blood. "You fool. You had her. You had her and you threw her aside as if her fealty, her love, meant nothing to you."

"And what's it to you, puny god?" he spat out. "I suggest you back off before I call on Banner and ask him nicely to go green just for you."

"Yeah, sorry Cap but fat chance of that happening," the scientist's voice traveled throughout the kitchen area. "I heard enough to know who's side the kids will be taking in the divorce and it's looking a little bleak for you."

"Honestly we should start calling you America's Asshole from now on. Fucking hell I can't believe you had the sheer audacity to take a relationship where you can actually say each other's names and you shit on it for what? Little Miss Tinkerbell with the perky tits and the Oh Captain you're so big and strong bullshit?" The kitchen became more crowded as Stark entered the area, joining in on the imposition. "You do know that she tried it with Point Break, too? The only difference between you and him is that he's loyal to Lady Thunder at an immovable level. He would never be caught dead doing what you just did to your ex."

"Please, she's not--"

"If you honestly think that she's gonna be anything other than done with you after this, then you need to sign yourself up for stand-up comedy because I didn't know you had jokes, Captain," Stark cut him off, his tone dripping with disgust that he was trying so hard to pass off as merely sarcasm.

"She just needs time to come around." Despite the bravado that Rogers was trying to use as a crutch to put up a pitiful confident front, his voice faltered. As if he knew that this truly was the last that he would be hearing from you in any remotely romantic sense. As if he knew that he had lost you.

And deservedly so.

The faint sound of drawers banging shut had Loki fighting back a smirk. Yes, my darling Y/N, he thought to himself. Don't fight your rage. Let it flow through you. You need not hold it in any longer.

"That's assuming she doesn't make a complete mess of our home first."

"When will it register in your impossibly dense skull, Captain, that you have squandered your chance with her? You no longer share a home with her. She is erasing herself from your life as effectively as you have wiped her name from your mind the moment you gave in to the attempts of that would-be temptress." To even think that anyone would look elsewhere when they already had you was truly baffling and infuriating to the god, causing him to grip his blade even tighter.

"You know what, blue boy, you're really starting to get on my nerves," Rogers seethed, starting to surge forward only to once again be thwarted in his attempts by Barnes' metal arm. "This is none of your business. I bet you haven't even known the honor of getting to say someone's name since this curse started, so save your high horse act for someone who'll be stupid enough to buy it. You keep talking about how I threw my chance away, well at least I had a chance. Which is more than I can say for the likes of you."

Loki gritted his teeth, charging foward and poising the tip of his blade an inch away from the adultering Captain's chest. "The only reason I hold back now…the only reason I'm not driving this blade through your heart? The only reason that you're still breathing is that your untimely yet arguably warranted demise would still devastate Y/N."

The mention of your name had everyone's gaze turn sharply toward Loki, who'd chosen to stash his blade away back in his pocket dimension. Shock overtook their features as he turned away from them and took off in the direction of Rogers' apartment. He had more pressing matters to attend to. He could give your former lover grief any time he wished, but right this moment his priority was ensuring that you were alright.

Reassuring you that no matter how dismal things seemed, that you would not be navigating your betrayal alone. That you had him. Even if you knew not the magnitude of how you had him.

A/N: So…welcome to yet another series that happened because I got inspired by a TikTok POV🥴 I can't wait for y'all to see what I have in store for this! And if you're ready to throw the nearest heavy object at Rogers, trust me there's a line and Loki's at the very start of it

‘everything’ taglist: @simplyholl @loopsisloops @unlucky-number-13 @imalovernotahater @coldnique @loz-3 @huntress-artemiss @salempoe @vickie5446 @athalialaufeyson @lokiprompts @kats72 @kikster606 @evelyn-kingsley @lokixryss @thomase @mischief2sarawr @peaches1958 @lovingchoices14 @lunarnights95 @goblingirlsarah @iamlokisgloriouspurpose @creationsbyme @maple-seed @mjsthrillernp @ladyofthestayingpower @mygfloki @sititran @glitterylokislut @ozymdias @fictive-sl0th @lovelysizzlingbluebird @lokidbadguy @mochie85 @silverfire475 @joyful-enchantress @elizabethmidnight2017 @holdmytesseract @lokidokieokie @lunarnights95 @superficialdomina @anukulee @kmc1989

[hyperions-fate]

The sheer insanity of describing an attack on a built-up neighbourhood in Beirut, a city of 2.5 million, as a 'surgical strike' against a 'Hezbollah stronghold'. To both the Western media and to Israel's war machine, Arab cities - with their complex histories and lives - are little more than stage sets for high-tech barbarism.

[mariacallous]

The path to Palestinian statehood has been crushed beneath an avalanche of bombs, bullets, smoke, and fire. “After Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a prepared statement in January.

What little hard-earned trust there was between Israelis and Palestinians has been shattered both by the slaughter of civilians by Hamas in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, 2023—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust—and the subsequent war between Hamas and Israel. More than 30,000 Palestinians have now died, the majority of whom were civilians. Violent resistance has failed Palestinians—and empowered extremists in Israel.

In the Israeli collective psyche, Oct. 7 was a tremendous violation because of the sneak nature of the attack, the dismembering and burning of corpses, the use of systemic rape as a weapon of war, and the targeting of civilians including children in kibbutzim and attendees at a music festival. There is little appetite for peace with the perpetuators.

In Gaza, meanwhile, Israel is carrying out a brutal and unremitting war that has buried countless children under rubble and seen the destruction of more than half of all houses as well as libraries, court houses, hospitals, and all of the territory’s universities. Many Palestinians view the Israeli military offensive as an attempted genocide. The greater part of the Palestinian political spectrum, including both Fatah and Hamas, broadly support the South African case in the International Court of Justice.

Yet there is little hope of real victory for either side. Even today, parts of Gaza remain under Hamas control, and the top figurehead commanders inside Gaza who oversaw the planning and execution of the Al-Aqsa Flood—Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif—have not been captured or killed. The Hamas political leadership outside Palestine is, for the most part, also still at large—top Hamas political bureau members Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Meshal, and Mousa Abu Marzook are still alive, while Saleh Al-Arouri was assassinated by Israel in Beirut on Jan. 2.

Both sides have hardened against a two-state solution. In a Jan. 16 interview, Meshal dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution and said the Oct. 7 assault on Israel proved that liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea” is a realistic idea. In November, another Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hammad pledged that Hamas would “repeat October 7 again and again” until they achieved their goals—the total destruction of Israel and a Palestinian state throughout the entirety of the land.

Strategically, this makes no sense. While occupied people have a right to violently resist military occupation, for relatively disempowered people, trying to assert their cause through advocacy and negotiation is a much more fruitful domain than violence because it relies on force of argument rather than military might.

The Palestinian case for self-determination—like any stateless people—is bulletproof, even if Palestinians themselves are not. The principle of self-determination is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Palestinians have an inalienable right to rule themselves in the land on which they live.

The trouble is that Hamas’ demands go far beyond demanding self-governance. What they and Palestinian anti-Zionists demand is the right to extinguish their neighbor’s self-governance, and conquer their neighbor’s territory. It’s the same right that Israeli extremists claim as they prepare new settlements on the West Bank—and even dream of seizing land in Gaza.

This overarching narrative of Palestinian resistance against the existence of any kind of Israel or Zionism has been deeply embedded into the cause since the start of the conflict—and has produced little but tragedy for Palestinians. Since before 1948, the use of force to resist Zionist presence in the land was normalized and glorified. Muslim leaders such as the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini refused to permit the establishment of any kind of Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world on what they held to be Islamic land. This absolute rejectionism fueled the anti-Zionist pogroms of the 1920s and 1930s, and spurred the Arab Palestinian factions to try to extinguish the newly created state of Israel in 1947 to 1948.

It was only in the 1990s that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) renounced the strategy of violence, recognized Israel, and switched toward a strategy of diplomacy and negotiation. But this did not last very long. After the failure to agree upon a negotiated two-state solution at Camp David, Yasser Arafat gave his blessing to armed groups including Hamas to initiate a Second Intifada, perhaps as an attempt to achieve greater negotiating leverage and further Israeli concessions. Hamas’ takeover of Gaza and their war against Israel is simply a continuation of this long history of anti-Zionism.

Of course, this approach has failed to achieve both Hamas’ objective of eradicating Israel, and also failed to grant Palestinians any kind of state. So why is this?

Reliance on violence fuels a cycle of violence. This cycle of violence has led to severe Israeli retaliation, exacerbating the suffering of civilians and leading to deep humanitarian crises, cruelly visible in Gaza today. The use of violence has sabotaged the Palestinian cause on the international stage. Violent tactics have frequently been used to justify the delegitimization of Palestinians, and serve as an excuse to prolong the occupation of the Palestinian Territories by Israel. Horrific acts such as those of Oct. 7 alienate potential allies and supporters, particularly in the Western world.

This is not to mention the internal Palestinian political landscape. The split between Hamas and the PLO over tactics, strategy, and goals has fragmented Palestinians. This has made it more challenging—if not nigh on impossible—to present any kind of united front in negotiations with Israel and the international community.

The Israeli right has used Palestinian fragmentation as a way to prevent the development of a two-state solution. According to the Jerusalem Post, in 2019 Netanyahu admitted as much when he told a private meeting of his Likud party that bolstering Hamas was part of his strategy to help maintain a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Yet the use of peaceful protests and strategies has also faced significant challenges. Despite the moral and ethical superiority of nonviolent resistance, its effectiveness in the Palestinian context has been limited due to several factors. Peaceful protests often receive less media attention compared to violent conflicts simply because they are of lower impact and lack the visceral shock of terrorism.

This lack of visibility can limit the impact on the global stage, making it harder to garner any kind of recognition or negotiation leverage. While violence might isolate Palestinians on the world stage, the dramatic and attention-grabbing nature of violent attacks helps to bolster Hamas’ standing on the Palestinian street, where they are seen to be the ones doing something—anything—to fight for the Palestinian cause.

Beyond this, peaceful protests have often been met with heavy-handed responses from Israeli security forces—such as with the Great March of Return in 2018. This suppression not only risks the lives and well-being of protestors and also discourages participation from the broader population. Violent elements including Hamas have also infiltrated these movements, and turned efforts at peaceful protest into acts of aggression.

The ongoing occupation, the blockade of Gaza, and settlement expansions in the West Bank underpin a sense of desperation and frustration among Palestinians. As Frantz Fanon suggested in his anti-colonialist opus The Wretched of the Earth, violence sometimes can be viewed as a cathartic force and as a response to the systemic violence inflicted upon an occupied people by a process of colonization or military occupation, and thus as a means for an occupied or colonized people to reclaim their humanity and agency.

Additionally, Palestinian nonviolent campaigns have been blighted by the same tendency for maximalist demands as Hamas’ violent campaigns. The Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for example opposes Palestinians having dialogue with Israelis, in what they call “anti-normalization,” and makes maximalist demands about the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to Israel. By making maximalist demands that are never going to be met in a negotiation, nonviolent campaigns can doom themselves to failure through the perception that these demands are not serious or in good faith.

After this war, we must call for a new approach rooted in realism, a renewed commitment to coexistence, and the willingness for both sides to compromise. Both Israelis and Palestinians need to abandon maximalist demands and delegitimization to focus on pragmatic solutions, accepting the fact that neither side is going to disappear, or push one or the other into the sea.

Israelis and Palestinians must both accept that maximalist positions—whether it’s the complete destruction of Israel as a state or the denial of Palestinian statehood —are unattainable, implausible, and only perpetuate the cycle of violence, hatred, and trauma. Moving beyond this demands a culture of coexistence, where both Israelis and Palestinians acknowledge each other’s right to live in peace and security. Education and public discourse—on both sides—must emphasize mutual respect, understanding, and the historical and emotional ties that both groups have to the land.

The focus must shift back to negotiating a pragmatic compromise that can satisfy the core needs of both sides. Palestinians and Israelis need to prepare to head back to the negotiating table and work out our differences. This involves working towards establishing a Palestinian state with agreed borders, preventing the takeover of this state by terrorist groups like Hamas. We need to establish a consensus on Jerusalem’s status, refugee rights, and an end to settlement expansion. On the Palestinian side, trust was lost in previous peace efforts due to settlement expansion. On the Israeli side, trust was lost due to continued violence, leading to a lack of faith in Palestinian leadership’s ability to control extremism and provide security.

The international community, including regional powers and global organizations, must play a constructive role in mediating and supporting this process. This includes ensuring that any agreements reached are respected and providing economic and political support for peace initiatives. This pathway to peace is undoubtedly challenging and requires courage, vision, and perseverance. But it’s the only way toward a future in which two peoples can live side by side in peace, dignity, and safety.

[wesleysniperking]

Strawhats’ Band AU

- The Strawhats’ sound is akin to Beirut and Broken Social Scene.

Band Members and Instruments:

- Usopp: Bass guitar. (Engineer and Songwriter/Lyricist)

- Luffy: Lead singer.

- Nami: Keyboardist/pianist/synth player.

- Zoro: Drummer.

- Sanji: Trombonist. (Might play other hard-a** brass instruments). (Lyricist/SW)

- Chopper: Maracas, Tamborine, and instruments similar to those. (He can play the Kalimba and idiophone type).

- Robin: Harp. (Can play the Theremin too).

- Franky: Electric guitar. (Engineer)

- Jinbe: Percussion line.

- Brook: Violinist. (Composer)

Nami: Keyboard/piano prodigy exploited by corrupt talent scout Arlong. She tried to sue him for damages after her adopted mom passed away. She had a breakdown but returned to music with Luffy’s help.

Zoro: Dedicated and talented drummer with a slight drinking problem. His playing style is swift, intense, and controlled. Learned to play in the same style as a late friend.

Sanji: Talented trombonist who left a philharmonic orchestra due to politics and personal reasons.

Luffy: Former member of the marine band, sent there by his grandpa after attending military/marine school but managed to escape.

Usopp: Music college dropout who is haunted by his famous father, whom he never knew. His girlfriend passed away from cancer. He had posted YouTube covers and gained a following. His late mother was an indie artist who never achieved widespread success. It is uncertain whether she was a groupie.

(all EB5 were homeless or broke at one point before meeting).

Both Robin and Nami have had experiences similar to Kesha, involving exploitation in the music industry.

Usopp’s dad, Yasopp or “Chaser”, is a famous bassist, ranked as one of the best of all time by Rolling Stone.

Shanks or “Red Hair” is Luffy’s mentor. He is the famous lead singer of a Grammy award-winning band.

Red Hair Pirates - They are a famous Grammy award-winning band with a sound similar to War, King Harvest, Dire Straits, and Guns N’ Roses, depending on the era.

Usopp and the band have a falling out when they alter their sound and remove a fan-favorite song, "Merry," from the setlist.

Usopp leaves the band after a public feud with Franky and Luffy’s decision to remove "Merry" from the Water 7 music festival setlist, which is akin to Coachella or Lollapalooza.

Sabaody Groove Fest: This festival is similar to the controversial Warped Tour, with various allegations surrounding it.

Usopp modified Nami’s keyboard to have unique synth sounds, similar to the Climatact.

“Merry” was believed to be an ex of Usopp’s, but it’s revealed that the song personifies the band’s journey and dream towards success. The band is surprised by this revelation.

- Franky writes a successful song called “Sunny” that charts well, but fans believe "Merry" will become a classic.

Each bandmate will receive honorifics and titles in their 40s or 50s. Usopp will be ranked #1 or #2 on the best rock bassists of all time list, surpassing his dad.

Usopp also creates a musical collective with other Black artists, developing a following of 8,000+ fans.

The band’s (Strawhats) fandom name is Nakama or Sailors

- When not singing, Luffy plays the cymbals, fooling around when he’s not leading the vocals.

- Usopp returns at the Water 7 festival as Sogeking, playing a crucial bass solo riff, symbolizing his readiness to rejoin the band. Luffy pulls him on stage to finish the song with a cool bass riff.

The Strawhats might decide to make a political statement during a performance, similar to when Luffy told Usopp to shoot the flag in the show. This could involve revealing an anti-government poster or banner, which could then go viral. Alternatively, they might do something in support of Robin, who is in a dispute with her former record label.

I have a dirty little secret. I wrote a song about Merry to accompany the fic idea. It’s a little cringe but I recorded it and everything. I might share it one day. Lol!

This is what I mean by the band’s sound…

They’d pull something like this in public.

BSS lyrics are pretty raw and bombastic in a way I feel like the SHs would be.

Music video is basically about pirates (???) and it reminds me of one of Luffy’s moves.

[southernsolarpunk]

Hey check this out

I was making a zine (solarpunk ofc) and decided to use a bunch of old National Geographic magazines to cut up and use in a scrappy diy scrapbook fashion and of course I started reading them. This one in particular:

It caught my eye because it’s from September 1980 & talks about the Middle East. My brain wonders if they mention Palestine and they do! I copied the text for accessibility, but I put pictures at the end of the original pages.

“Jerusalem: reunited or occupied? The question has divided the city's 400,000 Jews and 100,000 Arabs since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967.

BEIRUT, JANUARY 1975. Armed soldiers lead me through labyrinthine back streets, up a dark stairway to a midnight rendez-vous. Only a bare bulb lights the temporary command post; Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, seldom dares spend two days in the same place. “Our argument is not with the Jews” He tells me. "We are both Semites. They have lived with us for centuries. Our enemies are the Zionist colonizers and their backers who insist Palestine belongs to them exclusively.

We Arabs claim deep roots there too."

Two decades ago Palestinians were to be found in United Nations Relief Agency camps at places like Gaza and Jericho, in a forlorn and pitiable state. While Palestinian spokesmen pressed their case in world cap-itals, the loudest voice the world heard was that of terrorists, with whom the word Palestinian came to be associated. Jordan fought a war to curb them. The disintegration of Lebanon was due in part to the thousands of refugees within its borders.

Prospects for peace brightened, however, when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, most powerful of the Arab countries, made his historic trip to Israel in November 1977. A year later Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David accords, a framework for the return of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

The former enemies established diplomatic relations and opened mail, telephone, and airline communications.

The Camp David accords also addressed the all-important Palestinian question but left it vague. Sadat insists that any lasting peace depends on an eventual Palestinian homeland in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel agrees to limited autonomy for those regions, but, fearful of a new and hostile Palestinian state suddenly planted on its borders, insists that Israeli troops must maintain security there.

Crowded Rashidiyah refugee camp, set among orange groves south of the ancient Phoenician port of Tyre in Lebanon, lies on the front lines. Frequent pounding by Israeli military jets and warships seeking PLO targets has war-hardened its population, some 13,700 Palestinians.

At the schoolyard I watched a solemn flag raising. Uniformed ashbal, or lion cubs, stood rigid as color guards briskly ran up the green-white-and-black Palestinian flag.

Ranging in age from 8 to 12, they might have been Cub Scouts— except for the loaded rifles they held at present arms. Behind them stood two rows of girls, zaharat, or little flowers. Same age, same weapons.

Over lunch of flat bread, hummus, yo-gurt, and chicken I commented to my hosts, a group of combat-ready fedayeen, that 30 years of bitter war had settled nothing nor gained the Palestinians one inch of their homeland. Was there no peaceful way to press their cause?

"Yes, and we are doing it. Finally, after 30 years, most countries in the United Nations recognize that we too have rights in Palestine. But we feel that until your country stops its unconditional aid to Israel, we have two choices: to fight, or to face an unmarked grave in exile."

AFTER CROSSING the Allenby Bridge from Amman, I drove across the fertile Jordan Valley through Arab Jericho and past some of the controversial new Jewish settlements: Mitzpe Jericho, Tomer, Maale Adumim, Shilat. Then as I climbed through the steep stony hills to Jerusalem, I saw that it too had changed. A ring of high-rise apartments and offices was growing inexorably around the occupied Arab side of the walled town. Within the wall, too, scores of Arab houses had been leveled during extensive reconstruction.

"Already 64 settlements have been built on the West Bank," said a Christian Palestinian agriculturist working for an American church group in Jerusalem. "And another 10 are planned," he said. Unfolding a copy of the master plan prepared in 1978 by the World Zionist Organization, he read: "Real-izing our right to Eretz-Israel... with or without peace, we will have to learn to live with the minorities...

The Israeli Government has reaffirmed the policy. In Prime Minister Menachem Begin's words: "Settlement is an inherent and inalienable right. It is an integral part of our national security."

"Security" is a word deeply etched into the Israeli psyche. The country has lived for 30 years as an armed camp, always on guard against PLO raids and terrorist bombings.

Whenever such incidents occur, the response is quick: even greater retaliation.

In Jerusalem I met with David Eppel, an English-language broadcaster for the Voice of Israel. "We must continue to build this country. Israel is our lawful home, our des-tiny. We have the determination, and an immense pool of talent, to see it through." His cosmopolitan friends a city plan-ner, a psychology professor, an author gathered for coffee and conversation at David's modern apartment on Jerusalem's Leib Yaffe Road.

Amia Lieblich's book, Tin Soldiers on Jerusalem Beach, studies the debilitating effects almost constant war has had on life in the Jewish state, a nation still surrounded by enemies. As she and her husband kindly drove me to my hotel in Arab Jerusalem afterward, some of that national apprehension surfaced in the writer herself.

"We don't often come over to this part of town," she said. "Especially at night."

I DROVE OUT of the Old City in the dark of morning and arrived a few hours later at the nearly finished Israeli frontier post, whence a shuttle bus bounced me through no-man's-land to the Egyptian ter-minal. As a result of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, it was possible for the first time since 1948 to travel overland from Jerusalem to Cairo. An Egyptian customs man opened my bags on a card table set up in the sand. I took a battered taxi into nearby El Arish, to a sleepy bank that took 45 minutes to convert dollars into Egyptian pounds, Then 1 hired a Mercedes for the

200-mile run across the northern Sinai des-ert, the Suez Canal, and the Nile Delta. By sundown Cairo was mine.

Despite official government optimism, I found many in Cairo worried that President Sadat's bold diplomatic gestures might fail.

The city was noticeably tense as Israel officially opened its new embassy on Mohi el-Din Abu el-Ez Street in Cairo's Dukki quarter. Black-uniformed Egyptian troops guarded the chancery and nearby intersections as the Star of David flew for the first time in an Arab capital. Across town, police with fixed bayonets were posted every ten feet around the American Embassy. Others were posted at the TV station and the larger hotels. Protests were scattered, mostly peaceful. None disturbed the cadence of the city.

Welcoming ever larger delegations of tourists and businessmen from Europe and the U.S., Cairo was busier than ever-and more crowded. Despite a building boom, many Egyptians migrating from the countryside, perhaps 10,000 a month, still find housing only by squatting among tombs at the City of the Dead, the huge old cemetery on the southeast side of the capital.

Even with the new elevated highway and wider bridge across the Nile, half-hour traffic standstills are common. Commuters arrive at Ramses Station riding even the roofs of trains, then cram buses until axles break.

Cairo smog, a corrosive blend of diesel fumes and hot dust from surrounding des-erts, rivals tear gas.

Despite the rampant blessings of prog-ress, Cairo can still charm. In the medieval Khan el-Khalili bazaar near Cairo's thousand-year-old Al-Azhar University, I sought out Ahmad Saadullah's sidewalk café. I found that 30 piasters (45 cents) still brings hot tea, a tall water pipe primed with tobacco and glowing charcoal, and the latest gossip. The turbaned gentleman on the carpeted bench opposite was unusually talk-ative; we dispensed with weather and the high cost of living and got right to politics:

"Of course I am behind President Sadat, but he is taking a great risk. The Israelis have not fully responded. If Sadat fails, no other Arab leader will dare try for peace again for a generation."

Across town at the weekly Akhbar El-Yom newspaper, one of the largest and most widely read in the Middle East, chief editor Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Ghani drove home that same point.

"What worries me most is that President Sadat's agreement with Israel has isolated Egypt from our brother nations," he told me. "When Saudi Arabia broke with us, it was a heavy loss. The Saudis are our close neighbors. Now they have canceled pledges for hundreds of millions in development aid to Egypt. Some 200,000 Egyptians-teach-ers, doctors, engineers live and work in the kingdom.

"And Saudi Arabia, guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, remains for Muslim Egypt a spiritual homeland."

This magazine was published before my mom was born, and yet the sentiments have basically unchanged. An interesting look at the past, and more proof this didn’t start October 7th. (But imagine my followers already knew that)

[theangelicimp]

Waiting For the Right Time

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Summary: Imagine that Bucky Barnes has a huge little crush on you. Now imagine that he's not the only one who thinks that way.

Word Count: 1,082

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Black!GN!reader

Warnings: None, just Bucky getting jealous and slightly possessive, mostly fluff. Reader attracts attention from all across the gender spectrum, and is stated to have powers. No Y/N, we don’t do that here. Ambiguous ending ahead!

AO3: here

Bucky’s got a problem, and for once it has nothing to do with his past.

It’s you and the way the sunlight bounces off your brown skin to make it shine. It’s you and the way your smile makes his heart do backflips. It’s you and the way your deep brown eyes look at him with nothing but admiration and care.

Bucky loves you, and he is not ready to do anything about it.

He knows, logically, that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him if he were to confess. You damn near killed yourself trying to save him during a mission in Beirut, when a mercenary lobbed a bomb his way. You plucked it from the air and flew off with it, wrapping yourself in a blue shield just as it went off – you got a nasty scar, and it makes his chest hurt every time he thinks about it. You smile to reassure him when he stares and tell him that it gives you a cool story to tell at family reunions. Worst case scenario, you would let him down gently and ask to remain friends. Even still, the worst-case scenario was apocalyptic to Bucky.

If he were going to confess, he needed to be absolutely sure that you would love him back. That was how things were, and that’s how it was going to stay until Bucky finally found the right time to confess.

Too bad the rest of the world didn’t get the memo to play along with his pining.

You got flowers the morning of June 26; Bucky remembered the exact day because his world came to a screeching halt when he read the note attached to them.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, Know what’s on the menu? Me ‘n’ U~<3 From, Your Secret Admirer”

Bucky should’ve thrown the flowers away as soon as he saw them, should have stomped on them, thrown them in an incinerator, anything to make sure you didn’t see them. People sent you flowers all the time, and you never cared what anyone did to them – you like to joke that you had the opposite of a green thumb.

But he didn’t. He froze, and you came trudging out of your bedroom, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, wondering why Bucky spent so long outside your door without knocking.

“Aww, corny but sweet,” you cooed sleepily when you read the note. Bucky’s heart squeezed when you said that, and not in a good way. “Any chance these are from you?”

“No. No, they’re not.” Bucky grits out. If he sent you flowers with a note, he would be pouring his heart and soul into the card, not leaving a shitty pickup line.

“Wonder who it is then,” you yawned as you breezed by him.

Bucky spent the day tracking down the secret admirer. It was a random SHIELD agent, lower in the hierarchy, and too cocky for his own good. It only took a single visit from the former Winter Solider to get the agent to back off. Unfortunately, that agent wasn’t the last to pursue you.

When you went for your morning runs, a woman would join you every morning at exactly the halfway mark. She asked you if you wanted to go to the botanical gardens with her; Bucky showed up and pretended that there was a mission at the same time that would have happened. Thank god there actually was a mission to back him up.

When you thwarted a bioterrorist’s attempts to clear out the “undesirables,” you rescued a civilian from falling rubble with a well-timed shield. They offered to make lunch or dinner to repay you for saving them; Bucky waited till your back was turned to tell them that the Avengers didn’t accept food from strangers. Standard procedure and all that. There technically was no such procedure, but it was just common sense not to eat anything made by a stranger, right.

When Tony threw another one of his notorious parties, you were approached by a random well-to-do bachelor. He fancied himself an art aficionado and invited you to a personal showing of a rare Basquiat painting. When you left to get more champagne, Bucky got Sam to distract the man before you could give him an answer. Sam was sworn to secrecy, of course, Bucky would rather you didn’t see this side of him.

“How long are you gonna keep this up, man?” Sam groaned when he came back to the table.

“Keep what up?” Bucky kept his eyes trained on you, your enchanting laugh reaching his ears even through all the blaring music and cacophony of voices.

“This!” Sam gestured at you and Bucky. “It would just be easier to confess at this point. You can’t scare off everyone that goes near them forever.”

He gave Sam a deadpan glare. “I can and I will.”

“You would have to keep an eye on them all the time at that point, you’d basically be stalking them at that point.”

“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”

“Wait-“

“There’s cafe across the street from their apartment, could probably stake out there.”

“Bucky-“

“You think I could get those little spy cameras from Tony’s lab without him noticing?”

“No! You need to say something to them before someone else asks them out and they say yes.”

“’S not the right time.”

“Man, someone else is gonna snatch them up while you’re busy waiting for the right time!” Bucky left before Sam could finish talking; another woman had sidled up your table.

As much as he hated to say it Sam was right.

Bucky hated this; the constant vigilance of chasing away would-be suitors, the way his heart squeezed every time he saw you smile at someone that wasn’t him, the fear that you would pick someone else before he could show you how much he loved you.

So on a cold November 12th, Bucky woke up earlier than everyone else in the tower to finally enact his plan. He went to the only shop open in Brooklyn for a fruit bouquet – filled with all the fruit he knew you liked and drizzled with chocolate. He dressed in the outfit Steve had helped him with – something casual, but made to impress. He put on your favorite playlist – Etta James, and Al Green, and Aretha Franklin.

With everything in place and his nerves at an all-time high, Bucky took a deep breath and knocked on your door.

Original A/N: Little something I thought up that I had to get out before I forgot or something, hope y'all enjoy! It was inspired by another post that I haven't been able to find, but it takes place in the 40s right before Bucky is shipped out to the warfront. If anyone can find it please let me know!