#palestine will be free no matter how long it takes. I just wish it happened sooner so that there didn't have to be so much suffering

[sleep-y-bones]

it just feels like we're all living in some backwards unreal world, the way we're supposed to believe it's correct or normal to sit back and let genocide happen. over and over we're constantly seeing the cruelest things being done by israel to palestinians. then I walk in while my stepdad watches tv and the people on the news are like "the nypd was called to a college campus to save all of the poor little zionists who go there from reading signs saying genocide is wrong 🙏 thank god" and I just feel like I'm losing my fucking mind!!

[legalkimchi]

Please learn more than just a Phrase.

I don't expect people to be subject matter experts on issues of global politics.

But false equivalency is rampant in online discourse regarding three major conflicts in the world today. I am using the word conflict in this post, however, when applicable, i will use other words to describe specifics. (Nuance folks... it's a thing)

So i start off with an assumption that most people don't understand the basics of most international events. As an american, i only know some of the stuff that is happening within my own nation. This is not an insult to you, dear reader. Rather, it is a position we all must realize we are in. You do not understand most world issues.

You just don't.

you aren't there. it isn't your life. you don't have the academic background.

I saw a post recently calling for "freedom for Palestine, Sudan, and Congo."

And it bothered me. Not because i am opposed to peace, (how is asking for ceasefire a bad thing?) but rather because i believe simplifying the conflicts with this wording showcases the ignorance of the differences.

Not all conflicts are the same.

In palestine, we have a convoluted mess where two groups claim a territory as home. getting into the in-depth story of this conflict takes time. Foundational elements of it take place thousands of years ago, but the conflict itself is only about 75 years old. So it is a long and short story. Currently, the sovereign state of Israel is engaging in a genocide in Gaza. Asking for freedom for palestinians makes sense. they live in an apartheid state and would like a state of their own. they wish to be free of occupation. you can argue with the details, be pro-israel, or whatever, but that is the basic ask of palestinians. (if you want to get into anti-semetic regional sentiment or the desire of certain groups to eradicate the israeli jewish population or Israel as a nation that's a different topic, not the point of what i'm talking about.)

In the Congo and Sudan, it is a different story.

Let's start with the Congo. First of all, Which Congo?

Let's please understand that there is the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Republic of the Congo is a former french colony. Then there is Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some of us might remember this country as Zaire.

the DRC is the congo we are talking about in the news. This was a former belgian colony and the atrocities committed by the belgians there rival any genocide in human history. i've seen estimates between 5 million and 20 million deaths. some estimates state the population of native congolese were cut in HALF. since the turbulent start of the country after their independence in 1960, the country knew relative peace until the 1990s. Then a mixture of a weak central government and the Rwandan Civil war (which had it's own genocide you may have heard about) spilled over into what was then Zaire. Zaire dissolved, and the DRC took it's place, But the wars have been raging off an on since then. earlier this year, more civil war violence erupted AGAIN. This displaced millions, AGAIN. while the DRC is a bit of an autocratic and repressive regime, the rebel groups are groups with ties with the Rwandan government and the other group with ties to Isis. It's awful all the way down.

Sudan has had an ongoing civil war for over 20 years. I remember this because i helped lead some anti-genocide protests regarding Darfur when i was in college 20 years ago. I've been following this conflict for nearly my entire adult life. you may have heard about this with regards to the Save Darfur coalition regarding the genocide in Darfur. Well, that genocide has continued (albeit with less intensity) for 20 years. the civil war lasted until 2021, but restarted in a different form in late 2023. the conflict is now between two different sides of the military government fighting each other.

It is an awful conflict full of awful leaders. Sudan's government suffered a revolution in 2019 from a dictator, only to have that government overthrown in a coup by the current dictator. The Sudanese military is supported by folks like Russia and North Korea. you might see that among the other countries that support sudan, bunch of communist countries, and you might think "hey, maybe al-Burhan is a leftist".

no... no he is not.

He is a military despot. He has no ties to any real ideology. He just runs sudan as a military dictator.

So who is opposing him?

The Rapid Support Forces. and you may be thinking "ok, so they are the good guys? trying to overthrow the dictator?"

No... They are the ones that instigated the Genocide in Darfur.

This is a situation is "no matter who wins, the people of Sudan lose."

So when folks claim these are all the same. Or wonder why folks talk about one and not the other.

there are reasons. These are very different conflicts. Please learn about them. It matters more than spouting some 4 word slogan calling for "freedom."

Find out what the people of these areas actually need. Learn more about what is happening. My description above is incomplete. I may even get some things wrong. I am trying to keep informed, but I am not an expert, nor do i live there. Raise voices from the region and find out if there are ways to help.

[because--palestine]

In our lifetime

We will be free

One day when the light shines

We will be free

In our lifetime

We will be free

And they can bury us

But they will find out we are seeds

I say Free Falasteen

Because I know of every massacre we suffered

The Nakba, Sabra,

Shatila and Rafah

My people have died a million times

In this struggle

Still they rise from the tide

Like a rose through the rubble

I see God himself

In the eye of a refugee

Who’d rather die a martyr

Than live a life under siege

So if I’m not allowed to say

“From the River to the Sea

Then “From the rind to the seed

Palestine will be free”

Still they know they can’t shake us

Billion dollar sword to the neck

Death cannot break us

And every Palestinian refugee

Holds a key

One day we will return

No matter how long it takes us

In our lifetime

We will be free

One day when the light shines

We will be free

In our lifetime

We will be free

And they can bury us

But they will find out we are seeds

They can bury us

But they will find out we are seeds

I’ve seen massacres

I’m grateful to be alive

You appreciate life

When you survive a genocide

Look in my eyes

And tell me what you see

Ran out of tears to cry

Rap till Palestine is free

Got a problem with a system

That doesn’t want us existing

Turn a city to a prison

That’s missing living conditions

My moms calling

She’s telling me she’s kinda scared

I hear the bombs falling

I smell the death up in the air

My uncle lost his children

I lost my cousins

As tears water the grave

To let him he still loves em

Our schools turn to shelters

For the rich and poor

I just pray for peace

When I speak I don’t wish for war

Bodies laying out

Ain’t nothing to play about

I give the people hope

Cause I’m the first who made it out

I’m just walking the path

This is gods plan

Building up my dreams

From the rubble I touched with my hands

في حياتنا

منكون حرين

يلمع النور

ومنكون حرين

في حياتنا

منكون حرين

لو دفنونا

منرجع مزهرين

لو دفنونا

منرجع مزهرين

They done woke up the world now

We know who you serve at the White House

To kids in Gaza

my vow

right now

I’ma ride for your life like you were my child

Long live the resistance if there’s something to resist

Had enough of you motherfuckers murdering little kids

PC for a minute I was trying to be a bridge

But they’ll never be freedom

by pleading with Zionists

World screaming free Palestine

We see the Manual we know how you colonized

You’d be surprised

By how many fucks you actually really don’t give

When you take away the power

Of the all mighty dollar sign

Fuck the allure

We’ll boycott the stores

Capitalism killing us

That’s something we can’t afford

They want us to hate each other

in the interest of war

Afraid of the mosque

And afraid to light the menorah

Hey Kamala

I don’t know if you’re listening

But stop sending

Money and weapons

Or you ain’t winning Michigan

We uncommitted

And hell no we ain’t switching positions

Because the whole world

Turned Palestinian

I see the murdered children of Gaza

And I see my babies

Life being stripped from the bombs were making

When will congress decide

a Palestinians life

Is just as precious

as an Israelis

We don’t own the earth

Don’t own the earth

We killing each other

Over some lines in the dirt

We bleed the same blood

Feel the same hurt

Palestinian life

Does it have the same worth?

What happened to us

منكون حرين

يلمع النور

ومنكون حرين

في حياتنا

منكون حرين

لو دفنونا

منرجع مزهرين

[khyiratw]

Hello I'm zalka Yusuf citizen of Palestine , leukemia patient, I am requesting for your sincere donation to help me seek medication in Egypt. I should get some blood transfusions and grab some drugs .Any donation you make will have a great positive impact in my life.No matter how liitle . Feel free to donate and share I know this is a really big favour I'm bringing unto you...today I received information that the doctor who was to attend to me sent a message that he will do my bone marrow transplant.......in Germany 8 days from today......and I should be in Germany 3 days before so that I adapt to climate.....my relocation to Germany cost 500dollars .......please help me out as much as you can...please talk to even some of your friends please...if I miss it ....I won't survive please DONATION LINK IS AVAILABLE ON MY PIN POST 🙏

While I unfortunately don't have the means to donate myself, I will absolutely take this opportunity to signal boost for you!

Sincerely, to anyone in my following reading this or anyone else who happens to see this post, please donate to Zalka if you can. Even if all you can give is just a dollar or two, that can make such a huge difference in the long run. When those small donations stack up quickly, they can meet goals like this quicker than you'd think. That dollar or two you donate today could save a life, so I truly can't stress enough how important your donation will be.

I'll leave the link to her pinned post with her donation link below for those who can donate.

Signal boosting stuff aside, I truly wish you nothing but the best in reaching your donation goal and I hope that the procedure goes well! 💜🙏

[arathergrimreaper]

To everyone saying this is going to 'give the right more power to do what they will'...

you realize they were going to anyway right? Like, you know this shit is inevitable? Right? You do know, don't you? What we're headed for? The same thing as everyone else. It's not a good thing, no, but we (The United States) need to stop seeing ourselves as "too good" for things like that to happen here. That's why we say "Free Palestine" that's why we root for Hong Kong and Sudan, and Haiti, and everywhere where the people are fighting loudly against the powers that bind and subjugate them.

Because it can (and is and will) happen here. It has before and no matter what we do, it will again. Every student of history knows this. I hate making real shit about fiction, but I don't know what else will reach some of you boneheads: It's like when Frodo tells Gandalf he wishes all the shit with Sauron wasn't happening in his time. Then Gandalf tells him, so does everyone. Cowboy tf up anyway bc it's here and it's happening no matter what we wish.

I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you get it.

We are headed toward something and it will not stop, just because we will it to. Even with voting, how long before a coup happens? Before there are more fascistic supporters to enforce the decisions that hurt everyone rather than stand against them? How long? Fours years? A year? A month? We don't know but it will take action to survive it. Sometimes violent action. And people will die, sometimes even by choice. All we can do is prepare and remember who we are even when we are forced into a corner and there is nowhere left to run or to hide.

[nickyhemmick]

A Very Stressed American Jew here again,

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to respond to my ask and yes, I’m someone who loves hearing as many perspectives as possible so I’d love some sources from you. I also very much appreciate the fact you are being very careful to only reblog posts that are anti Israel, not antisemetic (which is frankly a breath of fresh air, the internet has been a bit exhaustingly full of both antisemitic & Islamaphobic content these past feel days as I bet you’ve seen)

I’ve also been to Israel on a Birthright trip. We met people who ( both Palestinian and Israeli) on various sides of the conflict and learned a ton about it, from both perspectives which I was lucky to have the opportunity to do. We even went a little into the Gaza Strip to talk to these people running a pro Palestine peace movement and it was so important to me hearing those stories.

I never said they were on equal footing militarily, they definitely are not, Israel definitely has that advantage. But you are incorrect about Israel always being the aggressor since 1948,they’ve defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Isreal is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack.

I 100% agree that there are too many people who are compliant with the mistreatment of many Palestinians! I’m not anti #freepalestine at all! I get why that is a thing. But I also stand with Israel( but that does not mean I condone every action they take. ) Overall I think the situation is extremely complicated and some sort of compromise should be reached.

It’s just been very frustrating to see so many people reblog things on a situation just bashing Israel because so many others are doing it. Especially when then don’t know what they are talking about or using big buzz words that they don’t know what they mean, or spreading misinformation. It’s been on both sides and has been very very draining. I just want peace and some sort of solution. It makes me extremely happy you know what you are talking about and can debate politely yet happily about it. The internet has been so ‘ either agree with me 100% or you a bad person’ about this so it’s refreshing to see you are not like that.

I’ve done a lot of research into it from as many perspectives as I can get my hands on.

Some extremest Israelis are hurting Palestinians

Some extremest Palestinians are hurting Israelis

Both sides are throwing rockets at each other and it’s terrifying.

Both sides claim the other side is brainwashed

There is so much biased propaganda out there on both ends it’s hard to know what is truly happening.

I know people living in Israel who have sent me videos they’ve taken of rockets flying over there heads and I’m so scared for them. I’m so scared for all the innocent people caught in the crossfire on both sides.

Thank you for a more nuanced response and I’d love some of your sources,

A Very Stressed American Jew

Hi anon, 

I wasn’t going to respond to this until after my math final tomorrow but I’ve spent the past two days thinking of your ask and the things I wish to articulate in my answer. 

I am going to start here: how can you say you support Israel but say you are also pro-free Palestine (as in, you said you are not anti free Palestine). In my opinion, these two ideas cannot coexist. Simply because, the entire establishment of Israel has been on violent, racist, colonial grounds. 

(Super long post under here guys)

You said you don’t support all Israel’s actions, and definitely, just because you support something doesn’t mean you can’t criticize it. However, in my opinion, if you do not support Israel’s actions against Palestinians there’s not much left to support? I admit this is a very biased view as I am Palestinian, but many things that people support about Israel have existed before its creation: as in, these are things and qualities that have existed in Judaism and are not due to “Israeli culture.” There is no Israeli culture. There’s Jewish culture--100%. But there is no Israeli culture, because Israel does not only steal Palestinian land, but Palestinian culture, too. Such as claiming Levant food is Israeli; hummus, ful, falafel, shawarma. I mentioned food from this article I know is culturally and traditionally of the Levant, and has been for centuries, it is not something that has come to culinary creation in the past 73 years. 

I do not think this is a complicated issue. I said that in the previous ask and I’ll say that again. Saying it is a complicated issue is trivializing the deaths of innocent Palestinians, the violent dispossession our ancestors endured, and the apartheid they live under. I hope if anything comes from this discussion it is you removing the “it’s a complicated issue” phrase from your vernacular. 

This is not complicated. A journalist reporting the death of martyrs only to discover that of them include two of his brothers is not complicated. The asymmetry of Israel vs Palestinian armed forces is not complicated, nor is the asymmetry in Israeli vs Palestinian suffering (which I will get to later). It is not complicated.  Destroying the graves of martyred Palestinians (or just in general, the graves of the dead) is not complicated. Little children being pulled from the rubble, children being forced to comfort one another as they are covered in the ashes of their decimated homes, attacking unarmed citizens in peaceful demonstrations (you can find videos before this attack where they were playing with kites and balloons), destroying an international media office and refusing to allow journalists to retrieve the work they are spending every waking hour documenting but claiming it was because it was a hide out for a “Hamas base,” fathers who are trying to cheer their frightened children up only to end up dead the next day, while many Israeli have the privilege and the option to go to hotel-like bomb shelters is not complicated. 

This brings me to my next point: the suffering of Palestinians cannot be compared to the inconvenience of Israeli’s. On one side, you have children who are happy to have saved their fish in the face of their homes and lives being decimated behind them to Israeli’s in Tel Aviv having to cut their beach day short to get to bomb shelters. You have mothers and fathers ready to set their lives down for their children to save them from bombs to Israeli’s enjoying their brunch only after making sure there are bomb shelters there. You have Palestinian children being murdered to blocking out the sound of sirens in the safety of your bomb shelters. (The first picture of the Palestinian child is not from footage of the recent problems). You have the baby lone survivor of a whole family recovered from rubble. His whole family, gone, before he ever had the chance to realize that he even exists, while Israeli’s decide to flee out of the country,(Translate the caption from Twitter, it checks out), or have to leave the shower due to sirens. Who is really suffering? 

I won’t sit here and pretend like the thought of rockets flying over my head, no matter which side I am on, is not terrifying. It is. It’s scary to just think about. But Israeli’s have protection beyond Palestinian’s, they have sirens to warn them (Israel does not always warn Palestinian building members that it is about to be bombed), they have the Iron Dome, they have simply the threat of nuclear power (which I am not saying Israel would use, but the simple fact they have it would make me feel a lot better if I were an Israeli citizen) and they have bomb shelters. What do Palestinians have? Hamas? That smuggles its weapons through the ocean? That only ever reacts to the action Israel instigates? And yet Gazans are branded terrorists and that it is their fault that they “elected” a terrorist organization that only was ever created due to no protection from any armed country? (There are so many links I want to add in this paragraph but it is simply impossible for me to add everything I want, a lot of what I’m referring to can either be found through a Google search, or you can stalk my Twitter account, all that I am posting now is about Palestine, and will include sources of things I cannot add in just this one post.) 

Look, I see myself in the genocide happening in Palestine right now. I see myself in this ten year-old girl. In this three year old girl. I see me and my family in videos of cars being attacked in Ramallah and Sheikh Jarrah (I cannot find the Ramallah video, should be somewhere on my Twitter), I see my father in the countless videos of fathers crying out for their children, of kissing the corpse of their loved ones (again, translate the Tweet, the man holding the body is saying “just one kiss”). I see my grandfather in videos like this (old footage). I see my younger brother, I see my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins. I see myself and my life and my family were my father not lucky enough to get a scholarship to the UK and out of Palestine, were my maternal grandfather not been lucky enough to make it to a refugee camp and build a life in Jordan. I have an unbelievable amount of privilege to be born into the life I was born in to, in terms of I do not have the threat of bombs and violent dispossession around me, and I do not even live in the US. I have privilege and sheer luck that my parents were able to go to the US so that me and my brothers can be born, because now I have both the protection of the most powerful country in the world while at the same time being part of a people to have suffered so generously the past seventy-three years. 

On the other hand, you saying that Israel has “defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Israel is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack,” I offer you this question: why are they using military grade guns and stun grenades in mosques to “defend” themselves from rocks? And before you mention that Hamas hit Tel Aviv, I remind you that Hamas did that due to the violence in the Al-Aqsa mosque square and the attempted ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. The violence didn’t begin with us; the violence was brought out of Palestinians in resistance to the generations of oppression we have endured and the attack on Palestinian Muslims during the holiest night of Ramadan. Hamas has since asked for a ceasefire multiple times and Israel is refusing. New reports say there is a possibility of a ceasefire in the coming days, but Israel could have decided this a long time ago and spared many lives. (Remember, no matter what resistance we make, Israel is the one in power).

Israel has been the aggressor since 1948. Just read up about the Nakba! 700k Palestinian families were dispossessed violently. The only reason Israel was established at all was because it simply declared it was now a country and the US and many other countries recognized it as such. (Of course, there are many other historical details here, like the British Mandate of Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords and many others. I am aware of them but these are for a different post all together). My paternal grandfather was a little younger than me when Israel as a state was created. The hostility that followed was due to this independent declaration being listened to over Palestinian voices. 

Here is a very, very simplified analogy, one that can also answer some people’s questions as to why Palestinians (not Arabs, we are Palestinian before we are Arab) did not like what happened in 1948 and why they refused a two-state solution (that Israel was never going to go through with anyway). (I am also aware other Arab nations got involved, and that is perhaps what you mean when you said they had to defend themselves, but my response to that would still be we didn't start it, that we only responded to it).

Let’s say you are a farmer. You have many fields of trees, ones you have taken shelter under from the sun since you were a child, or hid behind when you wanted to avoid your parents when you misbehaved. You have seen your trees grow from a seed, to a sprout, to a flower, to a large, beautiful tree with fruits the size of a fist. You pluck the fruits from one tree, and make a jam from it. I don’t know how to make jam but I know it takes a lot of energy. So, you make this jam and from it, produce a lovely, mouth-watering pie. Once it has cooled from the oven, you take it with you outside your balcony just so that you can admire the years, months, weeks and hours this one pie has taken to be created. Suddenly, a stranger walks past and yells to you, “That pie looks delicious, I want it!” And you, shocked at their boldness but ready to share, say, “I will give you a bite.” But the stranger says, “No! I do not want a bite or a slice or whatever you want to offer me, I want the pie!” And they grab it from you. You and the stranger start screaming at one another about who the pie is for, who is allowed to decide what happens to it, and who you can share it with. Then, another stranger comes by and says, “Why all the problems? Let’s cut the pie in half and the both of you can share it!” But why should you, who has spent years cultivating the fruit and grain inside this pie, share it? Why should you give up half of the 100% that you already owned? Of what you already had? So you disagree, and now a crowd has formed around you. “What’s the problem?” someone in the crowd calls. “They don’t want to share their pie!” another voice says. Then you become branded a selfish, mean bastard. Again, this is a super simplified analogy, so don’t take it too seriously, but I am trying to show you why Israel is the aggressor.

In addition, I do not know too much about the Birthright program, just that American Jewish people are sent to Israel, all expenses paid. I tried my best to find the Twitter thread but I read it so long ago, about an American Jewish person who went on their trip and they talked about the propaganda that they were exposed to on that trip. I can’t say for sure that it is true, because I haven’t been on it and never will, but that is the first thing I thought of when you mentioned your Birthright trip. Either way, I think it is still great you went and saw the country. However, I must ask you this: are the people you met ones you, yourself, sought out, or ones you were organized to meet?

Now, I haven’t been to Gaza, so I don’t know what you really saw or didn’t, but did you speak to Palestinians who lost their homes to airstrikes? Did you speak to siblings, parents or children of loved ones who had been lost beneath the rubble of buildings and towers? Outside of Gaza, did you speak to Palestinians that live in poor quarters? Ones who have been victims of an IDF soldier shooting them, or who have family members who have died from such attacks? Did they take you guys to Ramallah, to Nablus, to Beit-Imreen, to Jenin, to small villages in the West Bank, far away from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? Did you speak to people there? Ask them their stories? Because if you did I have a very hard time believing you still think Israel is “defending” itself.

I’ve been to Jerusalem, many times, even Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Haifa. All the times I visited Dome of the Rock there were IDF soldiers with huge guns strapped to their person, standing menacingly outside the courtyard. For what? Genuinely, genuinely for what? It is nothing but an intimidation tactic. The same way we are not allowed in through the airport. If you could see the struggle some Palestinians actually go through just to get into Palestine, through the land border, you would be disgusted. I love Palestine, it is my ancestry land, it is my culture and tradition. But I always hated going to visit because I knew the way to getting there would be hell.

My father worked in Tel Aviv through the first Intifada. My maternal grandfather was forced out of his home in the Nakba and was forced to leave behind his belongings and the orange trees that have been in his family for generations. Hell, the town they lived in was destroyed! It doesn’t exist anymore except in the memories of my aunts and uncles, who never even saw it, but just heard of it from their father!

I’m not saying there aren’t Palestinians who are racist and anti-Semitic (though, tbh, I will direct you here for that) and who support Hamas in killing Israeli’s, but talking about how there are many “extremist” Palestinians who are hurting Israeli’s and in the next line say there are extremist Israeli’s who are hurting Palestinians is not correct. There are extremist Israeli’s killing, lynching, stealing the houses of Palestinians, and there are Palestinians who are fed up and fighting back. (I am not talking about Hamas vs the IDF here, I am talking about the citizens). I have not seen one reported death of an Israeli due to Palestinian violence (if you have, from a trusted source, send it to me), but I have seen countless of the other way around. I have seen images of charred little bodies, of a baby being dug out of the rubble, of a child’s body that had been so mutilated that you can literally see the insides of their body coming out. (I don’t know if it’s on my Twitter, I didn’t want to save that shit). If this was my country I would be absolutely ashamed of myself and my people and what they are doing in the name of my protection. So you have to forgive me, and forgive other Palestinians, who don’t give a fuck about Israeli’s having anxiety over rockets flying over their heads when we see these images. Where is the protection of our kids? Why does no one seem to mention them except when mentioning the poor, innocent ones in Israel? At least more than the majority of them have their parents to comfort and rock them. At least many of them will probably be saved of ever having to be beneath the rubble of a destroyed building, or digging in it, to hope to find the parts of their parents or siblings just so that they can bury them. Just the links from the start of my answer is enough to support what I am saying.

I have soooo much more I can say, like how Israel uses religion to distort the image of what’s going on (tbh, just check my Twitter for that: language is EVERYTHING), but you didn’t mention religion in any of this and so I won’t either. The only reason I decided to respond to you in such length was because you have been one of the few respectful anons in my inbox in the past few years of me being on here talking about Israel, so I appreciate that from you. 

As promised, some more sources: decolonizepalestine is a good place to start if you haven’t used it already, it has reading materials, myth busting, and more. Here is a map list of destroyed localities from pre-1948 until 2017, run by two anti-Zionist Israelis. Here and here are the articles I promised of a former IDF soldier-turned Palestinian activist, I read these two last year in June and remember coming out much more informed than before I read them. I suggest looking into the writer and his organization, which, if I remember correctly, collects accounts from previous IDF soldiers. I would suggest not to follow Israel and the IDF accounts on any platform, or any Israel times newspaper, simply because they will not tell you the truth. In fairness, you do not have to follow any Palestinian Authority accounts (which I am not even sure there are), but to follow on-ground Palestinians like Mohammed El-Kurd, who has been speaking out since he was 12 (he is now 22) and he is part of the families in Sheikh Jarrah. I have noticed that this and this account have been translating Arabic headlines and tweets for non-Arabic speakers, I have just started following this person but their bio says they are a Palestinian Jewish person so I am interested in their view of things. You can also follow Israeli’s on-ground and see their perspective on things, but I would also advise to compare the Palestinian and Israeli side of things from the people, and critically analyze the language used in each case. Also, this article references Jewish scholars opposed to the occupation (I have not looked into them myself but I plan to after my exams), and Norman Finklestein is another great Jewish scholar to look into if you haven’t. Twitter is better than Instagram and Facebook, so I would stick to getting live-info from there, Twitter does not censor Palestinian content as much as Insta and Facebook so you’re more likely to see things there.

I will end this by saying I personally do not see any other option for peace than to give Palestinians our land back. Whether we may be Muslim, Jewish or Christian, it has always been and will always be our land. I only hope to see it free in my lifetime. 

Free Palestine. 

[regina-del-cielo]

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf. 

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine. 

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too? 

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could  easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain. 

He’s not alone anymore.

[ruminativerabbi]

Israelis and Emiratis

This week’s surprise announcement that the United Arab Emirates and Israel have decided to establish full diplomatic relations, including the cultural and commercial ties that such relations traditionally bring in their wake, caught me completely off guard—and everybody else in the world too apparently except for the players directly involved. Who saw that coming? And yet, now that I’ve had time to think about it a bit, I see this not only as something that was probably inevitable, at least eventually, but as a move that has the potential to alter the political reality in the Middle East in a way that could possibly actually lead to a peaceful resolution of one of the most traditionally intractable face-offs on the planet, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

It’s hard even to know where to start in assessing the potential impact of the agreement, but probably most important of all is that it makes it crystal clear that the Sunni Arab world is not going to refuse to make common cause with the one country in the region, Israel, that can and does stand up to Iran in its relentless effort to extend its malign, imperialist influence into Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen merely because the Palestinians don’t wish them to. The Gulf States feel vulnerable because that’s precisely what they are—and the UAE decision to recognize Israel is simply their way to make themselves feel less vulnerable and more in control of their own destiny. Nor is it at all likely that this is the sole deal of its kind in the offing: most of the experts I’ve read this last week seem to agree that it is now only a matter of time before Oman, Bahrein, Kuwait, and even Saudi Arabia follow suit and establish formal relationship with Israel. (Morocco and Sudan won’t be far behind.) It’s hard to imagine a more dramatic shift than the one constituted by this week’s agreement. It really is a whole new world out there.

The message the UAE-Israel deal sends out directly to the Palestinians is key. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has presumed the right to turn down whatever is offered to them—and there have been so many offers over the years that it’s hard even for experts to keep them all straight—not because of any specific detail included or not included, but merely because entering into a peace arrangement with Israel would obviously require the Palestinians to agree to live in peace with their neighbors, something they have never been able to bring themselves to do.

I have returned to this theme many times in this space. Well over 100 nations have already recognized the non-existent nation of Palestine, so it’s not like the Palestinians have to worry if their state will be internationally recognized. Indeed, the Palestinians could easily proclaim their independence tomorrow, like the Israelis did in 1948, and then get on with the business of nation-building. Yes, they’d have to work through various issues with the Israelis, including some thorny ones regarding a future Jewish presence in the new Palestinian state, but once all that was successfully done the Palestinians would still have to bring themselves to live in peace with the Israelis next door. And that is what they appear unwilling or unable to bring themselves to do.

The UAE-Israel speaks directly to that set of issues.

First, it makes it clear that the Palestinians do not have a veto over other nations’ decisions to act in their own best interests. They had an inkling of that sentiment in 1979 when Sadat came to Jerusalem and Egypt established diplomatic relations with Israel, and then again in 1994 when Jordan followed suit. But 1994 was quite some time ago and things have changed considerably in the Near East since then. The Palestinians are eager to describe the UAE decision as a stab in their collective back. But a more realistic appraisal would be that the decision simply constitutes an instance of a nation declining to pass up a chance to prosper through a judicious alliance merely because of a different people’s intransigency.

Second, it makes it clear that the threat posed by the Iranians to the neighboring states of the Middle East is serious and real…and not only in Western eyes but in the eyes of the players on the ground in the region. In other words, this week’s agreement signals that the nations who see themselves as future victims of Iranian expansionism are not going to sacrifice their nations on the altar of somebody else’s national aspirations…and particularly not when those aspirations could be brought to fruition easily and effectively in a matter of days or weeks if there were any real desire to live in peace and to prosper not as a nation of perennial victims, but as a free, independent, autonomous player in the forum of nations.

Third, the Palestinians have always acted as though time were on their side, as though all they had to do was wait long enough and Israel would just go away and their problems would be solved. The UAE deal signals that the opposite is actually the case, that time is specifically not on their side, and that the time has clearly come to act if they want to resolve their conflict with Israel effectively and fairly. The Palestinian story is a tragic one that began with their leaders’ failure to seize the moment in 1948 and establish the “other” state that the Partition Plan for British Palestine was supposed to create. That was already seventy-two years ago, however, and yet they remain mired in tactical decisions that failed them in the 1940s and are still failing them. Clearly, at least some of the Arab world is tired of waiting for the Palestinians to act in their own best interests.

And, finally, the UAE-Israel agreement makes it clear that the oft-insisted-upon fantasy that Israeli cannot live in peace with any Arab nation until it caves into the demands of the Palestinians, no matter how radical or unimaginable, is simply not true. It probably wasn’t ever really true. But now it’s clearer than ever that the moment for the Palestinians to move forward as an independent state is upon them…if they have the courage to seize the day and make the requisite compromises any deal will inevitably entail.

What the Palestinians have to learn, the Europeans also need to take to heart. The endless EU-based rhetoric based on the assumption that the key to Israeli-Arab relations is resolving the Palestinian conflict needs to be set aside and replaced with words reflective of a new reality. If the member states of the EU want to contribute to peace in the Middle East, in fact, they need to press the Palestinians to realize that their problems are being dwarfed in the region by the hegemonic aggression of the world’s two largest non-Arab Muslim states, Iran and Turkey. And that the smaller states in the region see that aggression not only as irritating or destabilizing, but as an existential threat. Since peoples who are facing existential threats generally do what it take to address those threats regardless of what bystanders think appropriate or reasonable, the time has clearly come to press the Palestinians to negotiate a just peace and then to move ahead from there into the future.

Suddenly, all sorts of dreams I’ve had for years are becoming slightly more possible. Could Lebanon ever live in peace with Israel? Not with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah pulling the strings, but what if Lebanon suddenly found the wherewithal to become free of foreign influence? What then? Would a seriously isolated Iran be willing to renegotiate the so-called Iran Deal of 2015 and agree actually to turn away from the possibility of becoming a nuclear power? Could the people of Syria ever seize the real reigns of power in their country, get rid of the Iranians camped out on their territory, and establish the kind of close ties with Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel that should have long ago made that specific part of the Near East into the economic powerhouse it could and should be? The irony, of course, is that these developments—pie-in-the-sky though they may sound now—these developments would only bring prosperity and autonomy to the Palestinians too, who would then be part of a thriving economic region.

In the meantime, exciting things are happening. The Israeli and UAE foreign ministers have had their first phone call and are apparently going to meet in person soon. Embassies are going to be opened, ambassadors appointed. Omer Adam, the Israeli singer, was invited personally by the royal family of the UAE to perform in Abu Dhabi. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin formally invited the Emirati crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to visit Israel. It is expected that it is only a matter of time, possibly only weeks, before direct flights begin between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

Americans should be proud of the role our government played in this enormous break-through. But the lion’s share of the credit goes to the Emiratis themselves who found the courage to act in their own best interests. That their move could conceivably lead the Palestinians to abandon their traditional intransigency and negotiate a just and real peace deal with Israel—that really would be the icing on the cake. Whether that will happen, none can say. But it was a pretty good week for the Middle East, and particularly for Israel and for the UAE, and for that we should all be grateful.

[libertariantaoist]

Donald Trump remains blinded — willfully or not I cannot say — by his absurd narrative of America as an aggrieved nation. It’s a narrative that will stimulate the growth, rather than the diminution, of government power.

As he told this week’s national prayer breakfast, “We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually.” He repeated this claim several times at a later photo op at the White House. It of course was the dominant theme of his presidential campaign: the United States is the 99-pound weakling into whose eyes everyone kicks sand. The only way to stop this abuse, we were told, is to elect Donald Trump. Now that he has assumed power, he says, he will keep his promise and restore respect to the United States.

His opening days as president have been marked by Trump’s idea of getting tough with allies and adversaries and cracking down on would-be immigrants and refugees who happen to have been born in the wrong Muslim-majority countries.

At the prayer breakfast he pledged to fix the world: “The world is in trouble, but we can straighten it out, okay? That’s what I do — I fix things.” Straightening out the entire world hardly signals a radical rethinking of postwar U.S. foreign policy and a switch to something more modest for the sake of “America First” — quite the contrary. Even if Trump’s objective were possible, it would take a far more powerful, more militaristic, more intrusive, and more expensive government than the one we labor under at present. So would his aim to “eradicate [“radical Islamic terrorism] completely from the face of the Earth,” as he promised in his inaugural address.

But in fact the theme that unifies most of Trump’s policy positions is wrong: America is not the aggrieved party. It is not everyone’s chump. It’s the abuser and the bully. Trump either doesn’t know this or he does but realizes that no one ever won power by telling the public, “Elect me and we still stop victimizing the world.”

One can see Trump’s aggrieved-nation shtick in nearly everything he says. America, according to Trump, has been abused by  Muslims, by trade partners (especially Mexico and China), by free-loading allies, and more. Weak leadership made this possible, he says. Strong leadership — the kind only he can provide — is the cure.

But in every case the story is the opposite of the one Trump tells. Violence against American noncombatants — unjustified as it is — has been a response to decades of direct and indirect U.S. government violence in the Middle East and elsewhere. Islamists from Osama bin Laden on down have said it. (They don’t say they hate us for our freedom.) Even American officials have acknowledged this, though they rarely say it outright in public. After World War I the Arab world (like others) hoped the United States would block the European colonial powers’ designs on the region. Instead the U.S. government acquiesced in England’s and France’s plans even as some Americans looked to supplant the old imperialist powers as the dominant force in the Middle East. In the ensuing years, Arab hope turned to ashes as America sided with corrupt autocrats, cynically used secular and religious elements as expedient, and backed Israel’s ethnic cleansing and land confiscation in Palestine.

Trump shows no signs of understanding the U.S. government’s century of provocation; on the contrary, he promises to double down on the so-called “war on terror,” pledging to those assembled at the prayer breakfast his war “may not be pretty for a little while…. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it [‘radical Islamic terrorism’] and to confront it viciously, if we have to.” The first special-forces operation on Trump’s watch just took place in Yemen, resulting in the deaths of women and children, including the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen and cleric killed by a drone strike in Yemen ordered by President Obama, and sister of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, an American teenager also killed by a drone strike in Yemen. (Needless to say, none of these victims were accorded due process.) Trump honored the one American military Navy SEAL killed in the badly planned operation, but did not acknowledge the deaths of noncombatants. Yemen, by the way, is where the U.S. government is helping Saudi Arabia wage a genocidal war, benefiting al-Qaeda in the process. Obama initiated the policy, but Trump has yet to mention, much less terminate, it. He’s not likely to do so because the Saudi targets, the Houthis, are said (erroneously) to be agents of Iran, which Trump has in his sights.

Trump would say, no doubt, that attacks on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are justified, no matter how ferocious, because they intend to harm Americans. But since they intend to do harm to Americans because of what the U.S. government has done to their societies, this answer is invalid. Moreover, it is self-defeating because U.S. attacks, especially the deaths of noncombatants, will likely provoke further terrorism against Americans. Trump, who presents himself as an out-of-the-box thinker, has yet to question the establishment story and understand what Ron Paul pointed out in his 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination: “They’re over here because we’re over there.” (Paul was referring to the 9/11 attacks. Since 2001 the few terrorist acts in the United States were committed by U.S. citizens said to be inspired by Islamist groups. Terrorists have not infiltrated the United States, although Trump would have you believe otherwise.)

As William T. Cavanaugh discusses in The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, blaming terrorism on Islam (even “radical Islam”) blinds Americans to the political roots of violence, specifically, U.S. neo-imperialism in the Middle East. How comforting it is to dismiss a large group of people as under the spell of a barbaric medieval religion rather than own up to the cruelty of one’s own government. Of course for Trump, evading the truth better fits the aggrieved-nation narrative.

Trump’s narrative is reinforced by Steve Bannon, perhaps his closest adviser. Bannon, whom Trump has named to the National Security Council, has often said that the West is in a war with Islam.  USA Today reports that in a January 2016 interview, Bannon said, “To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise.” The year before he said, “Some of these situations may get a little unpleasant. But you know what, we’re in a war. We’re clearly going into, I think, a major shooting war in the Middle East again.” (Also in 2016 he said, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t we? There’s no doubt about that.” Trump also has an animus toward China, which is bolstered by his top economic adviser, Peter Navarro.) Like his boss, Bannon’s got a thing for war. (Also see this.)

In Trump’s worldview, it’s not only terrorists who menace us. The foreigners with whom Americans trade also take advantage of America, especially but not limited to Mexico and China. But as has been said many times in response, trade yields expected net benefits to both parties or it does not take place. So Trump’s take on trade is based on a blatant fallacy. (Again, who knows if he really believes his own nonsense or if he says it because he knows few people understand even the most basic economics?) Suffice it to say that China and Mexico are not “raping” us, as Trump would have us believe. That he would equate voluntary transactions with rape should have won him only ridicule on day one of his campaign. That it did not speaks volumes. If anyone is harmed in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements it is the countries on which the U.S. government imposes draconian, unlibertarian intellectual-���property” restrictions that prevent indigenous competition with American corporations.

Even when Trump has a valid target  — NATO — he gets the story wrong because he cannot let anything detract from his aggrieved-nation shtick. NATO is not a collection of countries enjoying U.S. protection while free-riding off American taxpayers. Rather, it’s a multilateral facade for unilateral American foreign military and political intervention, that is, a tool of the American empire. NATO, particularly its inclusion of former Soviet republics and allies, also has been key in provoking Russia, something Trump doesn’t mention. Again, America is not the aggrieved party. (See more here.) We should note also that Trump has backed off his criticism of NATO and that even if he withdrew, American military spending would not go down. Trump plans to increase the military budget.

Finally, immigration. Trump thinks that people who come to the United States (unless they’re the “right” kind of people) do us harm. This is belied by every study. Immigrants (whether or not they have government papers — a matter that should not concern libertarians) make society better in all sorts of ways. But that is not the ultimate justification for freedom of movement. The ultimate justification is the natural right of the people to move in search of better lives. Trump doesn’t know or care about that, so he’s sticking to his promise to build a wall near the Mexican border. While he’ll be violating the rights of individuals who wish to move to the United States, he’ll also violate the rights of American landowners along the border. Trump’s wall cannot be built without eminent domain (land theft), which he is long on record as favoring. He has tried to get government to take private land for his own enterprises, and he applauded the Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling, which said takings for private use were constitutional.

As one can see, Trump’s aggrieved-nation narrative is a call for more powerful government across a range of issues. Those who were hoping that Trump would make the state a smaller presence in our lives should now realize how wrong they were.

[aaron-golden]

The World of Mercedes Ketch

Persephone had long retreated into the underworld, and Everett believed that the place she entered the underworld from was Toronto. Cold and polite, the gray apple, the chill in the air seeping into people's minds and hearts. It's why he liked Toronto; the sense of etiquette without thought, pity without relevance.

He'd known someone, decades ago, that had described autumn as a time of edges and scripture.

“What about winter?” Everett had asked that man.

“You'd have to ask Persephone,” the man answered. He'd died soon after, held in Everett's arms.

Steam rose from gutters and carried the scent of waste and cigarettes and coffee. He nestled in his jacket, coffee close at hand. He'd just gotten back from Brazil and a new supplier, the coffee good and rich in his hands, down his throat, settling in his belly. Two cups, one for him and one for the lwa as entropy tightened fingers on the throat of civilization.

Civilization was crumbling, but it had crumbled before many times. He'd learned to enjoy whatever a civilization could offer before faltering in and dying, and this one had come so far. The stars struggled to find some place in the night sky, but the purple-orange haze of smog and clouds turned even the moon away.

The coffee grounded him. The candles littered around him, protected from the snow and still air, the dull haze of a hundred streetlights below him and around him. He was on the roof of a building he owned – his home on the second floor, a coffee shop he ran on the first. Good cheap coffee, some tasty snacks, free wi-fi, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, closed on Christmas but open for New Year's.

Every New Year's made him smile, the arbitrary measurement of time this world was now obsessed with. He wondered what the next civilization would build itself on, once this one was dead and past and remembered only as another dark age. The arrogance of humankind, to think that whatever age they lived in was the apex of every possibility, that what they knew now was the only truth there could ever possibly be.

Cold and polite, he felt the soul of Toronto rear up and stare, nodding its head as it wandered the corridors of itself.

So many spirits out tonight, he thought. I wonder why.

He was having a moment, he knew, unable to remember whether this was the end or the beginning of winter. He knew where he was but after so long the seasons blended together, the decades, the centuries. He'd been told to remember and he did, back before sky had become earth, back before they'd won the war but lost, lost, lost so much.

What good was it to remember when everything he was had long since passed from breath into dust?

A shattering electric light flared into light beside him, the twinkling mire of a cell phone ring. That grounded him a little; he was here and now. He stared, took a deep breath, let the sense of time wash over and through him. Call display showed no name but a long string of numbers, one of those strange equations that came from across the Atlantic.

He reached for the phone, tracing the edge of the small screen, his hand looking like a shadow against the light and the trickling flakes of falling snow, so gentle.

“Hello?” Everett asked, smiling at the sound of his own voice. The deepness of it, the richness, unmarred by centuries past and the present world.

“Hi, Dad.” Two words, the voice familiar. He'd had children in the past, watched them grow old and die. Some he'd sired and others he'd adopted and this voice was from the latter, a small girl left to die in the care of those who saw only someone to be used until withered. He'd bought her, a black man buying a Hispanic girl from white folks. From Rose Unwanted to Rose Stone and now, now, he'd given her away and seen her married, and now she was Rose Ketch.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. He remembered her, the flash of her eyes, the crook of her lips when she smiled. The way she did her hair, the studious way her brow furrowed. Published, respected, he'd watched her grow and cultivated her loves, staring in awe at the women that unwanted child had become. “I don't recognize this number. Where are you calling from?”

“Acco, in Israel,” Rose answered. Names cycled through Everett's head, old names, dead names – Devinii, Kebara, Natufian, Meggido, Canaan, Kandar, Judea, Syria-Palestina, Palestine... He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. He'd spent little time in the area, had avoided it for the sake of memory. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You're doing that breathing thing you do.” Rose sounded concerned. She knew him so well. “Are you having one of your... episodes? Do you know the year? The month?”

“It's Toronto in winter time,” Everett answered, sounding stronger than he felt. “And I have a newspaper subscription on my phone. I've just been thinking.”

“What about?”

“Time.”

“Ah,” she said, and though she sounded reluctant she took the hint and let the matter drop. “How's Toronto?”

“Cold,” Everett said, and now his smile was genuine. He was looking down at the few people that wandered the city this late, the chill so much more than mere weather. “How's Israel?”

“Hot,” Rose answered, and he imagined the heat there was much the same. “Do you remember I was telling you about John's dig? The new one?”

“Surcess?”

“No, dad, he finished with Surcess,” Rose sounded playful, and he could imagine the light of her eyes. “The new one.”

“Surcess would be enough for anyone else,” Everett said, but his tone robbed the words of their criticism. He liked John and always had, but something was tickling him. “Isn't it pronounced Akko?”

“Or Acre,” Rose confirmed. “You know these places don't translate well. There's something like fifteen versions for spelling Hannukah I've seen in English alone.”

“I like Channukah.”

“The the one that starts with 'ch'?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know there are people debating Surcess' authenticity?” Rose asked. She sighed, and he could hear her stand, imagined her walking through whatever house she was living in. Acco, he recalled, was closer to the sea. Western Israel. “It doesn't help that a private investor bought the whole island.”

“The Verenes,” Everett said, nodding. Solaina, Robert, and... Lloyd. He narrowed his eyes, thinking of the latter. He'd never liked Lloyd.

“You remember them?” Rose asked. As if he would ever forget. “They were very excited.”

“I'm sure,” Everett answered, trying to keep his voice mild. “I'm sorry I missed the party.” He'd never been to Surcess – he'd been touring what would become Carthage when he'd first heard the stories. A whole island of people who would do favors for others and eat those who would not pay them back as demanded. Monstrous, evil humans, their name living on through the ages and now dismissed as myth. The Hellenists had destroyed them, led by a woman who had claimed their island for herself.

“It's alright,” Rose sighed. “The Verenes are turning the whole thing private, though, and without further investigation...”

“It's making John look bad,” Everett finished the lingering sentence. He knew how hard it was to explain anything to people when it challenged their view of the world; the people of the earth always preferred the shadows in the cave to the world outside, so afraid to remember the sky.

He wondered if, living among them, he had become so guilty. Would he know? How often might it happen? He shook his head, sat down in the snow and cradled his coffee. It was still warm, scalding his lips, but he didn't mind the sensation. He let it ground him.

“How's John taking it?”

“He's trying not to let it get to him, but you know how he is.” Rose paused, and he could hear the quickening of her breath. “And it's killing Jack.”

“And so he's brought you to Israel,” Everett asked, the words not quite a question. If people were challenging John about Surcess he would find it difficult to get more grants, more funding... “How are you feeling about that? How's Mercy enjoying that?”

“She likes the oranges and the fields,” Rose said. There was something wistful in her voice, something sad. “So do I. I'm trying to be supportive, but the books aren't doing as well as I'd thought they would and... well, at least there's something calming about deserts and mountains, you know?”

“I do,” Everett said, looking at his own horizon, the towering gray spires of concrete and glass, the dead valleys of streets named by those long since forgot. “What's he looking for now?”

“A group of people called the Devinii,” Rose was silent for a long time, and Everett realized he' wasn't breathing. He forced himself to, long slow breaths, in and out, in and out, his eyes open as the towers around him looked like outstretched fingers.

“W-what name did you say?”

“Devinii. Have you heard of them?”

That was a code; she knew about him even if she didn't know how old he was. She was asking if they were real, if he knew them to be more than a fable. He nodded, took another breath.

“I have,” he answered, hearing her breath catch in her throat. “Your husband is ambitious – I don't think there'd be much left of them, though. They predate Surcess by several thousand years.”

“Thousand?” Rose sounded surprised. “Thousand? How old are they?”

“About as old as my people,” Everett answered, and he heard her sit down, heard her take a deep breath. He'd never told her about his people, the culture they'd built, the one he'd been powerless to stop from being destroyed. No one could understand those horrors except the others that had been there, the handful of ones that had been asked to remember, and of those few he trusted even less.

“This is what I give you,” the Annanuki had said. “Life until death.”

“Don't we already have that?” one of the others had asked.

Everett silently wished that he'd stabbed them both, then and there.

It was painful to think about how much had been lost, how sky had been bound to earth. He'd told her the tales instead, the old legends that his father and his mother had told him, tales echoed by whispering lwa. The Scarlet Angel. The Musician. The Purple Queen, the Blue Queen. The Weaver.

“Dad?” His daughter asked. “Dad, come back to me.”

“Sorry. Sorry, hun, I missed that last bit.” Everett held the cup of coffee steady in his hands, staring at it, forcing himself to study the minute details until the world around him was all that mattered, here and now, the cold seeping into his ass from the snow he was sitting in. He stood, dusting himself off with one hand, holding the cup steady in the other. He could see all the way to the horizon, knew every window along the street.

There were weeks, months, years where this happened, where memory drowned reason. He'd been told to remember and he never forgot and sometimes, rarely, he would act.

“Is the Weaver out walking again?” Rose asked. “I can call back next week.”

“No. No, this helps.”

“If you're sure.”

“I'm sure,” Everett said. He closed his eyes, took a single breath. He remembered the conversation, every breath from the moment Rose called, every word and pause and inflection. He opened his eyes, took a long gulp of coffee as he considered all of it and frowned. “What's wrong?”

“We're fighting over money.” He could hear the pain and embarrassment in Rose's voice; she did not like admitting this, but few people ever liked admitting weakness. “When the Verenes bought the island, they stopped John's peers from confirming his findings, and without confirmation...”

“People are branding him a crackpot,” Everett nodded understanding. “You mentioned that. How thrilled Jack is about it.”

“Jack always had a firmer understanding of that sort of thing than John, and he's done his best to keep the reality away from John, but...,” she trailed off, and he could imagine her biting her lip, closing her eyes, gathering her thoughts and her strength. He waited, patient with ages, patient with knowing. “John's beginning to feel the crunch. We had to sell the house, and that's why Mercy and I had to move out here.”

“You sold the house.” Everett frowned, looking in the direction the house lay. Even he couldn't see it – the earth curved long before he might have, and there were cities in the way, but he still grimaced as he remembered every room and imperfection, the backyard and the garden, the ivy creeping up the side, the mint that grew along the back fences. “I loved that house.”

“So did I.”

“Let me buy it back.”

“Dad...,” Rose let the title hang between them, her tone uncertain. She didn't want to ask and struggled with the idea of him doing this, the hesitation in her voice caused by yearning for her old home and wanting to stand on her own.

She loved that house, he knew. They both did. To go from the bedlam and squalor of her childhood to those brick walls had been an impossible dream, and the two of them had made it their home together. Her harsh teen years, rebellion made worse by the pains of her childhood and the trauma he'd suffered in that decade, but they walked one another through it, walked one another past it.

He left it to her and John when he'd moved to Toronto. He'd always been a creature of cities, and he'd been glad when humanity had rediscovered them – living in Damascus, in Carthage, in al Hambra, in Ghana, in Barcelona, in Toronto. He loved the lights, the whispers, the collective breathing of hundreds of human souls, the thrum of their heartbeats, the joy of architecture.

“You could have come to me,” Everett said. “You can always come to me. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I do, but John doesn't,” Rose said, her voice very quiet. Everyone carried secrets, some shared and some not. Everett had shared his with Rose because he'd had to, but both of them had decided that John could never know – his obsession with the past would have broken against the length of Everett's life, and they both knew it. “He likes you, but he doesn't know... he doesn't like asking for help.”

“No one is an island, Rose,” Everett said, the words as gentle as he could make them. “We're all connected. Everyone accomplishes what they can depending on who they are and where they're from, the relationships they build in and of the world.”

And, he didn't need to add, he could afford it. He could afford almost anything, his riches past through the ages. He'd learned to diversify his holdings after Carthage was sacked, the lesson that no empire was eternal one he'd learned slowly, but once he had it he'd divided his wealth among different nations, different kingdoms, different places.

When the idea of inventing wealth had finally occurred to the modern world he'd been an early buyer, and he was now easily in the one percent of the one percent, rich in a way that stripped the word of essential meaning. He owned the building he lived in, owned the seven blocks around it, ran a coffee shop because he enjoyed coffee and giving night people a place to go. He had grandfathered his investments into other investments, spending a year in every decade learning the ins-and-outs of different economic models.

It was better, he had found, to be wealthy than to be poor, and better to be free than to be a slave.

He frowned, remembering the early days of America, the rise of the Three Sisters, the... he blinked, let his thoughts settle.

Deep breath, he thought. Here and now.

He loved his adopted daughter. He liked John. He enjoyed his granddaughter, little Mercedes. She called him uncle and John thought Everett was Rose's adopted brother. He looked at the stars trying to break through the smog cover and smiled, finishing the last of the coffee.

Sometimes, Everett thought, John could be more a child than Mercedes.

“Who'd you sell the house to?” he asked.

“A real estate firm for a down payment.”

“I'm going to buy it back and put it in Mercy's name as part of a trust,” Everett said, his tone allowing no argument. “Keep the money you got from it. Are you comfortable?”

“Me? Yes. Of course. This place is, well, it's lovely.” But it isn't home, she thought, and he could hear those words in the slim shaking of her voice. “What do I tell John about the house?”

“Anything you like,” Everett said, letting her know that he'd support her. “Next issue is your finances. You want to handle this on your own, and I get that. The Verenes are why you can't get grant money?”

“I guess. I mean, yes, kind of.”

“Then call the Verenes,” Everett said. “You got on well with Solaina, I seem to recall, and Robert seemed to get on well with John. If they're so interested in Surcess, let them have it – but get them to pay John for what he found, and get them interested in what he's currently looking for.”

“You think they'd be interested?” Rose asked, her tone light.

“If they're interested in Surcess, they might be interested in the Devinii,” Everett shrugged, letting the motion flavor his voice – she would not see the motion, but she would know that he'd done it. “Call them. Find out.”

“Okay,” Rose said, and she sounded so much more like herself.

“Do you have a contact number?”

“Yes, Dad, from Solaina.” Rose paused, and he could hear her licking her lips, swallowing. Her voice dropped, became quieter, more frightened. “Do you remember her?”

“I do,” Everett answered. “From when the two of you were kids.”

“We were in our teens,” Rose's voice turned warm, her recrimination playful. She was fond of those memories despite their horror, but the ability of adults to swim in their childish nostalgia had always amazed Everett, always left him wondering if his own memories were so tinted. He shook his head. Here. Now.

“Barely,” Everett said, his eyes rolling. He remembered young Rose, rags and bones, her eyes haunted and smoky, and Solaina's anger and flashing sword. “Give her a call. Play on history and see if there's anything there.”

“I'll do it as soon as I get off the phone.”

“You might want to have Jack plant the idea in your husband's head.”

“What?” Rose asked, surprised by the suggestion. “Why?”

“Because your husband, much as I love him, can be a bit of an idiot,” Everett said, smiling as he leaned against a wall, his eyes drifting over the city spires. “He might not listen to you, and he won't listen to me, but a suggestion from Jack...?”

“Yeah, okay.” He could hear her grin. “Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too,” Everett said. He let the words hang between them, enjoying a comfortable electric silence, breaking it only to ask, “Is Mercy around?”

“She's out in the orchard,” Rose answered. “The property we're on has an orange field. She spends her days reading, playing, or stealing oranges to eat.”

“Aright, well, let her know her Uncle said 'hi.'”

He could hear Rose shifting her weight, making herself more comfortable, hear the way her breathing changed. Rose understood why they told Mercy the things they did, understood why they kept the secret from the eight-year-old girl – children traded secrets for candy, and Mercy might never know the full depth of Everett's life, might never know that he could live forever.

Other children in the past had traded secrets bigger than that. Everett had seen it happen, had even had it happen to him. He'd had to flee Spain, cross a sea and flee further to escape the fires of Inquisition and the persecution of zealots. He'd ended up in chains, ended up blistered and shattered across an ocean, ended up in-

“Dad?” Rose asked. He took a deep breath. Here, he thought, now.

“Sorry, lost in thought again.”

“Hopefully, it's a little more pleasant.”

“It is,” Everett lied. She knew that he had seen and been and done many things, and often it was the bad memories that dominated. She'd seen him when- he smiled, shook his head, laughed. “Iataad taohif aamgae.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He asked her to call him when it was done, to let him know how things are and if there might be anything else that he could do to help. She said that she would and that she loved him and then she hung up and he stayed there for minutes afterward, staring down at a single girl staring back up at him.

She was young, this girl, pale as snow, with raven hair and emerald eyes. Her facial structure was that of someone that wasn't human trying to be – lacking the small ticks that came from growth, the small changes evolution brought to structure and culture brought to stance. She was looking at him and she nodded, smiling, turned and vanished into the night.

There were powers older than he was and too large to easily comprehend. He'd seen some of them in the past, been there when they'd done their workings and changed the world. It made him shudder in a way the cold never could, to know that such powers were moving through the world again, were gathering, that one of them might think that the conversation he had just had was important enough to watch so closely.

He replayed the conversation in his head once more, all of it from beginning to end, felt something that he'd missed when he'd muttered the most ancient of prophecies: iataad taohif aamgae.

In the long dead language of the Devinii, it meant none may escape.

*

So, this is part of a story that runs parallel to the first book in the Legend of Mercedes Ketch. I’m going to post the whole of that story here over the next few months; if you’re interested in reading the book that this is from, you can do so by going here: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Mercedes-Ketch-Fathers-Daughter-ebook/dp/B00CRJ14RA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485244368&sr=8-1&keywords=legend+of+mercedes+ketch 

In the meantime, if you like this, share it. Spread the word. Writer needs story to be read, has more story to tell.  

[nonmillenniallive]

Historic El Camino de Santiago - Hike with Heart

Historic El Camino de Santiago, The Way of St James Last year, my cousin decided to follow a hiking pilgrimage. Her trek was the first time I learned of the El Camino de Santiago.   Historically, it is a pilgrimage that normally takes a couple hundred days to complete, depending on which of the multiple paths you take and how fast you walk.  The paths wind through multiple countries and all end at the shrine of the Apostle Saint James the Greater in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia of northwestern Spain.  The popularity of the Camino exploded in recent years, with 277,913 certificates of completion in 2016 alone.  This is up from a mere hundred or two 35 years ago. Although the El Camino is a solemn activity, one of the cute things about it is that once you reach the Cathederal, in addition to the certificate, you can get a free bowl of soup from any local restaurant.  All it takes is walking 500 miles and 7+ weeks of your time. The reason this hit me as a meaningful blog post is because my cousin just completed the trek for the second time.  Her blog of the 12 week journey; she shared with a handful of friends and relatives. On her last post, she wrote these two sentences … everyday of the hike, I dedicated to one of you.  I thought of you the whole day and sent wishes for your happiness. This floored me.  What grace and kindness. This cousin has a heart of gold.  She doesn't follow a traditional religion.  She follows her heart. When I asked her last year why embark on this journey, she said to get the cobwebs out of my head.  The second time is because the cobwebs are out and she didn't want to give them a path back in.  How can you not love that? As you read, you'll see I really got into this.  It is fascinating to me.  When religious themes can be confirmed by relics, it turns faith to facts. Who is St James of El Camino The Bible only makes one reference to James and his brother John as the Sons of Thunder. However, no reason is given. Upon reading other passages of the New Testament, it appears the brothers are passionate and willing to fight for the group when fairness is challenged. This is the best guess of how the names are derived.  Santiago, Spanish for Saint James, also known as James the Greater, is one of Jesus’ first Apostles.  Jesus nickname for him is the Son of Thunder.  He became a martyr upon his death from beheading by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44AD. St James the Greater representation in Christian Art is in the garb of a pilgrim, with staff, gourd, and scallop shell. St James is often also depicted riding a white horse into battle.  The quick reason he is so revered is because he traveled far and wide into Spain and fought in wars to proclaim the teachings of Christ as well as to protect believers and people of Spain. The Long Version James was the son of Zebedee and was known as the ‘Greater’ as he was taller than the other apostle named James. James the Greater is thought to be a cousin of Jesus, by the sister of the Virgin Mary, and the brother of St Jude Thaddeus. He worked as a fisherman with his brother John, his father Zebedee and his partner Simon. John and James were followers of John the Baptist and then Jesus. James, along with his brother John, left his life as a fisherman when Jesus called him to be a fisher of men. Jesus chose James the Greater to be one of the 12 apostles and was given the mission to spread the gospel.

St James is also the great military patron of Spain.  His mission to defend the Christian Church against invaders was however reserved until after his death. During the celebrated battle of Clavijo, he suddenly appeared on a milk-white charger, waving aloft a white standard, and leading the Christians to victory. This manifestation was in response to the soldiers' invocation of his name, "Sant lago!" as the battle-cry of that day. Hence, the name of the ancient city (Santiago) which contains the cathedral founded in his honour. St James is also believed to have helped the Christians defeat the Moors in Spain – yet another reason he’s their patron saint. After his pilgrimage to the Iberian Peninsula to spread the word of Jesus, he returned to Judea, he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44AD. This is detailed in the Bible in Acts 12 of the New Testament. "King Herod extended his hands to harm certain ones from the church.  He killed James the brother of John with the sword. Seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to arrest Peter also".  How St. James Relics Made it to Northern Spain Although there is some dispute, there is one popular version of his devotions. Successfully winning over a handful of disciples in Spain. According to the legend, two of these converts accompanied him on his return to Jerusalem in 44 AD. Upon his return to Palestine and beheading by King Herod Agrippa, Herod would not allow James’ body to be buried so his disciples stole the corpse and escaped in a boat. Having no rudder, they were at the mercy of the ocean. The tiny boat and its occupants made it safely to Galicia. They came ashore in a place now called Padrón, named after the rock that supposedly enclosed the remains of the Apostle James. The Celtic Queen Lupia ruled the lands, and when asked by James' followers if they could bury his body she refused and sent troops after them. While chasing the followers of James, with his body, across a bridge it collapsed, killing her troops. This devastating event inspired Queen Lupia to convert to Christianity as she saw it as God's way of disapproving her actions.   training course before serving. As one of its services in support of the Camino, American Pilgrims offers these  several times a year, one in conjunction with its Annual Gathering of Pilgrims.  My Cousin's Volunteer Experience Upon completing the Camino, my cousin went through the prescribed training and was then given several choices of how to serve.  The choices were helping maintain pilgrims hospitality needs, educating pilgrims, maintaining the Cathedral or working in the office to maintain records and hand out certificates.  Working in the legal world for years, she chose and was accepted to do office work. Oh, also, volunteers are given an apartment for the 2 weeks they work.  Hers she shared with one other person. Ad mentioned above, she found the volunteering more rewarding than the walk itself. One of the things she loved about her trek was all the people she met from around the world.  Together they shared life stories, equipment provided knowing they would never recover it and a comradery that can only be accomplished from sharing such a unique experience. Her blog on this topic was her longest and most vivid.  Instead of describing the terrain, weather and her observations, she described the human experience. The volunteers were asked to work 8 hours a day.  She and 2 or 3 of her fellow volunteers worked 16 to 18 hour days.  Whether working 8 hour days or 15, they all spoke different languages and with their common goal of giving back found ways to communicate and serve. Summing it All Up Finding new experiences that express your interests and heart are among the most rewarding. Personally, this is something I will aspire to do. Be passionate.  Feed your soul.  Learn from others.  Be open to all opportunities.  And, no matter what happens in life, have faith that there is a way forward. So with cobwebs remaining successfully out, my cousin returns home to the sounds of the big city, the office she has learned to fill and a desire to keep in her heart those she met and those she loves. If you have had an adventure that has changed your life, write and let us know.  I'd love to write an article about it.   Read the full article

[fevie168]

Saturday (October 14): "Hear the word of God and keep it"

Scripture: Luke 11:27-28

27 As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!" 28 But he said, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!"

Meditation: Who do you seek to favor and bless? When an admirer wished to compliment Jesus by praising his mother, Jesus did not deny the truth of the blessing she pronounced. Her beatitude (which means "blessedness" or "happiness") recalls Mary's canticle: All generations will call me blessed (Luke 1:48). Jesus adds to her words by pointing to the source of all true blessedness or happiness - union with God in heart, mind, and will.

We can hear God's Word and believe it Mary humbly submitted herself to the miraculous plan of God for the incarnation of his only begotten Son - the Word of God made flesh in her womb, by declaring: I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word (Luke 1:38). Mary heard the word spoken to her by the angel and she believed it.

On another occasion Jesus remarked that whoever does the will of God is a friend of God and a member of his family - his sons and daughters who have been ransomed by the precious blood of Christ. (Luke 8:21). They are truly blessed because they know their God personally and they find joy in hearing and obeying his word.

Jesus unites us with our heavenly Father Our goal in life, the very reason we were created in the first place, is for union with God. We were made for God and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Lucian of Antioch (240-312), an early Christian theologian and martyr, once said that "a Christian's only relatives are the saints." Those who follow Jesus Christ and who seek the will of God enter into a new family, a family of "saints" here on earth and in heaven. Jesus changes the order of relationships and shows that true kinship is not just a matter of flesh and blood. Our adoption as sons and daughters of God transforms all our relationships and requires a new order of loyalty to God and his kingdom. Do you hunger for God and for his word?

"Lord Jesus, my heart is restless until it rests in you. Help me to live in your presence and in the knowledge of your great love for me. May I seek to please you in all that I do, say, and think."

Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12

1 The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coast lands be glad! 2 Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 5 The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. 6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory. 11 Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. 12 Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: Blessings for hearing and keeping the Word, by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.

"Mary was more blessed in accepting the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. To someone who said, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you,' he replied, 'Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.' Finally, for his brothers, his relatives according to the flesh who did not believe in him, of what advantage was that relationship? Even her maternal relationship would have done Mary no good unless she had borne Christ more happily in her heart than in her flesh." (excerpt from HOLY VIRGINITY 3.1)

Friday (October 13): "If it is by the finger of God"

Scripture: Luke 11:15-26

15 But some of them said, "He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons"; 16 while others, to test him, sought from him a sign from heaven. 17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. 18 And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. 19 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. 20 But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. 21 When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; 22 but when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil. 23 He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. 24 "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest; and finding none he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.' 25 And when he comes he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.

Meditation: When danger lurks, what kind of protection do you seek? Jesus came to free us from the greatest danger of all - the corrupting force of evil which destroys us from within and makes us slaves to sin and Satan (John 8:34). Evil is not an impersonal force that just happens. It has a name and a face and it seeks to master every heart and soul on the face of the earth (1 Peter 5:8-9). Scripture identifies the Evil One by many names, 'Satan', 'Beelzebul - the 'prince of demons', the 'Devil', the 'Deceiver', the 'Father of Lies', and 'Lucifier', the fallen angel who broke rank with God and established his own army and kingdom in opposition to God.

Jesus has power to cast out the Deceiver and set us free Jesus declared that he came to overthrow the power of Satan and his kingdom (John 12:31). Jesus' numerous exorcisms brought freedom to many who were troubled and oppressed by the work of evil spirits. Jesus himself encountered personal opposition and battle with Satan when he was put to the test in the wilderness just before his public ministry (Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1). He overcame the Evil One through his obedience to the will of his Father.

Some of the Jewish leaders reacted vehemently to Jesus' healings and exorcisms and they opposed him with malicious slander. How could Jesus get the power and authority to release individuals from Satan's influence and control? They assumed that he had to be in league with Satan. They attributed his power to Satan rather than to God. Jesus answers their charge with two arguments. There were many exorcists in Palestine in Jesus' time. So Jesus retorted by saying that they also incriminate their own kin who cast out demons. If they condemn Jesus they also condemn themselves.

Whose kingdom do you follow and serve? In his second argument Jesus asserts that no kingdom divided against itself can survive for long. We have witnessed enough civil wars in our own time to prove the destructive force at work here for the annihilation of whole peoples and their land. If Satan lends his power against his own forces then he is finished.

Cyril of Alexandria, a 5th century church father explains the force of Jesus' argument:

Kingdoms are established by the fidelity of subjects and the obedience of those under the royal scepter. Houses are established when those who belong to them in no way whatsoever thwart one another but, on the contrary, agree in will and deed. I suppose it would establish the kingdom too of Beelzebub, had he determined to abstain from everything contrary to himself. How then does Satan cast out Satan? It follows then that devils do not depart from people on their own accord but retire unwillingly. "Satan," he says, "does not fight with himself." He does not rebuke his own servants. He does not permit himself to injure his own armor bearers. On the contrary, he helps his kingdom. "It remains for you to understand that I crush Satan by divine power." [Commentary on Luke, Homily 80]

How can a strong person be defeated except by someone who is stronger? Jesus asserted his power and authority to cast out demons as a clear demonstration of the reign of God. Jesus' reference to the

'finger of God'

points back to Moses' confrontation with Pharoah and his magicians who represented Satan and the kingdom of darkness (see Exodus 8:19). Jesus claims to be carrying on the tradition of Moses whose miracles freed the Israelites from bondage by the finger of God. God's power is clearly at work in the exorcisms which Jesus performed and they give evidence that God's kingdom has come.

God and his Word is the source of our protection and security What is the point of Jesus' grim story about a vacant house being occupied by an evil force? It is not enough to banish evil thoughts and habits from our lives. We must also fill the void with God who is the source of all that is good, wholesome, true, and life-giving for us. Augustine of Hippo said that our lives have a God-shaped void which only God can fill. If we attempt to leave it vacant or to fill it with something else which is not of God, we will end up being in a worse state in the end.

What do you fill the void in your life with? The Lord Jesus wants to fill our minds and hearts with the power of his life-giving word and healing love. Jesus makes it very clear that there are no neutral parties in this world. We are either for the Lord Jesus or against him, for the kingdom of God or against it. We cannot serve two kingdoms opposed to each another. There are ultimately only two universal kingdoms which stand in opposition to one another - the kingdom of God - his kingdom of light and truth - and the kingdom of darkness - which is opposed to God's truth and justice and which is dominated by Satan's lies and deception. If we disobey God's word, we open to door to the power of sin and the deception of Satan in our personal lives.

Is Jesus the Lord of your mind, heart, and home? If we want to live in true freedom, then our "house" (the inner core of our true being) must be occupied by Jesus where he is enthroned as Lord and Savior. The Lord assures us of his protection from spiritual harm and he gives us the help and strength we need to resist the devil and his lies (James 4:7). The Scriptures remind us that God is our refuge and his angels stand guard over us:

"Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your habitation, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways"(Psalm 91:9-11).

Do you know the peace and security of a life submitted to God and his word?

"Lord Jesus, be the ruler of my heart and the master of my home. May there be nothing in my life that is not under your lordship."

Psalm 9:1-5,7-8

1 I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. 2 I will be glad and exult in you, I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. 3 When my enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you. 4 For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne giving righteous judgment. 5 You have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their name for ever and ever. 7 But the LORD sits enthroned for ever, he has established his throne for judgment; 8 and he judges the world with righteousness, he judges the peoples with equity.

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: Jesus has conquered Satan, by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD)

"[Jesus] has conquered the ruler of this world. Having, so to speak, hamstrung him and stripped him of the power he possessed, he has given him over for a prey to his followers. He says, 'The strong man, being armed, guards his house; all his goods are in peace. But when one who is stronger than he shall come on him and overcome him, he takes away all his armor wherein he trusted and divides his spoil.' This is a plain demonstration and type of the matter depicted after the manner of human affairs... Before the coming of the Savior, he was in great power, driving and shutting up in his own stall flocks that were not his own but belonging to God over all. He was like some voracious and most insolent robber. Since the Word of God who is above all, the Giver of all might and Lord of powers attacked him, having become man, all his goods have been plundered and his spoil divided. Those of old who had been ensnared by him into ungodliness and error have been called by the holy apostles to the acknowledgment of the truth and been brought near to God the Father by faith in his Son." (excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 81)