Absolutely serious issue:

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. debate sending billions more in military aid to Ukraine, an American citizen journalist, Gonzalo Lira, is languishing in a Ukrainian prison on allegations of spreading Russian propaganda, throwing into question the status of free speech in the supposed democracy the Biden administration argues is worthy of more taxpayer dollars.

The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve another $24 billion for Ukraine for now through the end of this year, which would add to the $113 billion that Congress has committed to the country since its war with Russia began in February of last year.

President Biden on Tuesday at the United Nations argued that investment in Ukraine was an investment in “the future of every country that seeks a world governed by basic rules.”

... We are funding a war that is propping up a fake democracy to take a stand against the tyranny of Russia...

... But it's all to further very questionable geopolitical goals.

This is how they like to phrase everything, right:

“I think if people are concerned about children, then they should be concerned about children’s human rights,” Devine said. “It has nothing to do with children — it’s about people’s bigotry and people’s fear. And I think it’s cowardly to suggest it’s about children.”

THEY have valid concerns about human rights and freedom, without any other agenda...

YOU have bigotry and fear.

Wild stuff happening up in Canada:

India also expelled an unnamed Canadian diplomat on Tuesday after Trudeau revealed Monday that there are “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in Nijjar’s shooting death, and that India’s top intelligence officer in Canada was being expelled as a consequence.

Also interesting to see liberal Jagmeet Singh get in on this:

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the allegation deserves more scrutiny, which will come through police investigations and the upcoming public inquiry. He also wrote to the judge in charge of the public inquiry, asking her to explicitly include Indian interference in her work.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Mastodon


I'm trying to bring up a Mastodon instance and running into this:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile --trace
** Invoke assets:precompile (first_time)
** Invoke assets:environment (first_time)
** Execute assets:environment
** Invoke environment (first_time)
** Execute environment
** Execute assets:precompile
** Invoke webpacker:compile (first_time)
** Invoke webpacker:verify_install (first_time)
** Invoke webpacker:check_node (first_time)
** Execute webpacker:check_node
** Invoke webpacker:check_yarn (first_time)
** Execute webpacker:check_yarn
** Invoke webpacker:check_binstubs (first_time)
** Execute webpacker:check_binstubs
** Execute webpacker:verify_install
** Invoke environment
** Execute webpacker:compile
Compiling...
Compilation failed:
yarn run v1.22.19
info Visit yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.


warning You don't appear to have an internet connection. Try the --offline flag to use the cache for registry queries.
warning You don't appear to have an internet connection. Try the --offline flag to use the cache for registry queries.
error Command "webpack" not found.

I do have an Internet Connection, I also have plenty of RAM, 256GB with 512GB swap.

Any helpful hints appreciated.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Modest Mouse and Pixies Fucked Over by Ticket Bastards and Climate Change Bullshit Arena in Seattle


False Advertising, Theft, 4th Amendment Violations, Shit Audio, Two Great Bands was it worth it?

Well, I won't do it again. Ticket Master advertised the tickets at $35 each, seemed like a pretty decent price but I actually paid $131 for two tickets by the time Ticket Bastards added all their bullshit fees. I was not informed in advanced that I'd be irradiated and just short of body cavity searched to get in. I DO NOT GO TO PLACES THAT VIOLATE MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS and ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY DO NOT INFORM ME IN ADVANCE, Hence I will not be going to another Ticket Master event nor other events at the Arena. I had a pocket knife which I use for my work, which I was going to be going to immediately after the concert stolen. Well actually extorted, either waste $131 in tickets OR give up a $47 knife. Now as for the audio. The speakers in the Arena are utterly incapable of any bass frequency below 100Hz, had at LEAST 20% harmonic distortion, had absolutely NO transient response on the lows, the highs were good if you sat in a location directly facing the stage, but if you were off to the side, nothing above 8Khz, though you could hear the higher frequencies delayed by about 1-1/2 second after it bounced off the rear of the auditorium. Unfortunately the hanging prison mattresses added to the ceiling during reconstruction didn't help that much. If they had spent a quarter of the amount they spent on LEDs it undoubtedly would have been a better experience, but what would have helped the most would be some semblance of respect and civility and basic honesty on the part of Ticket Bastards and the Arena security staff. I go to lots of events in Tacoma and NEVER get treated like this. Sad to see the city I was born in turn into such a piece of shit.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Ball Lightning


This is one of the coolest ball lightning videos I've seen, especially it's interaction with electrified rails and with the power lines. Really would like to understand the physics of these things. It surely involves some very intense fields in order to create the arc to the power lines many feet away yet it doesn't arc to the ground and ground itself out.

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Anti-Nuclear Propoganda


It is my personal belief that nuclear fission is the ONLY chance the human race has of surviving and prospering up until the point where hydrogen fusion or some totally unknown at this time technology can provide us with reliable, abundant,
economical, and long term viable energy.

But after a number of nuclear accidents, even though the total number of deaths that have resulted are far lower than ANY other power source including all of the renewables, people are paranoid to the point where it's very difficult to license a new reactor and particularly it is difficult to license new safer and much more sustainable designs.

I want you to understand the bullshit that the anti-nuke people go through, first see this film:

.

I want you to note here that after mentioning the legacy of nuclear waste from the Hanford program to make Plutonium from the bomb, he makes the statement that Washington has the highest per capital cancer rates in the nation, this is patently false.

See this chart below, (unfortunately, Friendica's composer will not allow me to inline the chart as I would like) and you will see that Washington State ranks 20th from the lowest to highest in terms of deaths per 100,000 due to cancer. In other words, we are not even average in cancer rates, we are BELOW average. See that Oregon, who gets it's drinking water from the Columbia, which is the contaminated river they are speaking about, has a similar rate. So right there, the very first premise of this film is ONE BIG FAT LIE.

Also notice some of the lowest areas of deaths by cancer on this chart, are the states were above ground nuclear testing was carried out, Nevada (16th lowest cancer deaths), Colorado (4th lowest cancer deaths), New Mexico (9th lowest cancer deaths), and Alaska (34th lowest cancer rates), of all of these only Alaska has cancer rates above the 50th percentile. Colorado is particularly interesting in that it has relatively high background radiation rates not because of the nuclear testing but because it's so high above the atmosphere that there is relatively little shielding of cosmic rays.

The states where the highest cancer rates are tend to be the farming states, so it would seem farming chemicals, probably in large part "round up", would seem to be a much higher contribution to cancer than nuclear waste.

And this is with today's rather poor from either a safety or waste production standpoint boiling water or pressurized water reactors, and the main thing that makes these reactors so dangerous is that they operate at pressures of around 300 atmospheres in order to raise the boiling point of water to around 600-700C because at lower temperatures the thermal efficiency is poor. And in terms of waste production usually these reactors are only 1 or 2 pass, use only the energy available in the U-235 isotope of uranium and recover less than 1/2 percent of the Uraniums energy potential, and this is precisely what makes the waste a problem.

A different type of reactor, a molten salt liquid fuel reactor addresses both the safety issues and the waste and proliferation issues. We should be building these in huge numbers because not only could they produce as much energy as we need to power the planet for more than 1000 years just using the waste from existing reactors, but they could extend the lifetime of existing resources to provide power for the next million years, even more if we extract uranium and or thorium from oceans. And at the same time they eliminate the the long term actinide waste, it just becomes additional fuel, leaving only short term fission products which return to the radioactivity level of the fuel that was initially mined in 300 year or less, and much of those isotopes have medical or industrial uses.

They are anti-proliferation because while they do produce plutonium PL-239 that in theory can be used in bombs, they also produce other isotopes of plutonium which are simply too hot to isolate from the PL-239 and which would cause the bomb to fizzle rather than to explode, that is to say you can't separate it economically by any of the classical methods, diffusion, distillation, centrifugation, thermal diffusion, exchange reactions, lasers, and electrolysis, because it's too hot to handle so it is just left in the reactor core to burn and produce energy.

Now the reason these reactors are so safe, 1) They do not operate at significant pressure, less than two atmospheres generally, just enough pressure to circulate the fuel through the primary coolant loop and heat exchanger, 2) the fission products are constantly removed so if the reactor is scrammed there is no residual source of heat, in a boiling water reactor, the fission products remain in the fuel rod and even if the chain reaction is stopped entirely they still provide enough heat to cause a melt down. 3) A meltdown can't occur because liquid state is the NORMAL state of the reactor. 4) The reactors are self regulating and self adjusting to load with NO mechanical devices. The liquid salt mixtures have a high expansion coefficient that moves the fissionable atoms away from each other as it heats up slowing the reaction, or brings them together as it cools off increasing the reaction and this happens with NO mechanical interventions. At Oak Ridge, they built and operated a test molten salt reactor, they pulled all the control rods so the reactor was going full-tilt, shut off the cooling, and allowed the reactor to run this way for 24 hours, no damage resulted. 5) If by some weird unforseen means the reactor DID actually overheat, it would just melt a melt plug and allow the liquid fuel to drain into a much larger drain tank that would separate the fuel far enough to stop the chain reaction entirely, and with little fission products, because they are continuously removed, there is so little residual heat that just normal radiative cooling of the tank to it's surroundings is sufficient for the fuel to cool down and solidify. 6) Because there is no water in the reactor tank, no hydrogen is produced so there is no potential for a chemical explosion like those that happened at Fukushima to disperse the radioactive elements. Further since only the actinides are in the reactor and the much more radioactive fission products are continuously removed, even if you have an explosion, for which there is neither a chemical nor nuclear basis, you wouldn't distribute these products across the nearby land. The absolute worst nuclear accident you can have is frankly a plumbing leak in which some of the fuel would spill upon the floor and solidify, and since it doesn't have fission products, it would not be intensely radioactive and easily scooped up and thrown back into the reactor tank.

So there are three very compelling reasons we should build these reactors, first, safety, they are safe based entirely on the principals of physics and need no safety equipment to activate to keep them that was, they are inherently safe. Second, they can burn the existing actinide waste for fuel, turning a million year waste disposal problem into a 300 year waste disposal problem so we aren't leaving a nuclear legacy to future generations, and third, they can eliminate the need for fossil fuels, and pull the entire planet out of poverty. We mustn't let stupidity as promoted by this film which is chucked full of lies and damned lies, to deny us this future.

While we currently have none of these reactors in the US, the Russians have been operating several for upwards of 50 years without incidence, and the Chinese, Indians, French, are experimenting with them. Japan has been experimenting with a similar but less safe design that uses molten sodium rather than salts, and the issues are two fold, one is that sodium is more corrosive than the salts although salts are somewhat corrosive, but water at 700C is very corrosive, and the other is that sodium is highly flammable and self ignites when it comes in contact with the air, and Japan did have a accident in their experimental reactor of this nature and had it shut down for repairs for some time as a result so for these reasons I do not favor these reactor types except given a choice between a boiling water reactor and these I'd prefer them, but molten salt is a much safer option.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Who wouldda thunk it?


Découvrez comment profiter de radiofrench.fr/ecouter/rfm.htm… en ligne pour une expérience d'écoute captivante. Cet article vous guide à travers les étapes pour écouter RFM en direct, avec une variété de musique, des émissions animées et des discussions en direct pour vous divertir.

RFM est une station de radio reconnue pour ses émissions de qualité, ses animateurs charismatiques et sa musique variée. Si vous souhaitez savoir comment profiter de RFM en direct en ligne pour une expérience d'écoute captivante, vous êtes au bon endroit. Dans cet article, nous vous montrons comment accéder facilement à RFM en direct via Internet et vous immerger dans l'ambiance musicale et animée.

Assurez-vous de régler le volume à un niveau confortable et d'ajuster les paramètres audio selon vos préférences.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Memories - Elaine Paige


I know it didn't get the highest reviews, but I loved it, thought the story line was quite good, but most of all I loved Elaine Paiges rendition of Memories. For whatever reason, this song for me is a real emotional roller coaster.

This regime is so butt hurt.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy supposedly “deliberately participated” in organizing “genocide and war,” Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, claimed on Thursday. The accusation, posted on X (formerly Twitter) came after the former French leader suggested a diplomatic resolution to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
The Ukrainian official blasted Sarkozy’s “fantastic” and “criminal” proposal after the latter suggested resolving the conflict, ongoing for a year and a half now, through a series of referendums under “strict” international control in the four new Russian regions and Crimea. Such a move would allow the territorial disputes between the two neighbors to be settled once and for all and help Europe avoid merely freezing the conflict, he told Paris daily Le Figaro earlier this week.

Sarko proposes that disputed regions undergo referendums to end this terrible war and the Ukrainian government lashes out so brutally...

Do I sense some lack of confidence that they would even win this referendums?

Just bizarre.

This should honestly alarm people, IMO:

The coral reef off southeast Florida is experiencing an unprecedented and potentially deadly level of bleaching this summer because of rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change, federal scientists said Thursday.

Some sites around the Florida Keys are being exposed to twice the amount of heat stress that causes corals to die, and earlier in the year than ever before, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a telephone news conference. They said the phenomenon is likely to affect the Caribbean very soon and a global bleaching event could be just around the corner.

“We are quite concerned and worried and stressed about this event,” said Ian Enochs, a research ecologist at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. “It’s not a normal thing.”

It's definitely not good that things like this are happening.

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in reply to Nanook

Puzzling it is, and perhaps on more counts than
Richard Vobes mentions.
For the suggested purpose a slightly assisted natural
wildfire would have done as well and better. A bad wolf
might have wanted to try out a new toy. But what toy?
Anything cosmic or airborne would have stood in need
of sufficient energy in the first place.
Has anyone heard of a flying garden of solar panels?
Or do we think nuclear?
Perhaps sth beamed up and reflected by some natural
mirror -- possibly a concave one?
Targeting from afar thousands of individual houses?
Slapping the spot in its entirety would not have spared
the roads and the trees, would it?
Slapping with sth initially affecting only conductors?
Any pictures of overhead power lines?
To complete the circle: a ground job made to appear
hyper-high-tech?
By the way, hardly a day passes without a report of a
-- to my mind -- poorly explained fire, especially in
Russia.

Check this out:

Quebec is on track to finish the year with seven per cent of all deaths recorded as doctor-assisted, Bureau said. "That's more than anywhere else in the world: 4.5 times more than Switzerland, three times more than Belgium, more than the Netherlands. It's two times more than Ontario."

Unfathomable.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebecers-maid-no-longer-last-resort-oversight-body-1.6936530

China Making Moves in Africa


I find this an interesting move from China overall:

TOKYO -- While China-Australia relations seem to be thawing, Beijing is slowly but surely moving to cut its dependence on Australian iron ore.
Last Friday, mining giant Rio Tinto and a consortium of Chinese state-owned enterprises announced that they had concluded key agreements with the government of Guinea to build a trans-Guinean railway capable of carrying iron ore from the west African nation's inland to the coast.
Over 600 kilometers of rail together with port facilities will "unlock" the potential of the Simandou mountain range, "the world's largest known undeveloped supply of high-grade, low-impurity iron ore," said Bold Baatar, the Rio Tinto executive committee's lead for Guinea and copper, in a press release.
Rather than cutting through nearby Liberia or Sierra Leone, the plan is to travel through Guinea, which has a tradition of being independent and friendly to China. That means snaking through mountainous Guinean terrain to a deep sea port that will also be built. The plan envisions the construction of 235 bridges, while the longest tunnel will be over 11 km.

archive.is/RbjXH

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Andy Ngo Trial - Judge Rules in Favor of Antifa


Fairly remarkable in the sense that we are literally seeing this in a courtroom, but absolutely unsurprising that it is in Portland:

During closing statements, defense lawyer Michelle Burrows told the jurors that not only does she self-identify as a progressive and “anti-fascist,” she is going to make herself an “I am Antifa” t-shirt to wear after the trial. She told the jury that the negative reputation surrounding Antifa is false and painted the organized militant group as activists that fight for social justice and civil rights, despite their extensive documented history of carrying out acts of violence.

In defense of Antifa, Burrows told the jury, “Resistance in this country has never been peaceful.”

But I also like the way that she walks it back here, lol:

However, as she argued before the jurors, Ms. Burrows admitted that the “black clad people” that had physically beaten Andy Ngo were “terrorists.”

OK... So you want to make a tee shirt that represents your affiliation with a group of people who engage in terrorism..?

The defense attorney went on to claim that journalist Andy Ngo does not have clean hands. She implied that Ngo is also a “doxxer” because he posts publicly available mugshots of the crimes that Antifa-affiliated individuals have committed on his Twitter account, in which he has more than one million followers.

Seeing that the lawyer calculated that, to some degree, people naturally dislike doxing is also something that I find encouraging. Doxing as a tactic may be quite limited as a tactic - eventually there will be enough of a consensus to outright illegalize the process, as is already the case to some degree in California.

Niger's coup leaders have closed the country's airspace until further notice, citing the threat of military intervention.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 is showing that there are currently no aircraft in Niger's skies.

The West African group of countries, Ecowas, had earlier warned it could use force if President Mohamed Bazoum was not reinstated by 23:00 GMT on Sunday.

A junta spokesman says Niger's armed forces are ready to defend the country.

Mr Bazoum was detained on 26 July, and Gen Abdourahmane Tchiani, commander of the presidential guard, later proclaimed himself the new leader.

The military takeover has been internationally condemned, including by former colonial power France and the rest of the European Union, as well as the United Nations and the United States.

It seems to be kicking off over in Africa to some degree, at least.

We will see if bellicose NATO will tell their colonies to calm down.

Amazing to see voice of Europe saying this.

There have been no victories—not even bloody and debilitating wins like in the Fourth Battle of Karkhov—for nearly a year. Western leaders still profess that their support will continue. Yet the Western Alliance now admits it didn’t give Ukrainians nearly enough good stuff for even modest tactical gains in their ongoing, sacrificial offensive—and knew it going in. And increasingly, Ukrainian unit-level commanders are accusing higher leaders of simply using them as cannon-fodder to satisfy NATO overlords. Not just platoons, but larger units are surrendering to Russian forces. Morale is cratering.

This is attrition coming to fruition. The fallen empires of 1918—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottomans—needed four years to reach that point. In a third of that time, Ukraine has lost 2.5 percent of its population. This reckoning amounts to what Soviet historians called “irreplaceable losses”—meaning, all soldiers who would never, ever return to the ranks.

Indeed, the real Ukrainian losses may well be higher.

in reply to J. Løvstuhagen

What's so striking about all of this is that the very top of US intelligence should have been aware that there just wasn't much of a chance.

It shows that we are deficient concerning our intelligence on Russian capabilities.

Or, more disturbingly, it shows that the information that we fed to the decision makers did not deter them in any way - they were determined to have this miserable conflict.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Cab Driver Takes HiJackers On Ride


This cab driver does exactly what I would have done in this situation.

TekNo ⚝ aEvl reshared this.

in reply to Nanook

The recent UN statement is a perfect example of the kind of political bullshit where very selective data is used to support a wealth transfer agenda. You'll note he says hottest in the last 120,000 years, look at this graph and you'll see there are regular peaks over time, we're at a present peak, and the last big one before this was about 140,000 years, and it was larger THIS peak, so if they had picked 140,000 years instead of 120,000 years then this argument wouldn't fly, hence the selective use of data.



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St. Gregory of Nyssa on Song of Solomon


Some more interesting content - from St. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth century Saint, concerning how to interpret difficult passages:

By all these diff erent modes of speech and names for intellectual discernment, the apostle is pointing us to a single form of instruction: one ought
not in every instance to remain with the letter (since the obvious sense of the
words oft en does us harm when it comes to the virtuous life), but one ought
to shift to an understanding that concerns the immaterial and intelligible, so
that corporeal ideas may be transposed into intellect and thought when the
fl eshly sense of the | words has been shaken off like dust (cf. Matt 10:14)
Th is moreover is why he says, “Th e letter kills, but the spirit gives life”
(2 Cor 3:6), for frequently the narrative, if we stop short at the mere events,
does not furnish us with models of the good life. How does it profi t the cause
of a virtuous life to hear that the prophet Hosea got himself a child by sexual
malfeasance (Hos 1:2) and that Isaiah went in to the prophetess (Isa 8:3),if one stops short at the literal sense? Or what do the stories about David,
in which adultery and murder have agreed together in a single crime (cf.
2 Kgdms 11), contribute to the virtuous life? But if an account is found that
gives an incontestable indication of how these events fi t into the history of salvation, then the word of the apostle will be shown to be true: “Th e letter kills”
(for it contains examples of evildoing), “but the Spirit gives life” (for it transposes a meaning that is incongruous and discordant into a more divine sense).
We know too that when, in the likeness and form of a human being
(Phil 2:7), the Word who is worshiped by the whole creation transmitted
the divine mysteries through the medium of fl esh, it was in the following
manner | that he unveiled for us the thoughts contained in the law. He says
that he and his Father are the two witnesses whose testimony is true (John
8:18; cf. Deut 19:15), and the brazen serpent that was lift ed up high and was
the people’s remedy against deadly stings he refers to the dispensation that
took place for our sake on the cross (John 3:14). Also he exercises the wits of
his own holy disciples by the veiled and hidden things he speaks in parables,
in similitudes, in dark sayings, in aphorisms—things set forth in the form of
enigmatic statements.4
In private, he would give interpretations of these and
explain to them what was obscure, but on occasion, when they did not grasp
the meaning of his words, he would blame them for being slow to understand and slack in intelligence. For when he commanded them to beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees, and they in their small-minded way looked to
their food pouches, in which they had failed to bring a supply of bread, he
reprimanded them for failing to grasp that | the word “leaven” is a reference
to teaching (Matt 16:5–12). Again, when the disciples were setting a meal
before him, he responded, “I have food to eat of which you do not know”
(John 4:32), and since they supposed that he was speaking of corporeal food
that had been brought him from elsewhere, he explained his statement by
saying that the food that is proper and appropriate for him is to fulfi ll the
salutary [divine] will

PDF available at the link.

Old Testament Interpretation as Allegory


Terrific reddit post from an amateur explaining some of the early Church father's positions on some of the elements in the Old Testament:

The conquest passages are the passages that speak about the Israelites conquering the land. Many of these war narratives cause ethical and moral controversy for obvious reasons. In the Christian spiritual tradition these narratives are read symbolically. Similar to the Muslim traditions view that the concept of Jihad is an internal struggle, the conquest passages are read symbolically as a struggle to conquer sin and wickedness. These are examples.

(i)The destruction of the 7 nations

In Deuteronomy 7 and 20 it states there are 7 nations in the land. You are to go and put "the ban" on those 7 nations. Meaning you are to "destroy" or "annihilate" them.

St John Cassian one of the Church Fathers in his work called the "Conferences"(Conference 5) he views the 7 nations as symbolising the deadly sins. The goal of the of the spiritual life is to conquer these vices and temptation. Murder is a deadly sin. We have to conquer the vice and temptation to murder. Greed and covetousness is a deadly sin. We have to conquer those vices as well.

(ii)The Midianite War(Numbers 31)

In Numbers 31 it speaks of how Moses went to war against Midian and in the aftermath the Israelites took many spoils and captives after their military campaign. Origen of Alexandria in his commentaries on the Old Testament read the taking of spoils and captives in a symbolic light

In his Homilies on the Book of Numbers Origen reads the Midianite war as symbolising the spiritual struggle. In Church doctrine Christians are part of what's called the "church militant"(soldiers of Christ). Our job to to engage in spiritual warfare for the sake of righteousness. How do we do that? Origen states "But they fight by means of prayers and fasts, justice and piety, gentleness, chastity and all the virtues of self-control, as if they were armed with the weapons of war."(Homily 25).

When people see us struggling for righteousness through the weapons of justice and piety they become "captives" and "prisoners" to the Gospel and the Word of God because they are "captivated" by the example of Christians who live a life dedicated to justice and righteousness. These people that are "captivated" by these virtues are the "spoils" of those who struggle for virtue and justice in this life.

(iii)Joshua's conquest

Just like other passages Origen of Alexandria read the conquest accounts in Joshua symbolically, and you see this particularly in his homilies on the Battle of Jericho. The walls of Jericho for Origen symbolised the walls of hatred in the human heart, and the city itself symbolised malice. So the destruction of Jericho symbolises the destruction of malice and hatred in the human heart.

Taking this one step further, Christ stated in the New Testament Jesus says the "kingdom of God is inside of you"(Luke 17:21). For Origen, Israel's conquest of Jericho symbolise the sovereignty of sin being replaced with the sovereignty of the Kingdom of God in the human heart.

(iv)The destruction of the "child and the infant".

In the conquest accounts this language is often times used and it generates a lot of controversy. St Gregory of Nyssa in work "The Life of Moses" when commenting on the Ten plagues states "The infant lifts his eyes only to see his mother, and tears are the sole perceptible sign of his sadness. And if he obtains anything which his nature desires he signifies his pleasure by smiling. If such a one now pays the penalty of his father's wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness?_Life of Moses(Book II, par. 91).

Gregory answering this question he posses reads this symbolically stating "The teaching is this: When through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginning of evil. For when he slays the beginning, he destroys at the same time what follows after it. The Lord teaches the same thing in the Gospel, all but explictly calling on us to kill the firstborn of the Egyptian evils when he commands us to abolish lust and anger and to have no more fear of the stain of adultery or the guilt of murder. Neither of these things would develop itself, but anger produces murder and lust produces adultery. Since the producer of evil gives birth to lust before adultery and anger before murder, in destroying the firstborn he certainly kills along with it the offspring which follows"_Life of Moses(Book II, par. 92-94)

What Gregory is saying here is that is that a sin like anger(in it's malicious form) is essentially murder in it's infancy, so we have to destroy the temptation towards murderous intent while it's still in its infancy before it grows or gives birth to something else. And this applies to all sins and wickedness on both a personal and social level. So Nazism was one of the worst forms wickedness in the world, but when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1923 it was still in it's infancy. If the world had destroyed the ideology of Nazism in it's infancy there would be no WWII and Holocaust.

These are all examples of how the passages speaking about the Biblical conquest are read symbolically. Now why does the symbolic and allegorical reading of the text have any validity in a Christian context? The reasons are the following:

1)Reading the Bible allegorically is a Biblical tradition.

The allegorical interpretation of the text isn't a modern development. It isn't something newly developed by the whims of people in 2020 reading the Bible however they want. This is something a part of the tradition of the Church that goes back to the Bible itself.

St Paul the Apostle in his letter to the Galatians uses the stories of Hagar and Sarah. In Galatians 4 he reads the narrative allegorically as a distinction between the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem as well as symbolising the two covenants

Jesus in his dispute with the religious authorities over the Resurrection reads the verse from the Hebrew Bible that says "God of the living not the dead" symbolically as an argument for the Resurrection(Mark 12:27)

St Paul the Apostle in 2 Corinthians speaks about the difference between the "spirit" and "letter" of the text(2 Corinthians 3:6). Origen read that as an injunction that the spirit of the text is much more important than the letter of the text.

2)The Church tradition authorises an allegorical reading.

As I presented in my arguments the Church Fathers read these conquest accounts symbolically. You see it in the writings of Origen of Alexandria(Homilies on Numbers and Joshua). You see it with St Gregory of Nyssa in his commentary on the Life of Moses. St John Cassian as well. St Isidore of Seville also presents this interpretation as well as Pope St Gregory the Great in his commentary on the Book of Job.

The authority of the Church to interpret the text and Christian doctrine goes back to the Bible itself. St Paul states that the Church is the "pillar and foundation of the truth"(1 Timothy 3:15). He also states we are to "hold fast to the traditions that you were taught whether by word of mouth or by letter"(2 Thessalonians 2:15). Jesus himself recognises this authority stating "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven"(Matthew 18:18) and we see the Church excercising it's authority on scriptural interpretation when it came to the question of circumcision(Acts 15).

The Church Fathers and Church leaders are the ones who canonised the text in the first place, so the interpretation of those who canonised the text has massive weight. Add to that the fact that for those that come out of a High Church tradition(Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican) the sacred text and sacred tradition have the same weight of authority when it comes to revelation.

3)It is consistent with Christian spirituality

This reading of understanding the conquest as representing the struggle against sin and temptation is consistent with the Biblical understanding of doing battle against sin. The Apostle Paul speaks about how we are to "put to death" passions like fornication, evil desire, greed, etc(Colossians 3:5)

St Paul also uses military rhetoric in a symbolic manner when speaking of the struggle against wickedness. He speaks of how our sword is the word and our helmet is salvation(Ephesians 6:11-18) and how "faith and love" are our weapons(1 Thessalonians 5:8). This symbolic use of military metaphors would be expand by thinkers like Origen when it comes to the allegorical reading of the conquest

So for all of the reasons above I believe that the conquest passages are meant to be read symbolically and that the symbolic interpretation makes sense.

Anglicanpolitics123's post can be found at the link below.

I discovered this while searching for more resources on St. Gregory of Nyssa's rejection of the story of the Midianite genocide.

This is wild

Despite that, the Harvard Law grad who is married to a white banker has blamed all her problems on white people.

“I’m getting used to dealing with problems that are expensive, disruptive and white,” Wu had sneered at the Saint Patrick’s Day Breakfast while surrounded by the old Irish guard that used to define Boston. Sitting and smiling next to her was Senator Elizabeth Warren, a fellow “woman of color” and her old Harvard Law professor, who had given Wu her start in politics.


People just like right out there

Going wild on all sides

Symbolism in the Old Testament


From St. Neilos the Ascetic

The story of Ish-bosheth also teaches us not to be over-anxious about bodily things, and not to rely on the senses to protect us. He was a king who went to rest in his chamber, leaving a woman as door-keeper. When the men of Rechab came, they found her dozing off as she was winnowing wheat; so, escaping her notice, they slipped in and slew Ish-bosheth while he was asleep (cf 2 Sam. 4:5-8). Now when bodily concerns predominate, everything in man is asleep: the intellect, the soul and the senses. For the woman at the door winnowing wheat indicates the state of one whose reason is closely absorbed in physical things and trying with persistent efforts to purify them. It is clear that this story in Scripture should not be taken literally. For how could a king have a woman as doorkeeper, when he ought properly to be guarded by a troop of soldiers, and to have round him a large body of attendants? Or how could he be so poor as to use her to winnow the wheat? But improbable details are often included in a story because of the deeper truth they signify. Thus the intellect in each of us resides within like a king, while the reason acts as door-keeper of the senses. When the reason occupies itself with bodily things - and to winnow wheat is something bodily - the enemy without difficulty slips past unnoticed and slays the intellect. This is why Abraham did not entrust the guarding of the door to a woman, knowing that the senses are easily deceived; for they take pleasure in the sight of sensory things, and so divide the intellect and persuade it to share in sensual delights, although this is clearly dangerous. But Abraham himself sat by the door (cf. Gen. 18:1), allowing free entry to divine thoughts, while barring the way to worldly cares.

Climate alarmism


Wonderful content concerning climate issues:

On the weather maps shown in the media, the areas with temperatures above 35 degrees centigrade are colored blood red. Only a few years ago, those same temperatures would be indicated by shades of green, or at most yellow. No mention is made of snow falling in the Alps at altitudes above 1,800 meters (a rarity in summer). Nor has there been any mention in the media of snow falling in Johannesburg just a few weeks ago. Apparently, this is a rare occurrence even in the Southern Hemisphere winter there. Meanwhile, recent research on Antarctica has shown that during the 2009-2019 decade its ice cap has had a net growth of more than five thousand square kilometers.

This is absolutely the first time I've heard of any of this.

And this is the sort of quips you always like to see even if it comes off as not necessarily related to climate change:

The EU is no more than the political branch of NATO, and NATO is to the US what the Attic League was to Athens: an imperial control mechanism dressed up as a voluntary alliance.

Dwayne Parsons reshared this.

Leftists even talk of non-White immigrants rebuilding Britain after the Second World War, thus giving them a permanent stake in the country. This is usually in reference to events in 1948, when 1027 passengers were carried from Jamaica to London on the HMS Windrush, a voyage that has become symbolic of Britain’s transformation to a multicultural country. There is often a sense that after this Britain embraced multiculturalism and entered an inexorable path to its current state, but this is quite far from the truth.

...

In a British government meeting in 1955, proposals were debated for the creation of “an independent committee of enquiry into coloured migration”, noting that “the first purpose of an enquiry should be to ensure that the public … were made aware of the nature and extent of the problem: until this was more widely appreciated the need for restrictive legislation would not be recognised”.

In 1962, the public had indeed grown more hostile to the problem, and the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which, for the first time, legally curtailed free movement for citizens of Commonwealth countries. Everyone born outside with UK or without a UK passport was now subject to stricter immigration controls. Up to this time, there was an ambiguity in British law that allowed any citizen of a commonwealth country to immigrate to Britain. By this time, the government favoured the entry of Irish and other White immigrants to the UK, but wished to restrict the entry of others. The result was a voucher system which was seen as discriminating on the basis of race.

Many would be interesting to see that happenign right after WWII.

The nail in the coffin:

Without question, the majority of blame for the UK’s rapid demographic transformation rests at the feet of New Labour. As late as 1991, the UK was still 95% White. When New Labour took government in 1997, net migration to the UK was typically about 50,000 per year, a figure Labour and Conservatives had tacitly agreed to. By Labour’s second term from 2005-2010, this had quintupled to 250,000 per year. By the time they left office, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour had added 2.7 million new arrivals to the UK workforce.