friendica.eskimo.com

It is not surprising. Every US administration has its share of banal bureaucrats who, in exchange for an important job with an impressive title, are willing to forfeit their integrity and jettison the truth in the “service” of country.

And so, since early October, the world has seen and heard a lot from Rumsfeld’s hideous heir, National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby.

Like Rumsfeld, the former career naval officer speaks in a high-pitched monotone befitting his dour, monochromatic character.

Like Rumsfeld, Kirby is obliged to spout state-sanctioned bromides in defence of the wholesale destruction of innocent civilians – casualties all of America’s familiar kill-first, think-later foreign policy.

Like Rumsfeld, Kirby is the darling of Beltway pundits who, as a rule, defer to authority and genuflect before power.

On cue, the Washington Post described Kirby earlier this week as a “star” whose skill and experience have translated into “a commanding presence” during press briefings where he keeps the White House’s “messaging” on Gaza “clear”.

Kirby, the Post wrote, is “direct, plain-spoken and unmistakably supportive of the administration’s pro-Israeli policies”.

...

I thought it impossible that Kirby could outdo his doddering boss, US President Joe Biden who, memorably, trafficked in fabrications about beheaded babies, and questioned the number of killed Palestinian children, women and men.

Silly me.

...

“Look, we certainly share the concerns that so many others have … about the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Kirby said last week from a rostrum at the White House flanked by the Stars and Stripes. “Tell me, name me, one more nation, any other nation, that is doing as much as the United States to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Gaza. You can’t. You just can’t.”

I should let that astonishing paragraph stand as Kirby’s sorry epitaph since it demonstrates how prepared the Biden administration and its smug surrogates are to disfigure reality to promote a revolting lie.

But Kirby’s deplorable admonition requires a reply. Decency demands it.

Much of Gaza and 18,600 Palestinians – the bulk of them children and women – have been erased and buried in mass graves with the help of America’s lethal largesse.

Thousands more have been maimed, traumatised or remain entombed beneath the pancake-like rubble – the shattered remnants of once-vibrant homes, businesses, schools, mosques and hospitals.


Another alt tech social media site abandoned.


Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.

So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.

I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.

I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.

In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.

In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.

But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)

:catodon:​ xx




This is just plain hilarious:

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (And here's something interesting: Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)


It's always interesting to find out who wins when the big boys clash like this.

The New York Times on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies’ artificial intelligence models infringe upon the newspaper’s intellectual property.

The complaint, viewed by VOA, argues that the AI models created by OpenAI and Microsoft used “millions of The Times’s copyrighted news articles” to train chatbots that now compete with the newspaper as an information source.

The lawsuit marks the first time that a major American media outlet has sued the companies behind the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT and other AI tools. The case also underscores questions that have proliferated from news organizations over the past year over the journalistic, financial and legal implications of generative AI.


I wonder if the casualty numbers for Israel will even be accurate once the whole war is over.

It always looks like Nigeria isn't far from anarchy.

Amnesty International criticised the government after the attacks, saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that “the Nigerian authorities have been failing to end frequent deadly attacks on rural communities of Plateau State”.
1

Now they're really doing numbers.

Shan state, known as a hub for crystal methamphetamine trafficking, is rife with other illegal activities in enclaves along the Chinese border, as criminals take advantage of ongoing civil unrest and armed conflict under the junta which seized power in a 2021 coup. Falling within neighboring China’s orbit, northern Shan state has become a focal point for Chinese scammers who target their own citizens.

From Oct. 31 to Dec. 15, nearly 12,050 Chinese citizens linked to online scam groups in the region were arrested and deported, according to a mid-December announcement by the State Administration Council, the formal name of the military junta governing Myanmar.

Most of the Chinese nationals sent back were operating in the Kokang region, whose mostly ethnic Chinese population has backed resistance to the junta.

Arrests of other Chinese nationals involved in the criminal activity have occurred in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army, or USWA, said to be the largest ethnic armed organization in Myanmar. USWA soldiers arrested more than 1,000 Chinese nationals involved in the gangs on Sept. 6-7 and immediately transferred them across the border to Chinese police.

Really the wild West out there.

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영향력과 밝은 미래 있어도 이렇게 하니... ㅜㅜ

누가 얘기해야하는데... 박봄 이렇게... 보이니... 좀... 어색하지않아?

자유롭게 얘기하는 것은 맞지 않지만 박봄의 현황은 좋지 않다고 생각해. 팬으로 얘기하고 있음.


/x/-Phile pleroma (AP)
Thread: /x/35857332
I start breathing, and
>nose blocked
>try buteyko to unblock nose, pure suffering
>lung pain, probably cancer
>abdomen pain (when I try deep diaphragm breathing), probably inflamed organs or cancer or kidney stones or ligma
>knee pain (this is getting better)
>fall asleep every 15 minutes despite slept 10 hours
I have to admit this shit is insanely hard than looks.
1 1

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.

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.

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Apparently bro is implicated in the murder of 2,000 Tutsis.
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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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Nanook friendica
It's already been proven that it's over fishing and not temperature that caused the bleaching, the fish eat something that attacks the coral and cause the bleaching, if the fish population is adequate to control this parasite then the coral are healthy even in warmer temperatures. And global warming only affects ocean temperatures very near the surface anyway.
Vee McMillen diaspora
Aha, thanks, I knew it! They lie.

The new Argentine candidate for the far right is an absolute firecracker. I don't agree with him on everything but just watching a guy go off like that is amazing.

I don't know if he can win but these numbers do change how I feel about Argentines and the possibilities of demagogues taking over.


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

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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.

2
Vee McMillen diaspora
Another very bad call.

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.


"Oh, please forgive me," she says.

"Now we have to cane you," says one of the staff.

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Vee McMillen diaspora
Very low scum of the earth to hit elderly people.
1

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.

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Vee McMillen diaspora
So they dribbled in just enough 'support' to keep the war going, but not so they could end it. The US needs to get out of NATO, and NATO needs to be ended.
3

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.


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.

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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.


1

People just like right out there

Going wild on all sides

1
Vee McMillen diaspora
Crazy people, crazy times.

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.

Azovites conducting bloodletting ritual to their pagan gods.

https://twitter.com/SameeraKhan/status/1685591150738980864

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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.
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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.
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BAP On Putin

Bronze Age Pervert bringing the heat:

When I look at the condition of west Europe now after 70 years of American vassalage I don’t see sovereign countries, I see places where the population has by force been replaced to such an extent that a young German is now a minority in his own age group in his own country. The Soviets were chimp brutal oppressors, looted, shot, did many bad things. But look at East Europe now – they didn’t replace the people. The people in west Europe were replaced. And it’s not just about the white race, because the same is happening to South Korea: it is simply the most cruel method of rule by the gang that has overthrown America, where they are using it on their own people–to replace nations in their own lands, to introduce tribalism, racial hatred, in the mistaken belief they will profit off of this. To these methods have been added now another still more cruel, of the transsexual movement which is quickly heading to where the state is able to claim ownership of children and castrate boys without consent of parents, which has already begun to happen in certain few places, but will only accelerate.

These two methods are the most brutal used by the most brutal Oriental despotisms and tyrannies, and they were not and are not being used by the Russians. We know Putler is corrupt and self-interested, but as long as he’s the only one giving resistance to this cabal that has overthrown the western governments, we will support him. In the case of Ukraine, this place is being used as a base of great value to this cabal: they are able to launder money to themselves, intelligence, and use it as a staging ground for operations like the Russia Hoax and the January 6 false flag attack on congress. They must be deprived of this base. Putin seems to have neither the intentions nor the ability to occupy Ukraine: his aims are ours, to deprive the cabal of this base.

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Ukraine Calls for More Anti-Air Systems

They obviously need it:

Ukraine cannot protect all of its main cities from Russian missile threats without a significant increase in the provision of air defence systems, according to a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Mykhailo Podolyak said the strikes on Odesa over the past week had shown clearly that the Russian strategy was to bombard Ukrainian cities, with the aim of overwhelming air defence systems.

“Russia’s tactics are clear: they use massive drone attacks to overload our anti-aircraft systems and then in parallel they have a window of opportunity to use ballistic missiles to target infrastructure,” he told the Guardian, in an interview at the presidential administration in Kyiv.

Honestly, there is probably not enough that can even be given over to them to make the sort of difference that is required.

This combined with the various other setbacks that the Ukraine faces, it does not make sense to not be actively pursuing a peace deal.

They should have been working on cutting their losses a long time ago, but for whatever reason, Zelenskyy thinks that NATO is fully capable of giving them the instantaneous and infinite supplies necessary to potentially win the war...

All while he runs out of manpower.

It's a mess of a situation and allowing the war to go on like this is a human rights violation.

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It might actually be the case that this is a relatively unimportant charge that just isn't being substantiated with enough evidence and they are unbothered due to the largesse of the remaining cases against him but it still makes me uneasy.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal judge late Wednesday it did “not intend to proceed” with a campaign finance charge against disgraced FTX founder and Democrat super donor Sam Bankman-Fried.

Consultation with the Bahamas on the campaign finance charges in Bankman-Fried’s original extradition document last year were behind the decision as part of an effort to adhere to the legal obligations therein, Forbes reports.

The campaign finance violation charge was among eight counts present in the DOJ’s original indictment—which also includes wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering—in December.

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Honestly this is a bit hard to read, but I share it - it concerns the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, famous for the transgender terrorist entering and killing the Principal and some students.

RIP to all the victims.

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feminists will literally efface the most beautiful & tender aspects of women if they think it will further their vendetta against men.


Every Mother that bonded with her baby will say; "BS on this 💩!"
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Great observation:

What we’re seeing is a widespread recognition that the naive efforts to integrate China into the western “rules-based order” have utterly failed which has precipitated a dramatic reversal in policy that is steadily gaining momentum and ferocity. China has demonstrated that it will never become a vassal state in Uncle Sam’s sprawling empire. The Chinese have remained stubbornly independent throughout, initiating only those reforms that fit within their political orientation while rejecting any changes that might challenge the party leadership.
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While Spanish news outlet Ultima Hora reported that the 21- to 23-year-old suspects were of Turkish origin, much of the Spanish press was fixated on the “German” aspect of the crime, which the men allegedly filmed on their smartphones. Even the German press was quick to claim the men were Germans with no context, with Welt, one of the most popular conservative papers in the country, running the headline “Five German vacationers on Mallorca have to be remanded in custody.” At no point in the piece does Welt mention the migration background of the suspects.
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