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andsomemaniacgotridofthewheel · 7 months

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Good Omens Theories

My Personal General Speculations:

There will be a second kiss between Aziraphale & Crowley, if only to make up for the violent nature of the first one.

Aziraphale & Crowley will absolutely NOT be having sex or be revealed to have had sex in the past, both neither implied nor explicitly. I mean have you ever listened to anything Neil Gaiman ever said about them. And also that's what fan-fiction is for.

There will be no apology dances that relate to the final fifteen. (Past ones like the one in 1941 are fair game, also present ones if they're about something else, like Crowley leaves the toilet seat up or Azirphale dents the Bentley.)

There will be a 1941 Flashback Part III (I mean something is clearly missing so far).

Crowley's angel name will only be revealed if it becomes plot relevant. (But if you tag speculation about it judgmentally with "deadname" I'm blocking you on sight.)

Season 3 will end in the garden of their South Downs cottage, possibly with a nightingale singing.

Theories I like/believe are closer than anyone elses:

The Magic Trick Theory*

-> Similar but with Time Loops

Crowley is up to something in 2x02

Crowley was Raphael** (see notes & entries under "Angel Names", I think Crowley was probably Kokabiel. Not sure if the latter is really going to be important, though.)

Aziraphale is Raphael** (see "Angel Names" section, entry "Israfil")

Theories I dislike and/or don't believe in:

The Coffee-Theory***

The Body Swap Theory****

Aziraphale was acting under duress and sending secret signals during the Final Fifteen***

Crowley was Raphael (see above)

Crowley was Lucifer (Thankgod Neil already pulled the plug on that one.)

Adam is Jesus (He is the literal ANTI-christ!)

Crowley was Mary Magdalene (I mean he surely tempted Jesus with more than just all the kingdoms of the world, if ya know what I mean, and I genuinely hope that will lead to interesting situations in season 3, but that doesn't automatically mean he was Mary Magdalene.)

Mine:

No, I am not letting this miracle / box thing go.

Important Clues / Props / Rules:

Crowley's changing sideburns (& more in-depth)

Crowley's changing sunglasses

Bookshop Clock Time Skips

Clocks and Time Discrepancies

Not discontinuity but continued elsewhere

Continued scene from S2E2 to S2E3

The Secret Timeline of Season 2

The Rules of the Twist

Chiastic Structure S1

Chiastic Structure S2

Blocking

Title Sequence Analysis

Aziraphale's Illustrated Bible

Aziraphale's Documents in the Box

Document on Aziraphale's Table

Musical clues (bells)

Miracle chimes comparison

The Tales of Hoffmann

Possibly Relevant Angel Names:

Israfil (sounds a bit like Aziraphale, angel blowing the trumpet to signal the end of the world & closest to God in Islam; the Christian equivalent would be Raphael, who apparently partly inspired Aziraphale's name.)

Kokabiel (Hebrew angel who fell, connected with stars and star making, most likely possibility for Starmaker!Crowley)

Baraquiel (mentioned in Hell's book of angels directly under Aziraphale, another possibility for Crowley's former angel identity)

Muriel becomes Abaddon (??? Apocryphal Texts, present at the Last Judgement and the Resurrection of Jesus)

Azrael (a. k. a. Death, as canon in book & show, listed here for exclusion reasons)

~asteriks under the cut~

*= While the theory's details hinge too much on its assumption (i. e. guess) on how the Book Of Life works, the idea that we will learn something in season 3 that completely reframes what we think we have seen in season 2 is almost a given. There will have been some sort of "magic trick".

**= Next to Gabriel & Michael, Raphael is the only other archangel we actually know by name. So that's a glaring omission from the show. And whether it turns out to be Crowley or not, I'm sure we will learn about Raphael and his conspicuous absence in season 3.

***= It takes agency away from Aziraphale, even though his actions are completely in line with his history and characterization so far, and nullifies all emotions experienced by the characters as well as the audience during the final scenes.

****= Both Neil Gaiman & John Finnemore are too good to pull the same trick twice. Yes, even if it's a variation. C'mon, give them some credit!

(I will edit this post when something changes or someone comes up with something new.)

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iprefertheterminsane · 4 years

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Okay. I don’t think anyone has said it yet, so I guess it’s up to me.

look, I remember when I first heard of the Good Omens fandom, and naturally, Aziraphale’s name, I was struck frozen like, “Wait, I know that name. Israfil, that's a first. Which is what reluctantly pulled me in

(I’m a Muslim)

See, growing up, we have this nursery rhyme for the 10 most important angels that you have to know, and Israfil’s name was right up there (if you want to know, the other nine are Jibril, Mikail, Mungkar, Nakir, Raqib, Atid,Ridhwan, Malik andIzrail)Christians to mention some of them in movies, I mean, you guys have versions of them too, right? So I’ve naturally heard the mentions of Jibril (Gabriel), Mikail (Michael) and Izrail (Azrael), but I was kind of stuck at the mention of Israfil of all angels, so throughout all 6 episodes I kept trying to remember what his main purpose was, in the nursery rhyme (you know that thing that you can’t think of something purely due to the reason because you’re looking for it?). As the story progressed I began to recall that he was a pretty big deal for starting Doomsday, but it wasn’t until this scene happened;

that it occurred to me what Israfil’s purpose was, in Islamic terms-

He blows the Sangkakala

Right, you guys don’t know what the Sangkakala is, of course.

The Sangkakala is basically this musical instrument that Israfil was tasked with to blow to start Doomsday, nothing can begin without it. In fact, the blowing of the Sangkakala basically does half of the job.

is basically what it looks like, and what could possibly be the approximation of its size. There are, even, entire theories circulating to whether or not the blowing of the Sangkakala was also behind the Scientific theory of the Big Bang. The closest I’ve ever heard of another mythology or religion that has someone that more or less has someone tasked with this is Heimdall, in the Norse mythology (thank Magnus Chase for that one). Basically, In Islamic terms, At the Beginning, and the End of All Things, the Big Star of the show is, and always has been, Aziraphale.

That, my friends, is how big of a deal he is.

Which, by the way, makes this scene all the more hilarious and scandalous, to me at the same time;

because to me, what it looked like is basically that these angels, irritated by Aziraphale’s behavior and fraternizing with a demon and whatnot, had decided to, against God’s rule, just give the job to someone else. And if that wasn’t crossing a line, I don’t know what is. I genuinely thought this, which makes his look of scandalized offense, after the sound of the trumpets, make much more sense. Doomsday, the End of All Things, had been tasked to Israfil (Aziraphale) since before the Beginning of Time. He was one of the earliest angels to have been created, due to this fact. Which meant, that God said, in the Beginning, Doomsday won’t start until Israfil says so. It wasn’t until Israfil says so, that things can proceed accordingly. I really think that this is why God made it so that he, Crowley and Adam

had managed to avert Doomsday so successfully. And why Death, when the Them had managed to beat the other three Horsemen, went peacefully. He knew his place. Aziraphale/Israfil said ‘no, Not Today,’ so Izrail/Azrael/Death just went ‘Fine. Hit me up when it is.’ He remembered his place. The other Angels did not. Aziraphale/Israfil just did his job-God would probably contact him personally should the End Times were ever to come about-so he wasn’t punished. What is there to punish? I wager God probably thought that the resulting Chaos and Humiliation on Both Sides were enough of a punishment to just let things be, after that.

Which, you know, ends my take on why God let Aziraphale and Crowley get away with living the rest of their lives on Earth like the hedonistic, naive Ethereal and Occult creatures they are.

End Scene

#BAMF Aziraphale #ineffable husbands #Ineffable beuracracy #God's saying sorry for the inconvenience #Wont happen again #Enjoy my lil trash bois #Islamic take on the trumpet scene

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mysticalmusicwhispers · 3 years

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lovers’ dreams

Summary: “A day fit for a spring dream.” And then he kisses Roshan, and they become lost in each other.

Characters: India (Aditya), China, Iran/Persia (Roshan, genderfluid). Human names used. Indran, Churan, and Indchu for ships!

Notes: 100% distilled surrealism! This was supposed to be a writing exercise that ran away from me rip. There are many footnotes that explain Many things. Enjoy!

also on AO3! (there are bonus thoughts and explanations there for anyone who’s interested or slightly confused 😅. everything necessary for you to understand the story is here too but I ramble about my thoughts going into the piece on AO3 lol)

———

The willow’s drooping branches hide Yao’s face like a beaded curtain, a bride’s sheer red veil. The spring breeze snakes through the tree, and the sound of wedding suona—sorna rings through the silence. A flutter of phoenix wings brushes past their ear, a whisper on the wind. Roshan walks languidly until they are in front of Yao; it takes a minute—it takes a month. Yao’s face is sharp and his eyes glint, like the jade in his belt. But the kiss is soft when they take his lips in theirs, and it tastes of the rose’s tender petals. The clean sweetness of flowers is warm against Roshan’s face and the fragrance of tea drifts into their nostrils.

Yao pulls away, and Roshan opens their eyes to polished jade thorns sprouting up from the earth around them—crisp green, sharp-tipped; elegant, dangerous. So these are the fruits of our love. It is fitting. They lean to kiss Yao again, and this time, a laugh peals through the air when they part. It is not Roshan’s, and it isn’t Yao’s. But it is clear as spring water and tinkles like a bell, a joyous sound, and it makes Yao smile—a smile that is gentle, calculating; sweet, dangerous. A copper coin hides in the corner of his lips. “A day fit for a spring dream.” And then he kisses Roshan, and they become lost in each other.

When Roshan opens their eyes again, Yao is gone. They are standing in nothingness, a shell of a dream. A liminal plane. A wedding song echoes in the empty space, loud and cheerful, although there are no musicians to be seen playing the dohol, the sorna. Then sprung from the air, a mirror of fate, Aayeneh-ye Bakh, with its customary candelabras flanking it, and with their dots of golden light—miniature suns, sparkling stars. Its face shimmers, clear and gleaming: a pond on a full moon night—and in it, Yao stands, his reflection bright, splendid robes shimmering like gold scales and fine silk. Roshan reaches out a hand, and pulls him into a kiss.

“Welcome back, my dear.”

———

It is sunset, and a chill brushes past Yao’s shoulders and winds through his hair. The sky burns red, and fork tongued flames lick at the sun. A world bathed in fire, on the cusp of night. A lotus pond sits before him, and a figure is at its edge—Aditya, adorned in gold, the perfect figure of a prince. He, a dream of glittering palaces and beady emeralds, bright against the glow of the setting sun, sharp against the bloody sky. He holds a lotus blossom out, and Yao takes it. It is pure, tender in his calloused hands. A drop of blood drips from a petal. He lets it float into the water, and Aditya watches with him as the peach pink petals drop before their eyes—the lotus head balloons, then falls with the weight of seeds; it withers, a shell of its fruit. Divine beauty is short lived—seasons turn with the winds of change.

Aditya loops an arm around him, bare skin on bare skin, the warmth of the sun hanging around them like a curtain. Their lips meet. The kiss is long, and lingers even after Yao pulls away; it is slightly bitter, but how could it not be? Aditya’s eyes are like black tea, and Yao tastes acrid lily bulbs. The sky has faded into burnt orange, the aftermath of a blaze. Autumn leaves fall from ginkgo trees, golden yellow, bright with memories of the past. Aditya closes his eyes, and Yao watches him sink into a dream.

The scene shifts before his eyes. The lotus pond morphs into a giant chessboard, and they are on opposite sides. Aditya plays white. Cream colored pawns meet chocolate brown knights, and they watch as kings rise and fall, as steady as the spinning of the world. Chariots race and elephants trumpet; the cavalry fight with long swords and bows, and the peasants use polearms, raised fists. Yao meets Aditya’s eyes, warm but gleaming with an ambition that has never gone away. He nods to his neighbor to the west, to his rival, lover, partner, equal. Aditya smiles.

“So we meet again.”

———

It is afternoon, and the sun is warm on his face. Roshan sits on a bench in the courtyard, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, a pomegranate in the other. Aditya nestles into their side, and they give him a feather light cheek kiss, gift him a wisp of air. They hold out the pomegranate, offers it, and Aditya takes a bite. Roshan takes the other half. They watch as the fruit regrows, seeds become jewels, glittering rubies in folds of red fabric. Roshan holds one up to the light with a critical eye. They spread tawny wings, amber eagle eyes alight with the pride of the past present future. A lion and the sun. The wings disappear—a trick of the light, reality fallen away. Then they hold up the cup of coffee.

“For you.” Aditya smiles, and offers a cup of black tea in return.

We have shared many things, and fought over equally many. How will it be in the future? He takes a sip, and falls through the cup.

A cemetery of swords surrounds them, a memory of things gone by. Afternoon sunlight filters through the trees, winds into Roshan’s hair. Idly peaceful. Flowers sprout through the earth; wither; climb up the rusted metal once again. A vine of roses twists around the hilt of a ceremonial spear, supple and full against cool, glinting steel. The leaves flicker, green yellow dead green again. Its blossom is still fresh red, like passion, like their love, pooling around them like a million memories, a still night in the river of time. Aditya looks at Roshan, different yet the same, a reflection of what they once were. Familiar, always, despite the changing tides and shifting dreams.

———

Notes

this part might actually be longer than the fic itself rip 😔 reminder that there’s extra rambling on ao3 lol

Suona/sorna: suona (唢呐) is a traditional wind instrument often played at wedding and funeral processions in northern China! (also used in Southeast China + Taiwan) It’s very loud and has a super brassy sound, but personally I think it sounds alright! The instrument came from Central Asia and is also used at weddings in Iran (where it’s spelled sorna/sarna), where it’s played with a dohol, a large cylindrical drum.

Phoenixes: wedding imagery in China, where a dragon symbolizes the groom and the phoenix the bride. There’s also an analogue to the phoenix in Persian mythology, a simurgh, which is a benevolent creature that is said to purify the land, roosts in the Tree of Knowledge, and apparently has seen the world be destroyed 3 times. Can symbolize healing, divinity, wisdom, and life. (the simurgh symbolism doesn't have much relevance to the fic but I thought it was incredibly interesting to read about lol)

Spring dream: very loosely referencing the Chinese phrase 一场春梦 (yi chang chun meng), which literally translates to an episode of a spring dream. It means the feeling that past predictions or events were actually totally wrong and fruitless, like you expected something (probably really good), but then woke up to reality not being up to your expectations? I can’t translate 😔

Mirror of Fate: In traditional Iranian weddings, a large, elaborate table with flowers and food and different spices is set up (sofreh aghd). A mirror of fate and 2 candelabras are also placed in the center of the table. The mirror represents how fate brought the bride and groom together, and the candelabras represent light and fire. The mirror is there so that when the groom looks into it, the first thing he should see is his betrothed's reflection.

Lotus blossoms: in China and India and many other parts of Asia, lotuses represent purity (they grow from dark mud but the flowers are pure white/pink), the divine, elegance, spiritual promise, the good part of humanity. so, a lotus with a drop of blood in Yao’s hands would be interesting.

Lily bulbs: this is purely self projection but lily bulbs (baihe) are used in Chinese medicine and I despise them. They're not super bitter but they taste starchy, bland, and off. Also lilies and lotuses are pretty similar and I thought that would be interesting :>

Chess: idk if I need a note for this but chess originated as an Indian game called Chaturanga and spread over to China and Iran, among many other places in Asia.

Tea and Coffee: nothing really special about this besides that Iranians Really Like tea. Decided to make India drink coffee instead for contrast; realistically he’d also be drinking tea lol

Eagle eyes: the Iranian/Persian symbol of the Faravahar, from Zoroastrianism has wings that are supposed to be eagle wings (I think? correct me if it’s just unspecified). You’ve probably seen it; it depicts a man with spread wings, half kneeling in a side view. Nowadays it’s also a symbol of Iranian culture, history, and national pride, besides being representative of Zoroastrianism.

Rose: national flower of Iran, and obv I don’t need to explain the other rose connotations. Also I’ve fully adopted the hc that Roshan and all their stuff smells like roses so that’s there too.

Lion and the sun: getting lazy with the explanations, but the short version is that it was a very important Iranian national symbol for many reasons, moreso tied to the state than culture (imo); it was also on the national flag up till the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although I’m still debating how much Roshan is associated with the state, I also think sun and lion imagery fits them (glory, golden days, pride and courage). It’s super interesting, go search it up if you wanna read more!

This whole fic was somewhat inspired by this one, and the indchu bit was also somewhat inspired by this fanart.

If you made it down here, you have all my gratitude. Feedback is welcome and appreciated! Thanks for reading <3

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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How the Taliban surge exposed Pentagon's lies

Western politicians and media colluded in duping their publics into believing Afghanistan was a 'winnable war'

The real explanation for the Taliban's 'surprise' success is that western publics were being duped all along

A month ago, as the US army prepared to end the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan and hand over responsibility to local security forces it had armed and trained, maps showed small, relatively isolated pockets of Taliban control.

At the weekend, the Islamist fighters marched unchallenged into Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, bringing almost the entire country under their thumb. US intelligence assessments that it would take the Taliban up to three months to capture Afghanistan's capital proved wildly inaccurate.

It took a few days.

Foreign nationals were left scrambling to Kabul's airport while American officials were hurriedly evacuated by helicopter, echoing the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US embassy staff were chased out of South Vietnam after years of a similarly failed war.

On Sunday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement that he had fled the country – reportedly in a helicopter stuffed with cash – to "avoid bloodshed". But all the evidence indicates his corrupt security forces were never in a position to offer serious resistance to a Taliban takeover.

Jumping ship

The speed with which the Taliban have re-established their hold on a country that was supposedly being reconstructed as some kind of western-style liberal democracy is astonishing. Or, at least, it is to those who believed that US and British military commanders, western politicians and the mainstream media were being straight all this time.

The real explanation for the Taliban's "surprise" success is that western publics were being duped all along. The United States' longest war was doomed from the start. The corrupt, entirely unrepresentative members of the Kabul elite were always going to jump ship as soon as Washington stopped pumping in troops and treasure.

According to Forbes magazine, as much as $2 trillion was poured into Afghanistan over the past 20 years – or $300m a day. The truth is that western politicians and the media intentionally colluded in a fiction, selling yet another imperial "war" in a far-off land as a humanitarian intervention welcomed by the local population.

As Daniel Davis, a former US army lieutenant colonel and critic of the war, observed at the weekend: "Since early 2002, the war in Afghanistan never had a chance of succeeding."

Nonetheless, many politicians and commentators are still sounding the same, tired tune, castigating the Biden administration for "betraying" Afghanistan, as if the US had any right to be there in the first place – or as if more years of US meddling could turn things around.

Colonial chessboard

No one should have been shocked by the almost-instant collapse of an Afghan government and its security services that had been foisted on the country by the US. But it seems some are still credulous enough – even after the catastrophic lies that justified "interventions" in Iraq, Libya and Syria – to believe western foreign policy is driven by the desire to assist poor countries rather than use them as pawns on a global, colonial chessboard.

Afghans are no different from the rest of us. They don't like outsiders ruling over them. They don't like having political priorities imposed on them. And they don't like dying in someone else's power game.

If the fall of Kabul proves anything, it is that the US never had any allies in Afghanistan outside of a tiny elite that saw the chance to enrich itself, protected by US and British firepower and given an alibi by western liberals who assumed their own simplistic discourse about identity politics was ripe for export.

Yes, the Taliban will be bad news for Afghan women and girls, as well as men, who are concerned chiefly with maintaining personal freedom. But a tough conclusion western audiences may have to draw is that there are competing priorities for many Afghans who have suffered under decades of invasions and colonial interference.

Just as in Iraq, large segments of the population appear to be ready to forgo freedom in return for a guarantee of communal stability and personal safety. That was something a US client regime, looking to divert aid into its own pockets, was never going to guarantee. While the US was in charge, many tens of thousands of Afghans were killed. We will never know the true figure because their lives were considered cheap. Millions more Afghans were forced into exile.

Spoils of war

Nothing about western intervention in Afghanistan has been as it was portrayed. Those deceptions long predate the invasion by the US and UK in 2001, supposedly to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Seen now, the attack on Afghanistan looks more like scene-setting, and a rationalisation, for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq that soon followed. Both served the neoconservative agenda of increasing the US footprint in the Middle East and upping the pressure on Iran.

The West has long pursued geostrategic interests in Afghanistan, given the country's value as a trade route and its role as a buffer against enemies gaining access to the Arabian Gulf. In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires used Afghanistan as the central arena for their manoeuvring in the so-called "Great Game".

Similar intrigues drove US-led efforts to expel the Soviet army after it invaded and occupied Afghanistan through the 1980s. Washington and Britain helped to finance, arm and train Islamist fighters, the mujahideen, that forced out the Red Army in 1989. The mujahideen went on to oust the country's secular, communist government.

After their victory against the Soviet army, the mujahideen leadership split, with some becoming little more than regional warlords. The country was plunged into a bloody civil war in which the mujahideen and warlords looted their way through the areas they conquered, often treating women and girls as the spoils of war.

Despite Washington officials' constant trumpeting of their concern at Taliban violations of women's rights – in what became an additional pretext for continuing the occupation – the US had shown no desire to tackle such abuses when they were committed by its own mujahideen allies.

Rule of the warlords

The Taliban emerged in the 1990s from religious schools in neighbouring Pakistan as civil war raged in Afghanistan. They vowed to end the corruption and insecurity felt by Afghans under the rule of the warlords and mujahideen, and unify the country under Islamic law.

They found support, especially in poor, rural areas that had suffered most from the bloodletting.

The subsequent "liberation" of Afghanistan by US and British forces returned the country, outside a fortified Kabul, to an even more complex havoc. Afghans were variously exposed to violence from warlords, the Taliban, the US military and its local proxies.

To much of the population, Hamid Karzai, a former mujahideen leader who became the first Afghan president installed by the US occupation regime, was just another plundering warlord, the strongest only because he was backed by US guns and warplanes.

It was telling that five weeks ago, asked about the prospects of the Taliban returning to power, Biden stated that "the likelihood there's going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely". Not only was he wrong, but his remarks suggested that Washington ultimately preferred to keep Afghanistan weak and divided between feuding strongmen.

That was precisely the reason most Afghans wanted the US gone.

Washington poured at least $88bn into training and arming a 300,000-strong Afghan army and police force that evaporated in Kabul, the government's supposed stronghold at the first sight of the Taliban. American taxpayers will be right to ask why such phenomenal sums were wasted on pointless military theatre rather than invested back home.

The US military, private security contractors, and arms manufacturers fed at what became a bottomless trough, and in the process were ever more deeply invested in maintaining the fiction of a winnable war. An endless, futile occupation with no clear objective swelled their budgets and ensured the military-industrial complex grew ever richer and more powerful.

Every indication is that the same war-industry juggernaut will simply change course now, playing up threats from China, Iran and Russia, to justify the continuation of budget increases that would otherwise be under threat.

Missing in action

The motive for US officials and corporations to conspire in the grand deception is clear. But what about the mainstream media, the self-declared "fourth estate" and the public's supposed watchdog on abuses of state power? Why were they missing in action all this time?

It is not as though they did not have the information needed to expose the Pentagon's lies in Afghanistan, had they cared to. The clues were there, and even reported occasionally. But the media failed to sustain attention.

As far back as 2009, as the US was preparing a pointless surge of troops to tackle the Taliban, Karl Eikenberry, then ambassador to Afghanistan, sent a cable to secretary of state Hillary Clinton that was leaked to the New York Times. He wrote that additional US forces would only "delay the day when Afghans will take over". A decade later, the Washington Post published secret documents it called the Afghan Papers that highlighted the Pentagon's systematic deceptions and lying. The subtitle was "At war with the truth".

Bob Crowley, an army colonel who had advised US military commanders in Afghanistan, observed: "Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible." The Post concluded that the US government had made every effort to "deliberately mislead the public".

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction appointed by Congress in 2012, had long detailed the waste and corruption in Afghanistan and the dismal state of the Afghan forces. But these reports were ignored or quickly disappeared without trace, leaving the Pentagon free to peddle yet more lies.

Cheerleading, not scrutinising

In the summer, as he issued yet another report, Sopko made scathing comments about claims that lessons would be learnt: "Don't believe what you're told by the generals or the ambassadors or people in the administration saying we're never going to do this again. That's exactly what we said after Vietnam... Lo and behold, we did Iraq. And we did Afghanistan. We will do this again."

A good part of the reason the Pentagon can keep recycling its lies is because neither Congress or the media is holding it to account.

The US media have performed no better. In fact, they have had their own incentives to cheerlead rather than scrutinise recent wars. Not least, they benefit from the drama of war, as more viewers tune in, allowing them to hike their advertising rates.

The handful of companies that run the biggest TV channels, newspapers and websites in the US are also part of a network of transnational corporations whose relentless economic growth has been spurred on by the "war on terror" and the channelling of trillions of dollars from the public purse into corporate hands.

The cosy ties between the US media and the military are evident too in the endless parade of former Pentagon officials and retired generals who sit in TV studios commenting as "independent experts" and analysts on US wars. Their failures in Iraq, Libya and Syria have not apparently dented their credibility.

That rotten system was proudly on display again this week as the media uncritically shared the assessments of David Petraeus, the former US commander in Afghanistan. Although Petraeus shares an outsize chunk of responsibility for the past two decades of military failure and Pentagon deception, he called for the "might of the US military" to be restored for a final push against the Taliban.

Were it still possible to hold US officials to account, the Taliban's surge over the past few days would have silenced Petraeus and brought Washington's huge war scam crashing down.

Instead, the war industries will not even need to take a pause and regroup. They will carry on regardless, growing and prospering as though their defeat at the hands of the Taliban signifies nothing at all.

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tawakkull · 4 years

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Spirituality in islam: The Initiate from a Different Perspective

An initiate is one who follows a way. In Sufi terminology, the word “ initiate” denotes one who walks toward God with a certain discipline in order to please Him, thus neutralizing the tendencies in their nature that lead them away from God, or trying to eliminate the distance between them and God. There are two kinds of initiate:

The first is the i nitiate who, without having to fulfill the requirements of following a spiritual path, passing through certain periods of suffering, or staying with a guide for a fixed amount of time, can pass through all states and stations in one attempt and reach the highest point destined for him by being attracted by God Himself. This is the initiate who is attracted or feels attraction toward God.

The striving i nitiate, who follows a spiritual path toward God either within their inner world or through the outer world in conformity with the requirements of the journey.

However, despite these two basic categories, there can be interconnections and transitions between these two different methods of initiation, or different states or conditions may occur in the way of attraction. For example, one who feels attracted toward God may lose this feeling at one point, only to regain it later without having had to enter a path. Or an attracted initiate who loses the feeling of attraction may feel it again after they have begun to follow a path. Referring such matters to the heroes of Sufi practice, I would like to discuss the initiate who walks toward the Ultimate Truth within their inner world or through the outer world.

The first step in initiation is intention. Intention is the beginning of every action; it is both the beginning and the foundation stone of initiation, without which any action is devoid of spirit and thus walking toward God is impossible. If a pure intention is strengthened through dependence on God’s help and sharpened through resolution and steadfastness, then an initiate can succeed in every attempt with God’s permission and will be able to overcome every obstacle; indeed, one day they will reach the final point according to their capacity. However, it is clear that there is need for a perfect guide along this path, as it is one which extends through many mansions, stations, and deep valleys; sometimes it is a highway and sometimes a trail. Along this road many difficulties await the traveler. For this reason, woe betide the initiate whose guide or master is a pretender or an insufficient one who claims to be a guide. The following couplet by Niyazi-i Mısri expresses this beautifully:

Let not any guide lead you, for he may make it too difficult to proceed;

It is very easy for one whose guide is perfect to advance along this path.

Initiation is another way of discovering and experiencing the truths of belief and being a Muslim in accordance with their true nature. The initiate recognized them partly while they were a seeker, and became familiar with some of their manifestations at different degrees while they were the one who wills. Peace of heart, the elixir of which many talk without knowing its true essence, is drunk by the glassful during initiation. Reverent awe of God can also be experienced in this way as well. In addition, that which is experienced becomes the depth of human nature at different degrees; in other words, belief, which was obtained on the horizon of theory, is grasped and experienced on the horizon of practice along such a journey made in the atmosphere of the heart and spirit. Having risen to certain heights through constant travel along this path and having been matured in virtues and praiseworthy characteristics, the initiate follows a line along which spirit beings move and reach scenes that lie beyond the horizon. The initiate elevates their theoretical knowledge to the level of experienced knowledge of God and is filled with lights both inwardly and outwardly, pitching their pavilion of glory at the station that is best suited for their state and stance.

It sometimes happens that a traveler with an illuminated heart and this degree of knowledge of God finds themselves in different states and manners, and they are enveloped by the colors that belong to the realms beyond; thus the ways to spiritual pleasures and vision are opened to the traveler. Nevertheless, there are many who are deceived by these occurrences and remain at a halfway point. Only the alert travelers overcome this stagnation by God’s leave and continue their journey. Such occurrences are neither the aim of worship nor the goal of initiation. One who perceives these as the goal cannot know the True Goal, and one who aims at these cannot obtain anything other than weariness. For this reason, the heroes of knowledge of God try to remain distant from such things, even in their dreams, fearful that such manifestations occurring without demand might lead them to perdition; at the same time they respond to the Divine gifts of which they are aware in their conscience with gratitude. If these are offerings from the All-Merciful and favors from God Almighty that increase the initiate’s zeal and yearning—it is not possible for us to say that they are truly thus or not – the traveler should think that they are being faced by a new shower of bounties and thus be full of thanks and enthusiasm, changing the acts of formal worship into acts of deep devotion, enriching their life with the depths of the night (spending some of their night in worship), and all their acts should demonstrate that they are a careful servant of God —they should do all of this, but never feel proud of these, never pursue fame or feel superior to others, as this will darken the manifestations that come in waves from the Realm of Mercy with the soot and rust of selfishness, arrogance, ostentation and the desire for fame. The traveler should realize that all these gifts and favors come due to their awareness of their innate impotence, poverty, and neediness before God, and thus they should not appropriate them. They should concentrate on the Real Source of these bounties and be fearful that they may be a test; thus, they should always seek refuge in God, and consider that such bounties may be a means of encouragement to further and better worship. As a result, the traveler should try to worship more consciously and in constant awareness of God’s omnipresence. They should worship God with the awareness that all they do in the name of worship is nothing but an insignificant response to the bounties that they have received in advance.

This is what is expected from a traveler to the Ultimate Truth who always controls, criticizes, and supervises themselves. Such a traveler knows their place and always feels and voices their inability to know, worship, mention, and thank God as He should be worshipped, known, mentioned, and thanked, saying:

All-Glorified are You, We have not been able to worship You as worshipping You requires, O the All-Worshipped.

All-Glorified are You, We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires, O the All-Known.

All-Glorified are You, we have not been able to mention You as mentioning You requires, O the All-Mentioned.

All-Glorified are You, we have not been able to thank You as thanking You requires, O the All-Thanked.

Moreover, such a traveler always feels agony, shame, fear, and anxiety because of the faults they have or may have made and the sins they have or may have committed knowingly or unknowingly, as well as their manners and behavior that are displeasing to God. They are in a state in which they are about to undergo the questioning of the grave at that moment; they are afraid as if their actions were about to be weighed in the Hereafter. The traveler seeks refuge in God with utmost repentance and dies once again in respect of their carnal desires, feeling a new revival in consideration of their deeper attachment to God, as if they have heard the sound of the Trumpet (which is to be blown for the resurrection of the dead), trying to build a new world in the horizon of their heart and spirit. This should be a world where the traveler will constantly think of God, mention God, turn to God, converse with God, and receive breezes of revival from the realms beyond. They will always be in the company of their guide, fully submitted to the spirit of the master of creation, Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, in their royal pavilion pitched in closeness to God. This is a station where existence ends in non-existence and non-existence will take on a new, ever-fresh existence. The clocks always indicate mid-day at this station, the east and west are one within another, daytime and night are fused together, and the physical and metaphysical cannot be distinguished. Space is replaced by absence of space, and time is replaced with timelessness. The inhabitants of this station comprehend that everything belongs to and is originated by God and that they are on the way of return to Him, ultimately to end in Him. Breasts begin to burn with the fire of feeling His nearness and with the awareness that meeting with Him is almost at hand. Lips begin to murmur the things expected to come from Him, the things of which they are aware and partially experience; they remain waiting in great hope. As if overcoming whatever should be overcome, the heart says: “My God! I ask for the pleasure of looking toward Your Face, and a yearning to meet with You!” They are in a turmoil due to the expectation of the vision of His perfectly beautiful Face, the source of all beauties, and the desire to meet with Him. With an inextinguishable love and inexhaustible zeal, the heart utters: “I ask for the highest of grades and the greatest of goals!” and begins to wait for the realization of the expected meeting. Who knows how many times a day such a person imagines themselves to be seated at the table of this meeting, taking sips of the water of the Divine regard and consideration, voicing their yearning, saying:

O cupbearer, offer the wine: it is time to break the fast;

Improve this ruin: it is time to display the favors.

Muhammed Lutfi

Then, sighing that the coming of the time to “break the fast” is dependent on God, the travelers pull themselves together.

Even though they are few in number at present, the initiates are the means of pride for the inhabitants of the heavens; these inhabitants watch them and take pride in their nearness to God. As stated in the verse, And it has never been the way of your Lord to destroy the townships unjustly while their people were righteous, dedicated to continuous self-reform and setting things right in the society (11:117), the initiates are the resilient barricade against possible calamities and the means of security.

Whether they be among those who are attracted by God Himself, or those who follow a spiritual path, or those who base their journey on the acceptance of human innate impotence and poverty, an initiate is one whose eyes are fixed on the door of the Ultimate Truth, who advances in adherence to the Prophetic way, trying to be equipped with knowledge of God and careful in their relations with their Lord; such a person always acts in awareness of God’s omnipresence. It is as if they are about to meet with Him; in their every state, they feel a yearning to meet with God at the same time as being in awe of God and fluctuating between hope and fear. Sometimes they feel that they are on the horizon of certainty of observation, perceiving what seems to be imperceptible according to the profundity of their knowledge of God, attaining points that seem to be unattainable and observing what seems beyond the limits of observation, beyond all terms of quality and quantity. At other times they are lost in more comprehensive and profound visions, breathing the light-diffusing words, God it is Who is the All-Known; God it is Who is the All-Besought, God it is Who is the All-Worshipped! They constantly mention God, fixing their eyes on Him and worshipping Him exclusively. Haqani describes an initiate of this quality in the following couplet:

What is befitting for an initiate—a follower of the path,

Is that he should proclaim: “We worship none but Him alone.”

An initiate may encounter certain surprises during their journey, even though they expect nothing; they are transformed from one state into another and they may hear voices from the realms beyond, receiving compliments from spirit beings. However, their duty is to advance toward God without ceasing; they travel from God toward God, from themselves toward Him. They grasp hold of one Divine Name and walk toward the next; while flying in the atmosphere of one Name, they observe different beauties as manifestations of another.

It sometimes happens that an initiate begins traveling from God toward God on the wings of attraction and being attracted, while at other times they travel from the horizon of His company into the depths of their own nature. Through such descents and ascensions they make journeys like “journeying in” and “with or in the company of God,” in addition to making other “ journeys” toward further points through doing good, righteous deeds, the purification of the soul, refinement of the heart, and asceticism. However, some initiates are always with God, beginning from Him and reaching the final point allowed by their capacities in His company. Some initiates are always turned to God in their hearts, feeling that He is nearer to them than their own selves. But they feel that they are caught up in a net that holds them at a certain distance from Him and they are continuously trying to cover this distance. Some others are near to God and aware of this nearness; they do their utmost to preserve this favor of being near. If a traveler bases their initiation or journey on constant companionship of God, no matter in what way this has been adopted, God is their eyes with which they see, their ears with which they hear, and the source of all their outer and inner sensations. So long as an initiate at this degree of spiritual existence continues in turning to Him, is able to purify their heart of any relationship with anything other than God, and can make this state a dimension of their nature, then all the carnal and material things in their nature melt away in the face of the dominion of their spirituality. As a consequence, the initiate who has nearly attained their destination achieves a “magical” state in which it is as if they have neither corporeality nor substance. Their nature displays the characteristic of being an immaterial being that has nothing to do with soil, water, air, or any other material object. They are in the heavens at the same time as they are on the earth; they are walking through tomorrow while living today. Even though they seem to be condemned to remaining distant from God with their corporeal being, they continuously breathe nearness in the spirit; even though they appear to be fixed in a narrow place in space with their transient body, with their eternally-young, spiritual being, they are a guest in many places at the same instant, giving a hand to many needy ones on the land like Khadr, and busy themselves with saving many others from drowning in the sea like Ilyas.

So long as an initiate preserves this degree of spirituality, the showers of Divine attention continue to increase and this elevated state becomes their nature. Such an initiate is considered to have a station or rank, even if it be in a relative sense. Whatever they see is regarded as being the truth. Whatever they hear and feel is always of the same color and design. Their speeches manifest Divine inspirations and are blessed with the value of “pearl and coral,” and thus have great effects on the audience. For they are initiates who are honored with established nearness to God, and whose knowledge is from God; they are those who see, hear and speak wholly dependent on God’s permission, thus they evaluate everything according to the knowledge that emanates to them from His Presence.

Whether the initiate travels on the way of ascension from God toward God on the wings of attraction and the feeling of being attracted or on the way of descent from God toward their own essence; or whether they are trying to cover their distance from God, even though they are aware of God’s nearness, or to preserve their nearness to God that they are aware of in themselves, the initiate is favored with Divine attraction and the capacity to cover all distances. Whether or not they experience any of the states through which they pass during their journey, the initiate reaches their destination with a single bound through Divine attraction and pitches their pavilion in the very center of the station. As for the heroes of effort and endeavor, they continually advance during their journey, covering distances and passing through many states. Covering the distances at a run, enduring the hardships and troubles that they encounter, and increasing in the knowledge of God that they acquire during their journey, they advance toward their final point, destined by their capacities, as if climbing stairs. They can also meet with God to some degree, but this cannot be compared with the favor that emanates to initiates from God’s special treasury.

In short: the start of initiation is the perception and realization of the truth of Islam or being Muslim; the end is full awareness of God’s omnipresence, or in other words, living a life as if always seeing God. The initiation is also the title of belief that has the degree of full conviction and full submission to God throughout an entire life, and an excellence or virtue in the meaning of worshipping God as if seeing Him or being aware that He always sees us. As for meeting with God, which is the final point or destination of the journey or travel, it is what the sensation or experience that transcends all time and space is called.

O God! Guide us to the Straight Path. Shower blessings on us from Your supreme Grace, and let Your Mercy pour down on us, O the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate! Bestow blessings and peace on the one whom You sent as a mercy for all the worlds, and on his Family and Companions, pure and clean.

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phroyd · 4 years

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Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.

The same Chief Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Mr. Trump has made Chief Gallagher a cause célèbre, trumpeting him as an argument for his re-election.

The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Chief Gallagher be held accountable. Mr. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.

The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Mr. Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.

As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps.

“We’re going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters,” Mr. Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of “the deep state” he vowed to dismantle. “People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn’t matter to me whatsoever.”

The president’s handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. Mr. Trump’s intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military.

“He’s interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks,” said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. “They’re trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in — and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system.”

Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Chief Gallagher’s platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president’s intervention could have on the SEALs.

“It’s blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams,” said Mr. Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. “He’s trying to show he has the troops’ backs, but he’s saying he doesn’t trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions.”

Chief Gallagher, who has denied any wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Mr. Trump’s allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules.

“From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,” Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of “Fox & Friends” who has promoted Chief Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. “That’s what the president saw.”

‘No One Touch Him. He’s Mine.’

Chief Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a deeply weathered face from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought out the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was “down to go” to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as “there is for sure action and work to be done.”

“We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7’s Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an “advise and assist” mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.

That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.

Chief Gallagher saw the distant explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and took him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. “No one touch him,” he radioed other SEALs. “He’s mine.”

‘Got Him With My Hunting Knife’

When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Chief Gallagher, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us.”

The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Chief Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.

A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.

As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief’s behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.

At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon’s snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.

One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.

Chief Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.

SEALs said they reported concerns to Lieutenant Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Chief Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Lieutenant Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief’s rifle to make it less accurate.

By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.

A Fox Contributor’s Cause

Chief Gallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as “the mean girls” and saying they sought to get rid of him.

David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. “All six were some of the best performers in the platoon,” he said, speaking publicly for the first time. “These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character.”

Chief Gallagher’s case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.

At the request of many, I will be reviewing the case of a “U.S. Military hero,” Major Matt Golsteyn, who is charged with murder. He could face the death penalty from our own government after he admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas. @PeteHegseth @FoxNews

38.1K people are talking about this

In the tweet, Mr. Trump included the handle of Mr. Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Mr. Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations “committed to victory on the battlefield,” as the biography for his speaker’s bureau puts it.

Upset at what he sees as “Monday morning quarterbacking” of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where “second-guessing was deadly,” Mr. Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Chief Gallagher, Major Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox in May. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors, who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.”

Mr. Hegseth found a ready ally in Mr. Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam by citing bone spurs in his foot. Mr. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a “whimpering” Islamic State leader killed in October.

In March, the president twice called Richard V. Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Chief Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Mr. Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Mr. Spencer pushed back, Mr. Trump made it an order.

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

27.5K people are talking about this

By May, Mr. Trump prepared to pardon both Chief Gallagher and Major Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Mr. Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.

In June, Chief Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Chief Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.

In early July, the jury acquitted Chief Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man

“Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “You have been through much together. Glad I could help!”

The President Intervenes

In the months afterward, Chief Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Mr. Hegseth spoke privately with Mr. Trump about the case.

As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Chief Gallagher — Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Mr. Trump in proceedings against his company. Mr. Mukasey said he never discussed Chief Gallagher with anyone in the administration. “I have been religious about keeping matters separate,” he said.

Another person with ties to Mr. Trump who worked on Chief Gallagher’s case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is now the president’s personal lawyer. Like Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Chief Gallagher’s case.

The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case — Chief Gallagher’s lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Mr. Trump would order Chief Gallagher’s punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Major Golsteyn and Lieutenant Lorance.

“This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review,” Mr. Spencer wrote. “It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Mr. Spencer threatened to resign. The Army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, also weighed in, arguing that the country’s standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.

The Navy Secretary Fights and Loses

Caught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Chief Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called “good order and discipline” after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.

For Admiral Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as “a bunch of morons.”

The admiral wanted to take Chief Gallagher’s Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Mr. Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.

Both Mr. Spencer and Admiral Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Mr. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.

But a day later, an hour after the chief’s lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”

The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!

36.8K people are talking about this

Three days later, Mr. Spencer was fired, faulted by Mr. Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.

In an interview with Mr. Hegseth this past week, Chief Gallagher thanked Mr. Trump for having his back. “He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing,” the chief said. “I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president.”

Phroyd

#trump #navy #gallagher #fox news

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every-angel-is-terrifyingg-blog · 5 years

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Raphael

I won’t lie, I’ve wanted to put off this post.

There are a few things I need to get off my chest and a few elephants I need to address before I can really talk about my boy Raphael.

If you’ve ever spent five minutes in the Good Omens tag, then you’ve heard of the “Crowley is Raphael” headcanon. It’s compelling to some people because the Archangel Raphael is a healer who looks out for humanity and snakes have a traditional connection to healing. Not to mention we don’t see Raphael in the show.

When I first saw this headcanon, I thought it was an interesting “what if.” However, it’s a “what if” that presents complications. Crowley doesn’t perfectly align with Raphael’s lore, which I’ll be getting into today. It also presents a bit of a paradox. There would need to be a pretty good explanation for why we humans know about Raphael and why we consider him one of the Big Four Archangels (ie Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel) if he’s fallen.

I’m not here to try and change minds. I’m here to enthuse about angels. So, if you like the Raphael headcanon, please understand that you need to find a good solution to a few roadblocks to make it work. I also hope the information I’ll provide is helpful.

If you headcanon Crowley as a different named angel, any named angel, I’m happy to talk lore and give information. Again, not here to change minds. At the end of the day, I just want more excuses to talk about angels without people assuming I’m religious. Also, I sometimes worry that the Raphael headcanon will drown out other voices/ideas and, well, that’s just not cool. The wonderful thing about fan communities is creativity and the stifling of creative expression is always something to be mourned.

My personal take? I think Crowley was a worker bee angel who very accidentally got where he is today. I also kind of like the idea that he was one of the fallen angels who taught humanity about astronomy/astrology as mentioned in the Book of Enoch, but my preference is that Crowley was essentially a nobody. It’s more satisfying to me to think that a nobody became the serpent in Eden and what not. If you disagree, that’s fine.

Okay, I’ve delayed things long enough. Let’s focus on Raphael, Archangel MD. Who is he and what is he about?

Raphael (God has healed) is one of only three angels that are named in any canonical text, the other two being Michael and Gabriel. This alone makes him the third most important angel we have.

He is first mentioned in the Book of Tobit, a text that is outside of the Hebrew canon and Christians are split on (Catholics say canon, Protestants say not canon). In the Book of Tobit, Raphael heals Tobit’s blindness and acts as a travel companion to Tobit’s son Tobias. He disguises himself as a a human, claiming to be a relative named Azarias (Yahweh helps). After a long journey and some miracles, Raphael reveals that he is one of the seven Archangels who sit by God’s throne.

After the big reveal, Tobias and Raphael reach their destination. Tobias wants to marry a woman named Sarah, but the demon Asmodeus keeps killing her husbands before they can consummate the marriage (rude). Raphael tells Tobias to smoke the demon out by burning a fish’s liver and heart. It works and the two humans can get married.

Raphael is attributed as a doctor angel in a few other places. The Zohar states that Raphael is the one who is in charge of healing the earth and is a protector of humans. In other stories, Raphael helped Abraham heal from his circumcision, fixed Jacob’s leg after some celestial wrestling, and gave Noah a book of medicine.

In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Raphael is further established as an angel of healing. After the fallen angels mucked things up on earth, Raphael was tasked with fixing the planet. Along with this, Enoch names him as a Watcher and a guide to Sheol, the underworld.

Being a very important angel, Raphael is referenced to a number of times in other stories.

It’s thought that Raphael’s equivalent in Islam is Israfil, the angel who will blow the trumpet to announce the Days of Resurrection. Some believe that he tutored Muhammad before Gabriel delivered the Qur’an and that he cries three times a day over the vision of Hell. What’s fascinating is how Israfil is depicted. He’s gigantic, hairy, covered in mouths and tongues, and has four wings: one to cover his body, one to shield him from God, one that stretches east, and another that stretches west.

Here’s what I’m wondering, are the mouths separate from the tongues or does he just stick all his tongues out of all his mouths?

The Midrash Konen says that Raphael was once the angel Labbiel. Before God created humans, there was huge argument in Heaven over whether or not humanity was a good idea at all. Labbiel and a number of other angels supported God’s desire to make humans. Because God is God, He got final say. The angels who disagreed with God were burned (rude) and Labbiel got a promotion and a name change.

In Jewish mysticism, Raphael along with the other Big Four (Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel) observe all the bloodshed in the world and watch over the Four Rivers of Paradise.

In the Testament of Solomon, King Solomon needed help building the Temple, so God sent Raphael. Raphael gave him a magic ring engraved with a pentagram (the Seal of Solomon). This ring had the power to control demons and so Solomon completed the temple thanks to demonic slave labor.

Some traditions place Raphael as a guardian of the Tree of Life, which grants immortality. He also oversees evening winds and is a champion of science and knowledge.

Raphael’s angelic rank is...tricky. He’s called the chief of Virtues, second sphere angels who ensure that miracles are preformed on earth (so, in Good Omens, are these the angels who told Aziraphale he was preforming too many frivolous miracles? I like to think so. Virtues do outrank Principalities after all.). However, he is also called a Seraph, a Cherub, a Power, and a Dominion.

I’m going to go with the rank my pal Johnny Milton gave him, which is Seraph. I also just really like Seraphim. They’re second to Thrones in my book.

Well, I invoked Milton, so now it’s time to talk about Paradise Lost.

First, Raphael is an important character in Paradise Lost because he is sent to go visit Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and tell them what’s what. Second, I’m pretty sure Adam has a crush on Raphael.

When Raphael is introduced, Milton spends a lot of time describing how beautiful Raphael’s six wings are and just how hot Raphael is in general. He’s so hot that his “glorious shape” is proof alone that he’s from Heaven and not Hell. Raphael tells Adam and Eve that he’s there to answer some of their questions. Eve decides to leave Adam and Raphael alone, presumably because Adam won’t stop making heart-eyes at the angel and it’s embarrassing.

Well, the narration says it is because Eve wants Adam to explain everything to her later, but I like my read better. It’s way less sexist and more fun.

So, Adam and Raphael sit and down to eat and this is A Big Deal. Scholars have argued for millennia on whether or not angels have physical bodies and if they operate like human ones. I’ll do a separate post on this another time, but this whole scene with Raphael is Milton making his stance known -- angels have bodies and they need to eat.

Milton also takes the opportunity to be much more woke than anyone expected. Adam gushes about how amazing sex is and asks Raphael if angels do it. After blushing, Raphael says yes. Angel sex is the kind of sex that has no lust. It is instead a celebration of love among pure entities. Some scholars believe that Milton wrote this to argue that sex can be enjoyed without shame and sex can be beautiful.

Adam asks Raphael several more questions about Heaven and the nature of existence, which Raphael does his best to answer. One question is about the movement of the stars and Raphael teaches him some quick astronomy.

(I’ve seen several people comment that Raphael has a connection to the cosmos and this is the only piece of evidence that I can find. Did everyone get this from Paradise Lost? I’m genuinely curious.)

Regardless, Raphael being the “sociable angel” tries his best to explain God in a way that Adam can understand. None of the other angels have tried to get on Adam’s level like this, so it makes him stand out. Most importantly, Raphael tells Adam about the war in Heaven and Lucifer’s fall.

This conversation takes place in Books V-VIII. So, this lasts a while.

When Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden, God sends an angel to tell Adam how much life is going to suck from now on. You’d expect it to be Raphael, but sadly, it’s Michael. Michael is a much more distant angel, so it really drives home that Adam and Eve no longer have that same personal relationship with the divine.

Also, they can never ask their angel friend TMI questions about Heaven sex or admire his hotness ever again. And that’s why they call it Paradise Lost.

Dumb jokes aside, Raphael has very much earned Milton’s title of “sociable angel.” As both doctor and angel, he is closely tied to human affairs and has excellent bedside manner.

Could he be Crowley? That’s ultimately up to you. This Internet Person says no, but I’m just an Internet Person.

Sources for this post can be found under the “My Resources” tab. Check out the “Who Am I” tab for more info on this blog and the author.

#good omens #crowley #headcanons #raphael #archangels #paradise lost #milton #holy shit this is a long post #every angel writes #i also talk a little bit about angel sex in this one if you are so inclined

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writing-after-the-disaster · 5 years

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Hisham Aidi writes:

Exactly 20 years ago I was running around Cairo trying to find people who had met Malcolm X. I spoke to Jamal al-Banna (liberation theologian, trade unionist & youngest brother of Hasan al Banna) and David Du Bois (journalist, Maoist & jazzhead and step-son of W.E.B. Du Bois. They were both very helpful in making sense of MX's thought.

(The image below is from Al Bilad, a Saudi newspaper (in July 1964) -- it's one of my favorite interviews with MX, where the interviewer tells Hajj Shabazz – I don’t understand why you describe yourself as black, when you’re actually “wheat-colored;” MX laughs and proceeds to explain the “one drop rule” and how race works in America.

In this long-acoming essay, I discuss the globalization of MX's image over the last 20 years; MX's time in Egypt, Ghana, and Saudi; his interest in setting up a branch of Al-Azhar in Harlem & how in Sept 1964 (following months of training) he was appointed an official representative of the (Salafi) Muslim World League and hoped to make Muslim Mosque Inc a "legal branch of the Muslim World League" - also in Harlem; also discussed -- the controversy surrounding the 2011 Marable biography, and the once published - now off the market - slightly redacted travel diary of MX.

==================

"‘I have difficulty praying. My big toe is not used to it,’ Malcolm told his diary on April 20, 1964 shortly after arriving in Mecca. Having recently left the Nation of Islam with their practices, he was still acclimating to sitting on his knees during prayer. Despite the pain, the following day he embarks on the journey to Mount Arafat, part of the hajj pilgrimage, joining ‘hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, all colors, buses, car, camel, donkey & foot.’ Mecca, he writes, is surrounded by the: "cruelest looking mts [mountains] I’ve ever seen. They seem to be made of the waste material from a blast furnace. No vegetation on them at all. The houses are old & modern. Some sections of the city are no different than when the Prophet Abraham was here over 4000 [years ago] – other sections look like a Miami suburb.

Wandering among the pilgrims, he describes the rituals, the seven stones cast at the devil, the circumambulating of the kaaba, and observes,‘This would be an anthropologist’s paradise.’

The diaries also provide a firsthand account of Malcolm’s travels in Egypt, Ghana, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia in 1964. There’s Malcolm crossing Tahrir Square to buy some lemonade at Groppi’s, a still-existing pastry shop; then he’s buying pajamas, picking up vitamin C tablets (because he’s feeling kind of “woozy”), going to the movies, and so on.

Malcolm X is a powerful optic through which to understand America’s post-war ascendance and expansion into the Middle East. His is the perspective of a ghetto-dweller who has transcended the borders drawn around him.‘[A]s though I had stepped out of prison,’ he writes, when he travels abroad. The diaries – several notebooks of single-spaced hand- writing – show an anthropologist’s eye. Malcolm comments on the landscape, the politics, cultural and religious differences, with humorous asides. When a friend arrives late, he quips, ‘Arab time!!’ At one point, he observes, ‘The worst most dangerous habit among Arab Muslims is cigarettes. They smoke constantly, even on the Hajj.’ There are also personal reflections on his mood, health and intense solitude.The words ‘lonesome’ and ‘alone’ appear on almost every other page. His thoughts on Saudi Arabia support the standard narrative that the hajj was transformative.

Yet the diaries show something else: when not in Arabia, Malcolm seemed to enjoy being away from his role as a religious leader, and away from religious strictures as well.Whether in Ghana, Guinea, Kenya or Egypt, he immerses himself in the cultural life of these newly independent states, and the younger Malcolm, the music aficionado, resurfaces, as he frequents night-clubs and dance centers again. In Nairobi, he goes to see his friend Gee Gee sing at the Equator Club, and then accompanies Vice-president Oginga Odinga to a party at the Goan Institute of Dance. (‘The PM is a good dancer, remarkably for his age,’ he writes.) In Guinea, he attends a wedding party, then goes to a nightclub and,‘watche[s] some Americans from the Ship-hope try to dance.’ He rejoices in seeing newly independent states shunt aside European colonial music and celebrate their own musical traditions. In Accra – accompanied by Maya Angelou – he attends a party at the Ghana Press Club and enjoys ‘Highlife,’ which would become the country’s national music (Angelou 1986, 134). But it’s mostly in Egypt, which he saw as the bridge between Africa and Asia, a key player in the Non-Aligned Movement, that he spent the most time and experienced the most cultural immersion.

The story of Egyptian jazz dates back to the Harlem Renaissance, when African-American musicians who had settled in Paris, ventured east. In December 1921, Eugene Bullard, the Georgia-born military pilot, drummer and prize fighter, traveled from Paris to Alexandria, Egypt. For six months, he played with the jazz ensemble at the Hotel Claridge, and fought two fights while in Egypt (Lloyd 2000, 79). A decade later, the blues singer Alberta Hunter followed suit, singing in Istanbul and Cairo (Shack 2001, 43). The trumpeter and vocalist Bill Coleman would live in Cairo from 1939 to 1940, leading the Harlem Rhythmakers/Swing Stars. As Islam began to take hold in American cities and within jazz circles, Muslim jazz musicians would journey to Egypt. In 1932, an African-American Muslim with a saxophone turned up in Cairo, saying that he was working his way to Mecca (Berger 1964). With America’s post-war ascent, jazz would spread around the world carried by servicemen, Hollywood and Voice of America broadcasts. In 1958, the bassist Jamil Nasir, trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, and pianist Oscar Dennard traveled to Tangier, where a VOA relay station would broadcast Willis Conover’s Jazz Hour to listeners behind the Iron Cur- tain, where they recorded an album. They then went on to Cairo. In the Egyptian capital, the thirty-two-year-old Dennard would fall ill and die from typhoid fever; he would be buried in the city, his grave a regular stop for visiting jazz musicians.

All to say, by the time David Du Bois arrived in Cairo in 1960, there was already a local jazz scene and the State Department had launched its jazz diplomacy tours aimed at countering Soviet propaganda. Du Bois and his friends – with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture – would try to create a music culture different from that sponsored by the US government. The Egyptian government was also leery of the jazz tours, and turned back ‘jambassador’ Dizzy Gillespie at Cairo airport in 1956 following the Suez War.

This was the buoyant cultural moment that Malcolm X encounters when he arrives in July 1964. Egypt is flourishing culturally, a regional leader in music, cinema and litera- ture. Malcolm’s diary entries from Egypt confirm the events and personalities described in Du Bois’ novel. David Du Bois is working as an announcer at Radio Cairo, and lobbying Egyptian officials to have his father’s books – especially Black Flame Trilogy – translated. (Black Boy by Richard Wright was the only work of African-American literature available in Arabic, he would write to his mother in November 1960; he wanted the government to translate Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun and Langston Hughes’ primer on jazz.) The local jazz scene was feeding off musical trends in the US, as American jazz artists wrote compositions in honor of Africa and Afro-Asian solidarity. Malcolm would soak up the scene in Cairo and Alexandria, attending weddings and concerts, socializing at Cairo’s elite social clubs, sailing down the Nile to the Valley of Kings. It’s in Cairo that he meets Fifi, a Swiss woman who works for the UN, and who is quite smitten by him. All along, of course, he is networking with regime officials and scholars hoping to build a branch of Al-Azhar in Harlem.When he travels from Cairo to Saudi Arabia for hajj, he is struck by how culturally barren the kingdom is compared to Egypt.

The diaries in effect show a man who has landed smack in the middle of the ‘Arab Cold War’ of the early 1960s, which pitted Nasser’s Egypt and her socialist allies against Saudi Arabia and the conservative monarchies backed by the US. As part of the Non-Aligned Movement, Nasser had stepped up his rhetorical attacks on American-allied monarchies in the region, through Radio Cairo, denouncing the royals for their social conservatism and alliance with the West. Music was at the heart of this propaganda effort, as top musicians were enlisted to sing the praises of ‘our destiny’ and ‘historical leader.’ And the expat jazz artists were solidly on the Egyptian side. One of the musicians, saxophonist Othman Karim, would set up the Cairo Jazz Quartet and record a track called ‘Yayeesh Nasser’ (‘Long Live Nasser’) (Du Bois 1964, 47). Karim would go on to collaborate with Salah Ragab, a young drummer and major in the Egyptian army, who would become Egypt’s most famous jazz musician, working with Sun Ra and Randy Weston.2 When Malcolm X arrives in Cairo, he negotiates this cultural tug of war, hanging with the ‘bros’ but also listening to jazz with Morroe Berger, a Princeton Arabist, expert on Black Muslims and organizer of State Department jazz tours. This contest is subtly rendered in Du Bois’ novel. Both Ragab and Karim make appearances – as characters named Salah Janin and Muhammad X – performing at the Cairo Jazz Combo.The Saudis would soon respond to Nasser’s cultural diplomacy, creating a radio station with religious broadcasts. In 1964, they launched their own ideological offensive, setting up the Muslim World League, to mobilize various Islamist groups to counter the spread of socialism and secular Arab nationalism."

Hisham Aidi, “Du Bois, Ghana and Cairo Jazz: The Geo-Politics of Malcolm X” https://www.academia.edu/36710145/Du_Bois_Ghana_and_Cairo_Jazz_The_Geo-Politics_of_Malcolm_X

#Hisham Aidi #malcolm x #cairo #du bois #ghana

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wisdomrays · 5 years

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KEY CONCEPTS OF SPIRITUALITY IN ISLAM : The Initiate from a Different Perspective

The striving i nitiate, who follows a spiritual path toward God either within their inner world or through the outer world in conformity with the requirements of the journey.

Let not any guide lead you, for he may make it too difficult to proceed; It is very easy for one whose guide is perfect to advance along this path.

All-Glorified are You, We have not been able to worship You as worshipping You requires, O the All-Worshipped. All-Glorified are You, We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires, O the All-Known. All-Glorified are You, we have not been able to mention You as mentioning You requires, O the All-Mentioned. All-Glorified are You, we have not been able to thank You as thanking You requires, O the All-Thanked.

O cupbearer, offer the wine: it is time to break the fast; Improve this ruin: it is time to display the favors. Muhammed Lutfi

Then, sighing that the coming of the time to “break the fast” is dependent on God, the travelers pull themselves together.

What is befitting for an initiate—a follower of the path, Is that he should proclaim: “We worship none but Him alone.”

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance https://nyti.ms/2OB255V

Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.

By Dave Philipps, Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman and Helene Cooper | Published Nov. 30, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 1, 2019 |

Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Chief Gallagher’s platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president’s intervention could have on the SEALs.

‘No One Touch Him. He’s Mine.’

“We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

‘Got Him With My Hunting Knife’

By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.

A Fox Contributor’s Cause

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

7:14 AM - Mar 30, 2019

“Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “You have been through much together. Glad I could help!”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family. You have been through much together. Glad I could help!

The President Intervenes

In the months afterward, Chief Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Mr. Hegseth spoke privately with Mr. Trump about the case.

The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case — Chief Gallagher’s lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Mr. Trump.

The Navy Secretary Fights and Loses

Three days later, Mr. Spencer was fired, faulted by Mr. Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.

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foulengineerzombie · 4 years

Link

He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.The same Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Donald Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Trump has been trumpeting him as an argument for his reelection.The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Gallagher be held accountable. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps."We're going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters," Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of "the deep state" he vowed to dismantle. "People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn't matter to me whatsoever."The president's handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. His intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military."He's interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks," said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. "They're trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in -- and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system."Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Gallagher's platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president's intervention could have on the SEALs."It's blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams," said Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. "He's trying to show he has the troops' backs, but he's saying he doesn't trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions."Gallagher, who has denied wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Trump's allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules."From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers," Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of "Fox & Friends" who has promoted Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. "That's what the president saw."'No One Touch Him. He's Mine.'Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a face weathered from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was "down to go" to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as "there is for sure action and work to be done.""We don't care about living conditions," he added. "We just want to kill as many people as possible."Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, "I'll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone's skull!"He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7's Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an "advise and assist" mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.Gallagher saw the explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and taken him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. "No one touch him," he radioed other SEALs. "He's mine."'Got Him With My Hunting Knife'When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Gallagher, they said, he told them, "Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us."The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.A week later, Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. "Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife," he wrote.As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief's behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon's snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Gallagher's position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Gallagher's position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.SEALs said they reported concerns to Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. SEALS said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief's rifle to make it less accurate.By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him "el diablo," the devil.A Fox Contributor's CauseGallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as "the mean girls" and saying they sought to get rid of him.David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. "All six were some of the best performers in the platoon," he said, speaking publicly for the first time. "These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character."Gallagher's case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on "Fox & Friends," Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.In the tweet, Trump included the handle of Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations "committed to victory on the battlefield," as the biography for his speaker's bureau puts it.Upset at what he sees as "Monday morning quarterbacking" of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where "second-guessing was deadly," Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Gallagher, Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News."These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment's notice," Hegseth said on Fox in May. "They're not war criminals, they're warriors."Hegseth found a ready ally in Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam as a young man citing bone spurs in his foot. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a "whimpering" Islamic State leader killed in October.In March, the president twice called Richard Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Spencer pushed back, Trump made it an order.By May, Trump prepared to pardon both Gallagher and Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.In June, Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.In early July, the jury acquitted Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man."Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family," Trump tweeted. "You have been through much together. Glad I could help!"The President IntervenesIn the months afterward, Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Hegseth spoke privately with Trump about the case.As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Gallagher -- Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Trump in proceedings against his company. Mukasey said he never discussed Gallagher with anyone in the administration. "I have been religious about keeping matters separate," he said.Another person with ties to Trump who worked on Gallagher's case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now the president's personal lawyer. Like Hegseth, Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Gallagher's case.The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case -- Gallagher's lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Trump.Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Trump would order Gallagher's punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Golsteyn and Lorance."This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review," Spencer wrote. "It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."Spencer threatened to resign. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy also weighed in, arguing that the country's standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.Defense Secretary Mark Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.The Navy Secretary Fights and LosesCaught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called "good order and discipline" after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.For Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as "a bunch of morons."The admiral wanted to take Gallagher's Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.Both Spencer and Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.But a day later, an hour after the chief's lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. "The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin," Trump wrote on Twitter. "This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!"Three days later, Spencer was fired, faulted by Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.In an interview with Hegseth this past week, Gallagher thanked Trump for having his back. "He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing," the chief said. "I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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delwray-blog · 5 years

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WHAT A PRICE HUMAN BEINGS WILL PAY FOR REJECTING JESUS CHRIST!

The World is Rushing toward Armageddon

The Battle of Armageddon

The Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty: This covers Rev. 19:7-21, which shows primarily Christ as the righteous Warrior, for we see Him coming to do battle with the host of Satan's armies in what is often called "the battle of Armageddon," but which in truth is a war, or campaign, of the great day of God Almighty. This war is necessitated by the fiendishly evil ambitions of humankind and their evil source of power, Satan.

Our Lord Himself tells when this battle will take place:

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:" "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" Matt. 24:29-31

The Glorious Appearing will take place "Immediately after the tribulation of those days". That is, at the end of the Tribulation and before the Millennium. Our Lord will time His coming at the most dramatic point in all history. The Antichrist, the False Prophet, and Satan will inspire the armies of the world to invade Palestine in a gigantic effort to rid the world of the Jews and to fight against Christ.

This coming battle before Christ sets up His millennial kingdom is often called "the Battle of Armageddon." This is a misleading expression because Armageddon means "Mount of Slaughter" and refers to the beautiful valley to the east of Mount Megiddo. And the word "battle" here literally means "campaign" or "war". No war has ever been won by a single battle. In fact, it is possible to lose a battle and still win a war. The war of the great Day of God Almighty takes place in a single day, and the Battle of Armageddon will be just one of the battles of that war.

The Battle of Armageddon: This war will encompass more than just the Valley of Megiddo; as we will see, it covers practically all of the land of Palestine. This conflict, when Christ defeats the armies of Antichrist, will be a series of at least 4 campaigns"; therefore it is more properly called "the battle on the great day of God Almighty" Rev. 16:14. This last conflict between Satan and Christ until after the Millennium will find Satan making one more fiendish effort to destroy the promised seed. Satan will order his armies to destroy the entire city of Jerusalem, but Christ will come to deliver her at the last moment, as is clearly seen, Zech. 12:1-9.

This is the word of the Lord concerning Israel: "The Lord, who stretches out the heaven, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him, declares:" "I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves. On that day I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness," declares the Lord. "I will keep a watchful eye over the house of Judah, but I will blind all the horses of the nations Zech. 12:1-4.

"Then the leaders of Judah will say in their hearts:" "The people of Jerusalem are strong because the Lord Almighty is their God." "On that day I will make the leaders of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume right and left all the surrounding peoples, but Jerusalem will remain intact in her place". "The Lord will save the dwelling of Judah first, so that the honor of the house of David and of Jerusalem's inhabitants may not be greater than that of Judah". "On that day the Lord will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the Angel of the Lord going before them. On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attach Jerusalem" Zech. 12:5-9.

The Battle of Jehoshaphat: "For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem," "I will gather all nations, and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up my land" Joel 3:1-2.

God dates this battle specifically. It takes place when Israel has been restored to the land.

The principals in this battle Hal Lindsey believes is the Israelis and the Palestinians who have attempted to usurp control over a city that holds no genuine significance for them and land they never particularly wanted until the Jews occupied it again. God names the participants. "Moreover, what are you to Me, O Tyre, Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering me recompense? But if you do recompense me, swiftly and speedily I will return your recompense on your head" Joel 3:4. Tyre, Sidon and the regions of Philistia are the ancestral areas of the modern-day Palestinians.

God also takes exception to the argument that they claim the city in the name of the god (Allah), and points out that they were never part of His sworn covenant that deeded it to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forever.

The Lord asks pointedly, "Moreover, what are you to me"? The argument currently being put forth to justify Islam's claim to the city of Jerusalem is that it is a holy city and that Islam's aim in controlling the city is to ensure the "holy places" are respected. God hardly considers the claim. "Are you rendering me a recompense?" God is plainly saying that He is quite capable of administering His city thank you very much. He rejects the offer and hurls it back contemptuously.

God brings to mind the destruction of His Temple, and more specifically, the arrogance and hatred of those who usurped its grounds to build a monument to another deity. After the Temple was destroyed, the Romans scattered the Jews to the far corners of the earth. It was during this Diaspora that the city and the Temple Mount fell into the hands of Islam. "You have taken My silver and My gold brought My precious treasures to your temples, and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory" Joel 5:6-7.

God confirms that His prophecy to restore the Jews to the land of Promise has been fulfilled and that it is from that place, the place He appointed them, that He would gather them to battle and that they would be the instruments of his recompense, or, in common vernacular, payback!

"Behold, I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your recompense on your head" Joel 3:7.

This is not the final battle of the War of Armageddon. The War of Armageddon involves the whole world in escalating waves of battles. But Joel sees those he can identify, the nations surrounding Israel. These were the same nations that were currently talking about peace and Oslo agreements while preparing for war.

War they want and war they are certainly going to get. "Hasten and come, all your surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down, O Lord," "Thy mighty ones. Let the nations be aroused and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations." "Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the winepress is full; the vats overflow, for their wickedness, is great."

"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision" Joel 3:11-14.

Note again that the Battle of Jehoshaphat is not the final battle. The Lord gives a gracious promise to sustain the believing remnant that is caught in the middle of the worst conflict of history:

"The sun and moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness." "And the Lord roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth tremble. But the Lord is a refuge for His people and a stronghold to the sons of Israel" Joel 3:15-16.

Even in the midst of this horrible carnage, where all that is familiar is being destroyed, God assures the remnant that this will never happen again: "Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, Dwelling in Zion My holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers will pass through it no more" Joel 3:17.

Each of the surviving powers in the final global conflict has land armies that have arrived in the area by this time. Most of the Russian and Muslim troops have been annihilated on the mountains of Israel Ezek. 39-2. Jerusalem was first besieged by an onslaught of the Russian led Muslim alliance, which included units from North and Black Africa. The Gog-Magog attack took the world leader by surprise, and it took him some time to muster the Western armies under his direct command for a counter attack.

"And at the end time the King of the south will collide with him, and the King of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and its many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through" Dan. 11:40.

The scene is devastating. Nuclear and neutron weapons have done serious damage to command and control, supply lines, lines of communication, and entire divisions no longer exist anywhere but on maps. In the confusion, the Bible seems to indicate Jerusalem is captured, recaptured, and captured again, but no one unit is able to hold it. Evidently, either by treaty with the Jordanians or by God's providential protection of the Israelis who fled to the caves at Petra Matt. 24:16. Edom, Moab and the sons of Ammon (modern Jordan), are spared the wrath of the Antichrist's military forces.

The battles grow so fierce, so destructive, and so wanton is the carnage that God sends Michael the archangel in on Israel's side. Remember, here we are in the midst of the greatest war in history, and Israel is right in the middle. Nuclear weapons uncounted millions of invaders the full force of the wrath of Satan is directed against the Jewish people. "Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued" Dan. 12:1.

Not every Jew will survive the war. God says that two-thirds of the Jews will perish.

"And it will come about in all the land," declares the Lord, "that two parts in it will be cut off and perish, but the third will be left in it. And I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say, "They are My people, and they will say, "The Lord is my God" Zech. 13:8-9.

That remnant who is "refined as silver is refined" and "tested as gold is tested" will indeed call on the Lord. There is nothing more powerful than prayer.

"But I will watch over the house of Judah, while I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness." "Then the clans of Judah will say in their hearts," A strong support for us are the inhabitants of Jerusalem through the Lord of hosts, their God." "In that day I will make the clans of Judah like a firepot among pieces of wood and a flaming torch among sheaves, so they will consume on the right hand and on the left all the surrounding peoples, while the inhabitants of Jerusalem again dwell on their own sites in Jerusalem" Zech. 12: 4b-6.

So, that is the military situation as it stands, as the entire Middle East becomes the most heavily contested battlefield in human history.

The Battle of Jerusalem: Once begun, the battles are fast and furious. As the Battle of Jehoshaphat draws to an end the Battle of Jerusalem begins. Why should such a little city command such attention? Especially when you consider the fact that only a couple of generations ago, most people in the developed world thought Jerusalem was a mythical city or a lost city from the Bible. Today it's the centerpiece of the world.

"Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah" Zech. 12:2.

According to the ancient prophets, the battle for the city of Jerusalem will involve forces from every nation on the face of the earth.

"And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it" Zech. 12:3.

It is during the battle for Jerusalem that the national redemption of Israel is accomplished. Every promise of God is true, and the covenant God made with Abraham is redeemed. The absolute Biblical proof that destroys the argument of the Dominionists and the Kingdom Now Movement is declared in no uncertain terms.

"And it will come about in that day," declares the Lord of hosts, "that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered, and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land" Zech. 13:2.

There will be no atheists left among the children of Abraham in that day. The Antichrist's claims to Messiahship will be forever and unconditionally discredited, and Israel will see, recognize and mourn the Son that their fathers in their blindness "cut off from the earth"Dan. 9:26.

"And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a firstborn" Zech. 12:10.

The Battle of the Jordan Valley: As the battles rage in Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat, what is left of the divisions of the northern army defeated on the mountains of Israel withdraw to regroup. They head down the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

"But I will remove the northern army far from you, and I will drive it into a parched and desolate land, and its vanguard into the eastern sea Joel 2:20.

The Jordan Valley runs some 200 miles from the North Sea of Galilee to Eilat. Into this valley streams the remaining hordes from the East, to meet in battle with what remains of both the Russian/Muslim alliance and the armies of the Antichrist.

The Battle of Armageddon: This is the valley of decision spoken of by the prophet Joel. All the nations of the world will be represented at this battle. The Jordan Valley will one day contain an army numbering in the hundreds of millions of men. Plus equipment, weapons, artillery pieces, vehicles, the works! All of these last battles happen almost simultaneously. There are elements in each battle scene like the Russian/Muslim alliance that play key roles throughout. The overall end of the Gog and Magog alliance is annihilation but yet they can be found in each scenario.

The Russians will launch their attack on Israel at the same time as the Kings of the South (the pan-Arab confederation), make their push. The Russians will capture key ports, like the one at Haifa that will lead directly into the valley of decision, arriving from the west. Meanwhile, the Kings of the East, (the red Chinese alliance), are arriving from the east into this same valley. The Kings of the South are already there. And the Antichrist and his forces, including the whole of the Western world (sadly, that will include America), will be on the march to repel the invaders.

This happens on the heels of multiple nuclear attacks, chemical and biological warfare, and the almost certain loss of sophisticated communications technology like satellites, global positioning systems, television, and telephones, etc. Nobody really knows what they're up against until they square off.

Undoubtedly, each believes that he is leading an overwhelming force against an enemy in disarray. The Antichrist's forces are simply repelling an Arab invasion and retaliating against a nuclear attack. The Kings of the East are planning to take the Middle East and its oil for themselves. With 200 million men, they certainly believe they have the advantage. Russia thinks it has the advantage of surprise.

And suddenly, there they are! The whole world in a single, massive confrontation, Awesome! Picture the scene as Prophet Joel saw it.

"A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the mountains, so there is a great and mighty people; there has never been anything like it, nor will there be again after it to the years of many generations" Joel 2:2.

Joel captures, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the madness, the hopelessness, and the insanity of the moment. Ordinary soldiers they are, led by demoniacs who have assured them of victory, looking back toward home and country, now under the shadow of the mushroom cloud. And in front, more war, more devastation. "A fire consumes before them and behind them, a flame burns" Joel 2:3a.

The common perception of the soldiers of the armies assembled at Armageddon is somehow inhuman. Nuclear war has robbed them of everything. Their only hope for continued existence is to find someplace untouched by the devastation. Like Israel.

"The land is like the Garden of Eden before them, but a desolate wilderness behind them, and nothing at all escapes them" Joel 2:3b.

The Return of Christ: This is the most dramatic moment in world history! After winning four successive battles, Christ will set His feet on the Mount of Olives.

"A day of the Lord is coming when your plunder will be divided among you." "I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city." "Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle." "On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south" Zech. 14:1-4.

"And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal; yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee" Zech. 14:5.

When Christ consumes all before Him through the earthquakes, lightning’s, and the sword that proceeds out of His mouth, not only will the Holy Land be destroyed but the entire country will be literally bathed in the blood of unregenerate, God-hating, Christ opposing people. It is hard to envision the hordes of troops from all over the world that will oppose Christ. Who can conceive of a time when the blood of Slain men will flow as high as the horses' bridles by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs? That is just about the length of the entire land of Palestine!

Naturally many skeptics and those who do not take the book of Revelation literally find it difficult to believe that so much blood could be shed. A point to be kept in mind is that part of the destruction of the troops around Jerusalem will include a hailstorm.

"From the sky, huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail because the plague was so terrible"Rev. 16:21.

Millions of pieces of ice will fall to the earth weighing a hundred plus pounds each, melting in the torrid heat of Palestine, and mingling with the blood of those slain until the land of Palestine will be literally bathed in a bloody liquid that is almost too horrible to describe. What a price human beings will pay for rejecting Christ!

When Jesus returns to our planet, His feet will touch down on the Mount of Olives, and it will split in two. Geological reports indicate there is a fault under the Mount; the touch of our Lord's feet upon the ground will cause that fault to split the mountain wide open, yet another powerful announcement of His coming. But what of His "fight against those nations"? The apostle John gives dramatic details of this one of a kind future event in Revelation 19.

"And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God," "so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great." "Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army." "Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs, he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur." "The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh" Rev. 19:17-21.

Several Bible passages indicate that the "battle of that great day of God Almighty" Rev. 16:14, actually consists of at least four "campaigns" and spreads over almost all the land of Palestine:

1. The Lord first goes to Edom to rescue Israel from the hand of the Antichrist; here He soils His clothing in the blood of His enemies Isaiah 63:1-6.

2. The Lord then goes to the Valley of Megiddo, where He defeats many of the armies of the world Rev. 16:12-16.

3. Next, the Lord defeats most of the remainder of the world's evil forces in the Valley of Jehoshaphat Joel 3:1-2, 9-17; Rev. 14:14-20.

4. Last, the Lord will come to Jerusalem to defeat the advance guard of the Antichrist, who will attempt to wipe out the Holy City Zech. 12:1-9; Rev. 16:17-21.

On the great day of His return, Christ will defeat all His enemies, capture alive the Antichrist and the false prophet, and cast them into the lake of fire, where they will be tormented day and night forever and ever Rev. 20:1-3.

So take courage Believers!

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christianworldf · 5 years

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New Post has been published on Christian Worldview Institute

New Post has been published on https://christianworldviewinstitute.com/bible-prophecies/end-time-events/book-of-revelation/seven-blowls/pastor-arthur-branner-are-the-seven-trumpets-past-or-future-seven-vials-works-of-darkness/

Pastor Arthur Branner - Are the Seven Trumpets Past or Future? Seven Vials? "Works of Darkness"

Pastor Arthur Branner – Are the Seven Trumpets Past or Future? Seven Vials? “Works of Darkness”

365 days I was as Chaplin in Iraq. In the same, behind this pulpit, this sacred responsibility I take very seriously.

So often God will do things in the past, and again do them in the future. The process repeats itself, we call this TYPE and ANITTYPE. As we enter into this trumpets study, I believe, theres been a TYPE, but in our days, there is an ANTITYPE. Jesus even spoke of the desturction of Jerusalem in AD70, but Ellen white speaks of it occuring in our day as well. ROME before, ROME now! This is the premise by which we’re going to study this.

SEVEN TRUMPETS: Green grass, 1/3 trees are burned up. 1/3 sea becomes blodd, 1/3 ships and sealife destroyed. 1/3 waters turn bitter. 1/3 sun, moon and stars do not shine. Locusts wield thebeasts military power. 100 million man army, 1/3 of mankind killed. Kingdom of God is declared.

SEVEN BOWLS: Sores Afflict those who accepted the MARK OF THE BEAST Sea turns to blood, all sea creatures die. Rivers turn to blood. Mankind scorched by the sun, blasphemes God. Beasts seat of govt is afflicted. Euphrates is dried up, world armies gather to armageddon. Earth is utterly shaken.

LDE, ELLEN WHITE – “The time of Gods destructive judgments is the time of MERCY for those who have no opportunity to learn what is truth. His hand is still stretched out to save, while the door is closed to those who would not enter.”

Rev 8:13 – “WOE, WOE, WOE TO THE INHABITORS.. 3 ANGELS YET TO SOUND”. Why? Because the first 4 plagues were primarily upon the land and sea, but the last three are judgments upon humanity.

Uriah Smith explains the Trumpets the most thoroughly. Which was the military history against western and eastern Rome. Alaric, Geneseric, Attila, Odoacer, Mohammed, Turks, and the West. Goths, Vandals, Huns, Heruli, Islam, Ottoman, NEW WORLD ORDER.

7 views of the trumpets held by the Seventh Day Adventist Leaders are not congruent at all. They varied widely: Uriah Smith, Thiele, Naden, Maxwell, Shea, Paulien, LaRondelle, Stefanovic, Treiyer.

Josiah Litch – “After the failured of 1843/1844 he went back to the Bible. He was convinced that the seven trumpets would be seven FUTURE events. In 1873, 35 years later, he published a book, A COMPLETE HARMONY OF DANIEL AND THE APOCALYPSE.. THE SEVEN TRUMPETS WILL TAKE PLACE JUST BEFORE THE SECOND COMING” He knew he had been previously wrong.

So, are the 7 TRUMPETS PAST OF FUTURE?

1 Cor 10:11

Heb 9:3-4 – “Which had the Golden Censor, and the Ark” So when was the censor used? It was used on the DAY OF ATONEMENT. So at the very least, the trumpets would occur only AFTER Oct 22, 1844, day of atonement!

What must happen for the FIRST trumpet to sound. “Rev 7:3 Hurt not, neither we have SEALED the servants of our God in their foreheads.”

I saw that the holy Sabbath is, and will be, the separating wall between the true Israel of God and unbelieverss… And at the commencement of the time of trouble, we were filled with the Holy Ghost as we went forth and proclaimed the Sabbath more fully. This view was given in 1847 when there were but very few of the Advent brethren observing the Sabbath, and of these but few supposed that its observance was of sufficient importance to draw a line between the people of God and unbelievers. Now the fulfilment of that view is BEGINNING TO BE SEEN. “The commencement of that time of trouble,” here mentioned does not refer to the time when the plagues shall begin to be poured out, but to a short period just before they are poured out, while Christ is in the sanctuary. At that time, while the work of salvation is closing, TROUBLE WILL BE COMING on the earth.. EW 85

Ellen White – “Solemn events before us are yet to transpire. Trumpet after trumpet is to be sounded; vial after vial poured out one after another upon the inhabitants of the earth.”

Ellen White – “Last Friday morning, just before I awoke, a very impressive scene was presented before me. I seemed to awake from sleep but was not in my home. From the windows I could behold a terrible conflagration. Great balls of fire were falling upon houses, and from these balls fiery arrows were flying in every direction. ”

Notice, if wars occured etc, the people would not be declaring, IT CAME SO SOON. No, this vision are plagues of her future, before wars. It’s soon to happen

Isaiah 11:4 – “With righteousness shall he judge..”

So, the judgement of the living occur at the sealing of his people. In lev 16:18,19, when the high priest goes to the outer court and annointed the brazen alter. It represents the gentiles, the LAST phase of judgment.

1906, Ellen White – “Let all who would understand the meaning of these things read the 11th chapter of Revelation. Read every verse, and learn the things that YET to take place in the cities. Read also Rev 18.”

I pray we can escape what will take the world by overwhelming surprise! source

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thethingsihavelearned · 6 years

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Dealing with Moral Law

I know I said that I was going to write about Jesus this time. I will explain some of what I have learned about Jesus today, but when I was considering what I wanted to share about Jesus, it occurred to me that I should write some things about morality first, about its objective nature and how societies deal with it. The objectivity of morality that we observe in our world speaks to God’s nature and reveals the purpose of Jesus’ life and death.

People sense that there are objective moral truths, which apply to only humans. First, consider king snakes, which kill and eat other snakes for sustenance. We do not call king snakes murderers when they live out their natural, animalistic instincts, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard. In Georgia, if a man was found to be killing and eating other men, a judge would sentence him to life in prison or probably death by lethal injection, and the people would say justice is served. Furthermore, there are different types of killings in human society. If a man kills another man for the fun of it, we would say he is sick, twisted, and certainty immoral, but if a man kills another man in self defense or in war, he is not called immoral and may be praised for it. There are other actions that we brand based on intent, like stealing and lying. If a prisoner-of-war lies to his captors, the people in his native country consider him to be a hero, and even his captors would understand him to be loyal, a trait they would provide in their minds even while they hate the soldier for it. Clearly, as humans we judge one another based on a specific moral standard.

Similarly, there are actions that men praise as decisively moral and good. These types of actions are usually selfless: the person commits the act for the betterment of another while receiving nothing good for their toil. Mother Teresa is praised as a morally virtuous person because she selflessly gave of herself to the poor. People may disagree on just how selfless one should be to be considered morally good, but selfishness is consistently denounced as immoral. When we consider the world religious, they are pretty similar to the actions that they trumpet as good things for a person to do, and the general idea is something that the Golden Rule of doing to others as you would have them do to you. The essential theme is to love one another. If we are loving one another, we are generally acting morally, and if we are acting out of hatred or selfishness, the chances are good that we are acting immorally.

When we consider human nature, it becomes quite clear that objective moral truths exist, and humans do not always live by them. There is a good reason: living a moral life usually does not advance one’s personal interests in this life, while selfishness does. That is why the existence of moral truths is important and why I am writing about it now. If living by the moral laws that we perceive does not advance a man’s interests, that leads to the question, from where did moral law come? Naturalism cannot account for moral truths because naturalism leads to snakes eating snakes, survival of the fittest, nihilism, and Adolf Hitler. The existence of moral truths is explainable only by the existence of a moral lawgiver (if you need more convincing on the origin of a moral lawgiver, I would recommend reading the chapter “Law and Order” in the book God’s Crime Scene by J. Warner Wallace). Then, it stands to reason that if there is a father of moral law, He would be bound to follow and uphold His laws.

If we acknowledge the existence of moral laws in this universe, then we see that humans, even ourselves, fail to follow all the laws all the time. Consider how a perfect person would live. Are you that person? Do you know that person? The answer to both questions is a resounding no by my account. The world religions recognize that no human is perfect, and each prescribes a way to deal with that problem. Islam says basically that a man’s good deeds should outweigh his bad deeds, and that will save him. Buddhism tells a man to find the middle path of enlightenment for himself, and Hinduism speaks of reincarnating to pay for the previous lifes’ sins until one reaches Nirvana. There is a parallel between each of these religions and every other religion I know of, save one. The common theme is man triumphing in a way that earns him salvation for his eternal soul.

Only the Christian acknowledges that good is not good enough. The moral lawgivers God, is perfect, and no matter how hard I try, I can never measure up to His standard, nor can any other man who has ever lived. Compared to His perfection, I deserve only punishment, and He is duty-bound by His sinlessness to mete out that punishment, which all humans deserve, because He caused our existence. As our ultimate Creator, He is responsible for our actions; therefore, if He allowed us to sin unchecked, He would no longer be sinless. He would be defying His perfect nature and would become a sinner by definition, which God cannot do. That is the problem with the solution for sin to which all the other religious subscribe; they turn God into a sinner. They attempt to bring God down to our level or to eliminate Him altogether, which betrays their falsehood. God, who will not be mocked, had a plan from the beginning to deal with our resultant sin in His perfection. He would come to Earth in the flesh and form of a man whereupon He would live a perfect, sinless life amid all the temptations that man faces. Then, after living the perfect life, He would freely take the punishment we deserve by experiencing the torturous death of crucifixion while harboring all of our sinful acts in Himself, to the point of forsaking His blamelessness. His death paid the debt that we sinners owe, which is our very lives, so that man can be justified and sanctified should we choose to accept His gift in humility. The humility part is critical because in order to accept God’s gift of salvation, we must first acknowledge our inability to save ourselves. Accepting God’s gift of salvation is the only path to salvation, and do not be deceived; it comes at a price. The price is your pride. When we understand that we require God’s help, there is a logical transformation that takes place in our minds. We realize that His way is better than our way. Following His calling trumps following our personal ideas’ because we are flawed, but He is perfect. That is the price of our salvation, but when we realize what our salvation and the resultant transformation entails, we realize that it is actually no price at all; that is why we call it a gift. When I am following God, I love life. Bad things may happen to me, but I accept them with a smile on my face because I see the bigger picture. Life is more than my current circumstance, and I am more, much more, than my flesh and bone.

Now, all of this that I have written about today makes for a nice story. It has a certain symmetry and logical beauty to it, but if the crucifixion and indeed, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, did not actually happen, then it is nothing more than a nice story. Next time, I will explain how I know that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection happened exactly how the Gospels say it did.

#read #words #life #writing #passages #thoughts #reading #writers #persona;#personal thoughts #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #god #Christianity #jesus christ #apologetics

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foundtheworl · 6 years

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New Post has been published on Found The World

New Post has been published on https://foundtheworld.com/divers-guide-east-bali/

A Diver’s Guide to East Bali for Scuba Diving Lovers

Bali reached international fame some time ago. It has long been a destination for surfers, tropical island lovers, and those looking for a temporary (sometimes permanent) escape from reality. In this sense, Bali is old news – however, Bali never gets old.

This South East Asian island has a certain mystic about it that has been drawing travelers, tourists, and ex-pats for decades. Is it the ocean’s swell? The unique mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity? Or perhaps it’s the near-perfect weather, practically guaranteeing year-round beach lounging.

No one would blame you for taking off to Bali. I’m guilty of it a few times myself. But it wasn’t for any of the above-listed reasons. While I certainly have nothing against surfing and sunbathing, my draw to Bali was for a completely different reason: Scuba diving.

What’s so good about diving in Bali?

I’ve done quite a bit of diving in South East Asia. As an employed dive instructor, I’ve jumped around from the east and west coast of Thailand to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. I’ve gone on multiple dive vacations to exotic places like Borneo, to the deep waters of the Philippines, to random, unplanned dive trips off of Koh Rong, Cambodia.

But there was always something about the idea of Bali that excited me more than all these places. Bali’s got it all; reef and wreck dives, deep water, current, massive schools of fish, sharks, turtles, small and crazy looking creatures, and tons of other tropical marine life.

Starting point

I was traveling with my boyfriend during my first trip to Bali. We were both employed in Malaysia as dive instructors and were in need of a short vacation. What better place, we thought, than Bali. It was just a short flight away and we were especially excited to check out some new dive sites.

We flew into Depansar International Airport and immediately jumped in a van to take us northeast.

I’d heard a lot about Bali, particularly the crazy party scene of Kuta, located in the south of the island near the airport. Kuta attracts backpackers and young Australians with promises of wild and cheap beach parties. Not really my scene anymore. We decided to skip this party animal’s hot-spot and head to a quieter part of the island.

TIP: If you’re not into the tacky tourist scene, get as far away from Kuta/Depansar/Seminyak as possible. Built up resorts, westernized restaurants, and countless souvenir shops as far as the eye can see are all you’ll find here.

So, where should you go? I’m glad you asked…

A Peaceful Haven

We’d done some research before arriving in Bali and knew we didn’t want to stay in the south with the 18-year old spring breakers. We settled on a small village called Amed, a 2 ½ hour drive from Depansar Airport, on the far east coast of the island. It looked small, quaint, quiet, and most importantly, was in close proximity to some amazing dive sites.

Amed

When we arrived in Amed, it was exactly what I’d be hoping for; narrow roads, mom and pop style restaurants, and cozy accommodation options. We picked Kadek Homestay, a small family run guesthouse in the middle of the “main drag” (if you could call it that). The property was shrouded in a garden jungle and backed directly onto the beach.

Kadek Homestay – garden and sea view

The first of many special things I noticed about Amed was the black, volcanic sand. It makes sense once you look up and see the powerful and prominent Mount Agung towering over Amed. The dark color of the sand gives the whole beach an edgier, more curious appearance– I couldn’t wait to see how that translated underwater!

Viewpoint over Jemeluk Bay with Mount Agung in the background

Diving in Amed

Amed is, by far, the most laid-back place for diving I have ever visited. You would be hard-pressed to find a place that’s more easy-going.

As card-carrying PADI dive instructors, we had all our own scuba gear with us. The only things we needed were a few weights and two tanks. We wandered into a dive shop just a few hundred meters from our guesthouse and chatted with the employees for a few minutes. They recommended a few dive sites that were just down the road and off the beach. Because we were dive professionals, we were able to go diving safely on our own. The dive shop rented us two tanks for $5 each and threw in a couple of kilo weights for free.

We stacked the tanks sideways on the floor of our rented scooter, wore as much of our gear as possible, and balanced the rest on the handlebars as we took off in the direction of the beach.

Pyramids

We found the spot the folks in the dive shop had described to us – a dive site known as “Pyramids.” We assembled our gear on the side of the road, used the references the dive shop had given us for an entry point and walked into the sea.

As soon as we were underwater it felt like we were on the cusp of a night dive; the black sand and twinkling sun on the surface was reminiscent of a sunset dive. We descended down, looking for the man-made pyramid-like structures we were told about. As the current pushed us along, the first pyramid came into view.

Suddenly there was a pop of color. It came from the bright soft corals that consumed the structure. Angelfish, moorish idol, trumpet fish, and damselfish flitted happily around. Upon closer inspection, we found dozens of small, colorful creatures like nudibranch and shrimp.

After a few laps, we drifted along to the next pyramid, then the next. More awesome soft corals, sand-burrowing string rays and flounders, and tons of colorful fish.

After we surfaced we had a quick swim to shore, dissembled our gear and hopped on the bike again. I couldn’t get over how such a simple and easy procedure could yield such a great dive. I didn’t know it yet, but it was about to get easier and better….

Big smiles after our first dive in Bali

The U.S.S. Liberty

If you’ve done any research about diving in Bali, you’ve read about this world-class wreck dive. The U.S.S. Liberty sits literally just off the beach in Tulamban, the neighboring village of Amed.

We decided to dive the U.S.S. Liberty the next day at sunrise in order to beat the crowds – as the most sought-after dive in Bali, we knew by mid-day the site would be mobbed with divers.

We managed to get our hands on a phone number to a local who delivered tanks to dive sites. We called, thinking this was too good to be true. Sure enough, the man on the other end confirmed the story. So, we thought we’d push our luck – did he have 15-liter tanks instead of the typical 12-liter? Yes, he did. Did he have Nitrox? Of course. Could he deliver two 15-liter Nitrox tanks to the U.S.S. Liberty dive site tomorrow morning at 6 am? No problem.

The next morning, we met our “tank guy” in the parking lot. He rolled up with our tanks and an analyzer to check the oxygen level of our Nitrox tanks. All good. He stated for us to call him when we were finished and he’d come pick up the tanks. Our dive at one of the most famous dive sites in the world cost us $7 each.

Gearing up for U.S.S. Liberty in the parking lot among snoozing locals

Once our gear was assembled we walked down to the beach. A local pointed us in the general direction of the wreck.

Walking down the beach to the dive site – you can see how close the dive site is to the beach by the other divers already in the water, about to descend.

The Dive

We experienced one of the best dives of our lives in the next 80-minutes. The wreck itself is staggering. It’s 120-meters long and has been sunk for over 50 years. The top of the wreck sits at 5-meters and the deepest point is roughly 30-meters.

There are many wide-open areas to safely swim through, over, and under the ship. The shimmering black sand sets a fantastic background for the vibrant soft coral that has grown all over the wreck. The pink, white, and purple fluorescents seem to light up the whole area.

Cruising over the top of Liberty

Exploring the inside of Liberty

And, oh my goodness, the marine life – schools of snapper, trevally, and hump head parrot fish patrol the grounds. Colorful angelfish, giant puffers, and porcupine fish drift lazily by. Red-tooth triggerfish flutter around and sea snakes twist their way by. The wreck is also crawling with exotically colored nudibranch and shrimp. The site is like an ancient, underwater playground. Simply beautiful.

One of the coolest parts of the dive was the garden of snake eels in the shallows. We spent almost 10 minutes observing their hide-and-seek behaviors at the end of the dive.

Snake Eel Garden in the shallows of U.S.S. Liberty

We loved it so much we dived it again the next day.

Japanese Wreck

Another ridiculously accessible shore dive in Amed is the Japanese Wreck. It’s shallow and often used as a snorkeling site as well. We’d heard great things about it, even though the maximum depth is only 12m, we wanted to give it go.

The dive is laid-back and boasts lots of small critters, like nudibranch and colorful reef fish. As usual, big soft corals and sea fans, all brilliantly colored. If you’re up for a longer dive, swim off the slope until about 35-meters – there’s a coral plateau waiting to be discovered.

Jemeluk Bay

We also wanted to explore the bay which was just a 5-minute scooter ride from our guesthouse. Jemeluk Bay is a large area hosting several relatively easy dive sites.

On the eastern side of the bay is Jemeluk Drop-Off AKA Jemeluk Wall. As the name suggests, the rocky, jagged reef drops down to depths of roughly 40m or more. We followed the reef with our right shoulder and surfaced at the eastern point of the bay. Another great dive with loads of healthy barrel sponges, soft corals, and swarms of small tropical reef fish – especially in the current at the end of the dive. Look out into the blue for the chance to spot some bigger pelagics!

***********************************

This literally just barely scratches the surface of the diving in East Bali. There are some truly amazing local dives that we didn’t have time for, and some that lie even further off Amed’s east coast; Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida. If you’re looking for some intense diving with strong currents and mind-blowing marine life – head here after Amed.

The diving we experienced in Amed and Tulamban guaranteed that we’ll return again one day. Not only was the diving top-notch, the ease in which we were able to dive was incredible. Of course, if you’re not a certified and very experienced diver, I would never suggest diving on your own. And in Amed, there’s no need to anyway – there are plenty of small, local diving shops dying to take you beneath the surface.

Amed and the rest of Bali are stunning regardless of whether or not you’re a scuba diver. From viewpoints, scenic motorbike drives, Hindu cliffside temples, miles of beaches, and consistently epic swell – Bali never disappoints.

#Amed #Bali #Beach #Coral #Heaven #Indonesian Island #Island #Paradise #Peaceful #Scuba Diving #Surfing #U.S.S Liberty

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renka-aardvarknews-blog · 6 years

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The complex situation in the Middle-East

Courtesy TAMER FAKAHANY The modern Middle East has been plagued by ruinous wars: country versus country, civil wars with internecine and sectarian bloodletting, and numerous eruptions centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But never in the last 70 years have they seemed as interconnected as now with Iran and Saudi Arabia vying for regional control, while Israel also seeks to maintain a military supremacy of its own. Russia, the United States and Turkey make up the other powerbrokers in a region where not only wars but proxy battlefields within those wars are on a feverish and hostile footing. The ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen, this week's mass killing of Palestinians by Israel in Gaza, Turkish-Kurdish hostilities, and the potential for an all-encompassing war sparked by an Iranian-Israeli conflagration in Syria or Lebanon, all have tentacles that reach across borders and back again. Suggestion in recent years of a Sunni/Shiite schism across the Middle East and Persian Gulf appears much less a factor than the jockeying of the key actors with the most military, financial and diplomatic muscle who are trying to shape the region in their image, or at least to the satisfaction of their national security and various leaders' hubris. Here's a look at each of the main power players, whom they are aligned with, and what their ultimate goals are. ISRAEL WHAT'S AT STAKE: Direct conflict with Iran has been simmering and briefly looked like it might burst into full-blown conflagration after Israel launched a blistering bombardment of Iranian positions in Syria, killing Iranian fighters after an alleged Iranian rocket barrage toward its positions on the annexed Golan Heights. The exchange followed several earlier suspected Israeli strikes on Iranian positions in Syria. Israel sees Iran as its mortal enemy and 'existential' threat. Conflict with Iran would likely drag in Tehran's ally, Hezbollah. An Israeli-Hezbollah conflict could play out in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, with each side warning it will strike across the opponent's country. Israel is bolstered by unprecedented support from U.S. President Donald Trump. Israel is determined to suffocate the Iran nuclear deal; Trump withdrew from the accord and days later sent his daughter and son-in-law to preside over the U.S. Embassy move to disputed Jerusalem, a move that angered the Arab and Muslim worlds. Bloodshed at the Gaza border may have revived global opprobrium against Israel for use of disproportionate live fire against unarmed protesters, killing dozens; but Trump's backing gives it reason to feel emboldened. Behind the scenes, Israel is building relations with Gulf nations also opposed to Iran. WHAT IT WANTS: A much weakened Iran, the continuation of the Gaza blockade — which is also imposed by Egypt — with a ferociously controlled border, and no concessions to the Palestinians with regards to land for peace. IRAN WHAT'S AT STAKE: The rapprochement with America under President Barack Obama is now ashes. Sanctions relief, running to hundreds of billions of dollars, is at risk, as Washington targets Tehran again, though a nuclear deal may be salvaged with EU nations, Russia and China. Iran has built up alliances to counter Israel and Saudi Arabia. In Syria, the presence of its troops and allied Shiite militias has been critical to President Bashar Assad's survival. In Yemen, it is allied to Shiite Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed forces. Tehran strongly supports the Palestinian cause, though its ties with Hamas have weakened. WHAT IT WANTS: Iran has pretty much accomplished a goal its officials have often trumpeted, building a corridor of power from Iran across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. In all those countries, it funds and arms powerful Shiite militias and has enormous political influence. It seeks a continuation of the nuclear deal with the other global signatories, hoping to bolster its financial coffers. There has already been discontent in Iran that sanctions relief was not flowing to the people. RUSSIA WHAT'S AT STAKE: President Vladimir Putin has ruthlessly filled the U.S. vacuum in Syria. Moscow's support of Assad turned the tide of war in his favor when defeat seemed imminent several years ago. Russia is also allied to Iran. But it also hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for its Victory Day celebrations hours before Israel's attack on Iranian positions in Syria, raising speculation the two were quietly coordinating so that Israel kept well away from Moscow's forces and planes in Syria. WHAT IT WANTS: Russia's regional goal in is to sustain and build on the major foothold it now has in the Middle East, beyond Syria, notably where the U.S. might have been once before. U.S. WHAT'S AT STAKE: "Traditionally we've tried to play a role of fireman in the Middle East. Now we're playing the role of arsonist," says Ilan Goldenberg, a former State Department and Pentagon official who runs the Mideast program at the Center for a New American Security. That seems to have plenty of currency in the region now. The Palestinians have essentially cut off contacts and say the U.S. cannot be an honest broker. So Trump's promised "deal of the century" doesn't seem to be in the cards for now. Trump withdrew from the Iran deal. He has by his side hawks like National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has advocated for attacking Iran and regime change. Trump can't decide on Syria — to keep the U.S. presence or not? He doesn't seem intent on ruffling Putin over Syria unless chemical weapons rear their head again, which prompted U.S.-led airstrikes last month. The administration is very closely allied to Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and seems set to continue following Riyadh's lead on Yemen. Washington may get an unpleasant surprise if a heavily pro-Iran government emerges in Iraq after last week's elections. WHAT IT WANTS: The administration is in complete synch with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saber-rattling with Iran could escalate, and it shows no urgency in pushing for Israel-Palestinian negotiations. SAUDI ARABIA WHAT'S AT STAKE: Also emboldened by Trump, the Saudi crown prince is determined to make his mark. Riyadh is spending billions of dollars in the Yemen war, leading a Gulf Arab coalition against Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels. Thousands of civilians have been killed by Saudi airstrikes and starvation in the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Prince Mohammed has made vague threats that the kingdom will build a nuclear bomb if Iran starts its program again. Saudi Arabia sees Iran as the single greatest threat to the region and its competition for the dominant role it wants for itself. The kingdom is closely tied to Trump, who chose it as the destination for his first overseas trip as president, and it has been back-channeling with Israel. At the same time, it has lost influence in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon after placing bets on losing partners or failed gambits. WHAT IT WANTS: Emasculation regionally of Iran and to be the dominant power in the region. TURKEY WHAT'S AT STAKE: For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it's almost exclusively about the Kurds, who in an alliance with the U.S. helped defeat the Islamic State group in Syria and in the process captured a quarter of the country. This has infuriated Turkey to the point it launched a military campaign seizing a pocket of northern Syria, and it threatens to attack Kurds all the way to the Iraqi border. The presence of U.S. forces among the Kurds is perhaps the only thing that's held Turkey back this long. Ankara views Kurdish fighters in Syria as an extension of the Turkish Kurdish PKK, which it considers a terrorist group. Turkey also gives vocal support to the Palestinians, while relations are at a nadir with Israel. Turkey has also offered to take in wounded Palestinians from Gaza for treatment. WHAT IT WANTS: To break Kurdish strength and, above all, prevent a Kurdish autonomous mini-state in Syria along its border. It also wants some say in post-war Syria where it has supported opposition fighters and Islamist groups opposed to Assad. Tamer Fakahany is AP Global News manager and has directed international coverage for AP for 15 years. Read the full article

#Iran #Israel #MiddleEast #SaudiArabia #Syria #Turkey #US #Yemen

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