The desert father Abba Zosimas tells the story of an old man who was robbed by thieves. When they said, “We have come to take everything in your cell,” he replied, “Children, take whatever you think you should take.” The robbers took everything, leaving only a small sack. The old man ran after them crying, “Children, take this too, which you left behind in my cell.” They were so shocked at his guilelessness that they returned everything and repented.
(Source: plough.com)
For the past year or so, I’ve been meditating on the Old Testament prophets. Throughout these books God reveals the sins of his people, pleading with them to turn from their waywardness and receive mercy. One of the most egregious sins is their neglect of the vulnerable: the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, the poor. Again and again, God commands his people to take special care of the needy in their midst.
Foolish Generosity
(Source: plough.com)
Dismissing a warning from Russia that it would regard the deployment of Western depleted uranium munitions in Ukraine as an act of nuclear war, a top British defense official said Monday that the United Kingdom will send DU armor-piercing tank rounds to Ukrainian homeland defenders—a move condemned by peace campaigners in the U.K. and beyond.
(Source: commondreams.org)
(Source: snopes.com)
If Trump ends up in court because he paid his attorney to pay off a former girlfriend, justice will not have been done. The nonsense indictment will be a failure, not a victory. Trump will never face jail time for kidnapping Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab or assassinating Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. His predecessors understand the importance of defending the big crimes. But January 6 and other antics put Trump on the outs with the rest of the elite gang. He gets no protection and could make history in a way that he never dreamed of.
20 Years After Iraq, Corporate Media Defends US War Crimes But Obsesses Over Trump Trivialities
(Source: blackagendareport.com)
My father vanished one afternoon, ostensibly traveling for business, but in reality, he had absconded. Years later, I would come to know that the debts he’d left totaled millions; that he had lost a great deal not only gambling in casinos but in stock markets rocked by the Asian Financial Crisis; that he had used his position as a senior lawyer to siphon off money from client accounts to pay his debts; that the police were involved and criminal charges were brought against him. Years later, I would find out he had borrowed money from literally everyone, from colleagues to classmates to distant relatives. From pawning jewelry to remortgaging the house, it was the television set ruse all over again. Years later, when I was in college, I would receive an email from him asking me for money to pay his medical bills.
If you forcibly take a child from parents’ arms, that’s kidnapping. If you take a lot of children and put them in a detainment camp that causes trauma, that is collective child abuse. These are state-sponsored crimes.
Marianne Williamson
(Source: currentaffairs.org)
Not all chains are visible. People are shackled by the economic insecurity and anxiety baked into the cake of a system where a stockholder value and short-term profit maximization for huge corporate entities is put before the safety, health, and well-being of people, animals, and the planet. And what we have now, which you obviously know, is our government chops wood and carries water for and is bought and sold by those people.
Marianne Williamson
(Source: currentaffairs.org)
Substituting aristocrat-philanthropist-wandering-saint Tolstoy for Marx as a starting point for countering poverty––whether in the US or global context with which it’s necessarily intertwined––strikes as neither an original nor useful turn. It’s pandering to liberal moralism.
Eric Reinhart
(Source: twitter.com)