#U.S. Southern Command

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]

A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.

Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.

“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”

“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”

“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”

The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.

“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”

Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.

“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods

Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”

Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.

“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine

That’s never ever ever seen a smile

If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There’d be a tombstone every mile

Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”

Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”

“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.

“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down

You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town

When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice

That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”

Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.

“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”

“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”

“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.

“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”

“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods

Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods

He’ll tell you that dying and going down below

Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”

Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.

“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”

“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.

“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”

“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”

“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.

“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”

You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”

“That’s appropriate.”

You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.

“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”

“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”

“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.

“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”

You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”

“Got it all figured out?”

“Sure did.”

“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.

“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”

He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”

“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”

He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”

“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”

“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”

“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”

Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”

“What’s bothering you?”

He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”

“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”

“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”

You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”

“Yeah right.”

“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”

He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”

You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”

Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”

“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”

“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.

You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”

“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”

“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.

“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”

Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”

“What?!” he exclaims.

“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.

Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”

Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”

“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”

“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”

You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.

“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.

“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.

He groans. “Should we really?”

“Yeah. We should.”

“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.

There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.

Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Does the trout smell right to you?”

Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”

“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”

“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”

“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.

You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.

Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?

You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.

You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”

“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”

She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”

“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.

You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.

“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.

Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”

“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”

At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”

“Not Otter.”

You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.

“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”

You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”

“Just one more day,” Aemond says.

One more day.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”

“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.

“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”

“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.

“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.

“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”

Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”

“Thanks…?” Luke says.

“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”

“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.

Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.

“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.

“Yeah?”

“That was actually a zombie, right?”

“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.

Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”

“Like…50%.”

“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.

Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.

“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”

“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.

You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”

“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”

“I prefer the view the way it is.”

You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.

“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before��so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.

“Why…?”

And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.

“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.

“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.

“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”

“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.

Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”

“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”

“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”

“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”

“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.

“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.

“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.

He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.

“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”

Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.

You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”

He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”

“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.

“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”

“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”

“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.

Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”

His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”

Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”

“You can do this,” Aemond says.

“I’ll try.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.

Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”

“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.

“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”

You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.

Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.

You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”

“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”

“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”

On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.

Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”

Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.

“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

“We can’t leave him alone like this.”

“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”

Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.

The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.

They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.

It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.

“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.

No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.

Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.

The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”

Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.

“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”

Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”

“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.

“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”

“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”

The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”

“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”

“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”

“They’re my family.”

“You can vouch for them?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”

“Yes.”

The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”

“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”

Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.

In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.

Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.

You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.

“The rest of our lives.”

It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.

[secular-jew]

I’m a Palestinian American. Here’s Why I Can’t Support the Anti-Israel Protesters. By Elizabeth Gillanders. August 16, 2024

Walking past Union Station in the nation’s capital, I recently was met with a heartbreaking sight. Vandals had defaced the Columbus Memorial Fountain with spray paint, writing the words “Hamas is coming” in big red letters.

Trash and signs discarded by anti-Israel protesters littered the ground. A burnt shopping cart stood off to one side with piles of ash beneath it.

Most depressing, however, were the three bare flag poles that had been robbed of their American flags. Protesters had burned the flags, the only remnant a charred piece of fabric atop another pile of ash.

This was the aftermath of the July 24 “pro-Palestinian” protests in Washington, D.C., organized in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address that day to a joint meeting of Congress.

As an American of Palestinian heritage, some expect me to cheer on these people. They expect me to condemn the U.S., hate Israel, and support Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to wiping out the Jewish state.

But these expectations don’t represent me, nor my family.

I inherit my Palestinian background from my mother’s side of the family; her parents emigrated to America from the Middle East. My grandma was born in Israel and later moved to Ramallah in the West Bank and eventually to Jordan.

After arriving in America in her 20s, my grandma worked hard to become a U.S. citizen. She learned the English language while raising my mother and uncle. She opened a restaurant with my grandpa, lovingly named the Chicken Pantry, in Hamtramck, Michigan. When that business closed, my grandma worked as a real estate agent before eventually retiring in the land of prosperity.

America brought my family prosperity. My grandparents taught my mother to “kiss the ground you walk on” because they knew what a blessing America is.

They passed this lesson on to me.

Although many seem to think that my Palestinian heritage should cause me to align with protests that supposedly are “pro-Palestinian,” it’s precisely because of my heritage that I cannot do that.

Israel went to war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip only after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 and kidnapped about 250 in a rampage of rape, torture, and murder Oct. 7 in southern Israel.

About 10 months later, as pro-Hamas protesters march in this country to “free Palestine,” they call for the death of America. As they burn the American flag, they burn all that my family has worked to achieve.

As the protesters pledge their allegiance to Hamas, they encourage a group that my grandmother wouldn’t hesitate to call a terrorist organization that operates with a strategy of human sacrifice.

Think about it. Why are there no Hamas military bases in the Gaza Strip adjoining Israel? Because the terrorists hide behind their own people.

They dress like noncombatants in Gaza. They establish bunkers in hospitals. They commandeer ambulances for transportation.

These actions are all in direct violation of Article 18 of the Geneva Conventions, the international pacts that set minimum standards during armed conflict for the treatment of civilians, soldiers, and prisoners of war.

One example is Hamas’ use of Gaza’s most important hospital, Al-Shifa. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hamas uses a bunker under the hospital as a base for military operations. This not only makes the hospital a target, but takes medical resources needed for the sick.

In contrast, the Israel Defense Forces have given civilians in Gaza opportunities to evacuate and warned of impending attacks. No other nation goes this far to protect enemy civilians.

How can I support pro-Hamas demonstrators who wish to end the nation that brought my family so much? How can I back a terrorist group that uses its own people as human shields? How can I hate Israel, when the IDF has worked to keep Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way?

I believe it’s important to point out that, contrary to popular belief, not all Arabs think the same. Some of us do see this conflict differently. And our thoughts and beliefs should not be snuffed out because they go against the “narrative.”

To some, perhaps our stance makes us walking oxymorons. But we are proud ones, nonetheless.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

There was a bloodbath over at the Justice Department, signaling real trouble ahead for the Trump administration. In the first major challenge to Trump’s new Attorney General Pam Bondi, the resignation of acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, a top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, set off a chain reaction that has shaken the Justice Department to its core. The Department had been planning to drop all charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is facing federal corruption charges and possible new obstruction of justice charges. Lately, Adams has been working hard to curry favor with the Trump White House, and it looked like his efforts were about to pay off. Enter Sassoon, who was in charge of the Adams case. When she learned of the plan to dismiss all charges against Adams, she offered her resignation in a polite but damning letter. In it, she laid out why she could no longer in good faith work for the Department, which had put political considerations above the rule of law. Sassoon wasn’t the only lawyer to quit the Department yesterday. When it tried to hand the case to the Public Integrity Section in D.C., its top lawyers resigned, too, rather than dismiss the charges against Adams. Then more lawyers followed. By the end, six attorneys had quit, dealing a stunning blow to the administration. Normally we don’t get much of a view into the inner workings and politics of the Justice Department. They are usually quite tight lipped. But thanks to Sassoon, we now have a clear picture of what happened and why it’s so indicative not only of the corruption at the very top but also of the high levels of integrity throughout the rest of the Department.

[...] Bove’s main rationale for dismissing the case was a headspinner. He claimed the indictment “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources” to Trump’s efforts to crack down on migrants and had “improperly interfered” with Adams’s re-election campaign. (If that sounds familiar, it’s essentially Trump’s long-held rationale for why charges against him were a “witch hunt” designed to create “election interference.”) In other words, Bove provided only political justifications for dropping the charges, with no rationale related to the actual facts, evidence or law of the case. That memo made big news on Monday, and legal observers assumed, with a sinking feeling in our collective guts, that the matter was finished. Adams had played politics well, and Trump had bitten and apparently ordered his Justice Department to comply. [...] It’s important to know something about Sassoon’s political leanings. She’s a conservative, Federalist Society attorney who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. So this is not some progressive or liberal, though I have no doubt that the MAGA ghouls will try to paint her that way. She was the lawyer the Department picked to head the Southern District of New York, an office so important and so aboveboard that it’s often referred to as the Sovereign District of New York. [...]

Bove fires back

Bove is a real piece of work, and he wasn’t going to let things go quietly. Whether Bondi instructed him to answer or he took it upon himself to do so, his letter responding to Sassoon blasted her personally and her handling of the case, along with her decision not to obey a direct order. Bove didn’t just stop with her. He wrote that the other prosecutors on the case who had worked with her, and apparently supported her position, would be placed on administrative leave, too, for disobeying his command. He threatened them with an investigation by the AG and the Department’s internal investigative unit, both of which would also evaluate Sasson’s conduct, which could be taken as a veiled threat to bring bar disciplinary action. (Bove may want to think twice about this investigation now, as his own conduct might come under the microscope, and the judge overseeing the dismissal could demand some answers about what really went down.) The most telling part of the letter was where Bove placed fealty to the President above all other considerations, including Sasson’s oath to uphold the Constitution. “In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President,” he wrote, “and anyone romanticizing that behavior does a disservice to the nature of this work and the public’s perception of our efforts.” [...]

The ensuing bloodbath

This is the point where things got really interesting. After Sassoon resigned, Bove sent the file over to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department in D.C. There, he expected that the heads of the Section, Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, would obey his order and dismiss the case. Instead, they resigned as well. Bove went to other lawyers down the line, including one who reportedly was in the hospital giving birth. The response was the same: We quit. In all, there were six resignations, including Sassoon’s. This is twice the number of people who were sacked when President Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating Watergate. They had to go three officials down the line until they got to Robert Bork, who was unprincipled enough to order Cox’s firing. That series of dismissals became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and it soured the public badly against Nixon who was clearly trying to obstruct the investigation. [...] Moreover, there is significant pressure now on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to exercise her power to remove Adams from office, especially now that there is unrefuted evidence that Adams sought leniency in exchange for throwing migrants in New York under the bus and letting ICE have free rein, in contravention to the city’s existing policies. Indeed, shortly after Sassoon’s resignation on Thursday, following a meeting between Adams and Trump’s new border czar, Thomas Homan, Adams declared he would issue an order allowing ICE agents into the Rikers Island prison complex, signaling a stark departure from the city’s prior sanctuary status. Through all of this, one thing is now crystal clear: This story has gone from a local case of mayoral corruption to a stunning and significant national case of embarrassment for the Justice Department. The resistance to the behavior of top officials, explosively displayed by the mass resignations of top Department lawyers on Thursday, spells real trouble for Bove and Bondi as they seek to bend the entire DOJ to the will of the Trump White House.

Happy to see Danielle Sassoon stand up for the rule of law by refusing to cave in on the Trump DOJ demand to drop the charges against Eric Adams, along with at least 6-7 others who also refused to cave.

See Also:

Talking Feds (Harry Litman): Thursday Night Massacre

Campaign Trails (Kevin Kruse): The Thursday Afternoon Massacre

everyone is entitled to my own opinion (Jeff Tiedrich): prosecutors to Donny: fuck straight off, we’re not dropping Eric Adams’ charges

TPM: DOJ Enters The Darkest Period In Its Long History

[probablyasocialecologist]

More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.   The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.

[...]

Israel’s statement that it shot down the majority of Iranian “cruise missiles” is probably an exaggeration. According to U.S. military sources and preliminary reporting, U.S. and allied aircraft shot down the majority of drones and cruise missiles. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the Royal Air Force Typhoons intercepted “a number” of Iranian weapons over Iraqi and Syrian airspace. The Jordanian government has also hinted that its aircraft downed some Iranian weapons. “We will intercept every drone or missile that violates Jordan’s airspace to avert any danger. Anything posing a threat to Jordan and the security of Jordanians, we will confront it with all our capabilities and resources,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said during an interview on the Al-Mamlaka news channel. French fighters also shot down some drones and possibly cruise missiles.

[mightyflamethrower]

“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023 

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020.  In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

[good-old-gossip]

Meet the REAL BLOOD THIRSTY MONSTERS of Levant - ISRAELI TERRORIST FORCES sponsored by U.S. Tax Dollars

New video evidence relating to the killing of 15 Palestinian rescue workers by Israeli forces has emerged, contradicting the Israeli account of the attack on a medical convoy in Rafah last week.

The footage, which was retrieved from a phone belonging to one of the medics who was killed, shows the Israeli army attacking clearly marked Red Crescent ambulances that had their emergency signal lights on, and emergency medical workers wearing reflective vests.

Palestine Red Crescent Society Officials said in a news conference on Friday at the UN's headquarters that they had presented the nearly seven-minute recording to the UN Security Council.

Last week, the humanitarian workers went missing after responding to a distress call from civilians wounded in an Israeli attack in Rafah.

All contact was lost with them and the medics were found days later in a mass grave, two to three metres deep, with their bodies riddled with gunshots, according the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza.

'They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," said Jonathan Whittall, head of then UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine.

The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces had executed the medics, some of whom were handcuffed, before burying them underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza's Rafah.

The Israeli military said in an initial statement that the vehicles were struck because they were being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both groups deny using ambulances for military purposes.

The new evidence contradicts the Israeli army's account that claimed that the emergency vehicles "were identified advancing suspiciously towards [Israeli] troops without headlights or emergency signals", prompting Israeli forces to shoot.

The video shows rescue workers exiting a fire truck and an ambulance and approaching a disabled ambulance that had veered off the road. Intense gunfire suddenly erupts and can be seen striking the convoy.

Voices of distressed aid workers and soldiers shouting commands in Hebrew can be heard in the background.

A medical worker can be heard saying that Israeli forces are riddling their vehicles with bullets. He then asks his mother for forgiveness, saying: "Mum, forgive me. This is the path I chose - I wanted to help people. Forgive me, Mum. I swear, I only took this path to help people."

Gaza's government media office said in a statement that the revelations "expose the lies of the Israeli occupation army" and has demanded an independent international investigation into the killings.

The workers include eight paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, six members of the Palestinian Civil Defence search-and-rescue teams, and one UN staff member.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, said at least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless.

"This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them and then discarded their bodies in the pit," Basal said. The killings are the single deadliest attack on Red Cross/Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"My son volunteered to help the wounded. He did not receive a salary. He loved his work and he was dedicated to it," the mother of one of the paramedics, Ashraf Nasser Abu Labda, told Middle East Eye last week.

[zvaigzdelasas]

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said Bahamian troops are currently in the pre-deployment phase for their mission to Haiti and added that their specific role will be determined once all agreements are finalised.

23 Aug 24

The U.S. Southern Command, the Department of Defense's joint military command covering Latin America and the Caribbean known as SouthCom, said it would deliver the mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) MaxxPros to the capital's main airport via U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft.

It said the deliveries would start from Friday, adding to an existing fleet of 10 U.S.-provided MRAPs.

The aircraft will also deliver 34 Overhead Gunner Protection Kits, or "turrets," which military-funded contractors will install onto the armoured vehicles to boost their field view during joint operations with national police, it added.

Kenyan troops were forced to withdraw from the Haitian town of Ganthier in late July, marking a major setback in one of the mission's first significant outings from the capital.[...]

The mission's initial 12-month mandate is set to end in October.

24 Aug 24

[girlactionfigure]

🔸 HAMAS OFFICIALS WARN CEASEFIRE WITH ISRAEL COULD COLLAPSE; JORDAN WARNS OF HAMAS POSITIONING ALONG ITS BORDER IF GAZANS ARE DISPLACED

🎗️ Senior Hamas officials have warned that the ceasefire with Israel is at risk of collapsing, according to AFP. This follows reports from Saudi media that Israel is no longer interested in the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal. The shift in Israel's stance comes immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the U.S.

🔹 Sources in Israeli security services told Haaretz that Jordanian intelligence warns of Hamas positioning along its border from Eilat to Tiberias if Gazans are displaced there. Jordanian intelligence believes Iran seeks to establish a presence in Jordan after losing influence in Syria and Lebanon.

🔹 Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen stated, "There are Arab countries with vast lands where a Palestinian state can be established. Whoever wants to create a Palestinian state can do so in their own country, and we will not object."

🔹 The IDF has set up nine military sites in Syrian territory captured after Assad's fall, with plans to stay until at least the end of 2025. Israeli forces conduct daily raids on former Syrian military bases, seizing weapons from nearby villages. However, they limit patrols in Syrian villages to "prevent southern Syria from turning into another Judea and Samaria," according to Channel 12.

💥 The IDF confirmed that Israeli Air Force aircraft conducted a precise intelligence-based strike on an underground tunnel that crossed from Syria into Lebanon. This tunnel, used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons in the Beqaa area, had been targeted before.

Additionally, IAF strikes hit multiple Hezbollah sites in Lebanon containing munitions and rocket launchers that posed an imminent threat. These targets violated the ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. The IDF remains committed to preventing Hezbollah from rearming and will continue operations to eliminate any threats to Israel.

⚠️ Senior commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are urging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to overturn a fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons. According to The Telegraph, Iranian officials report that these commanders believe the ban hinders Iran’s ability to counter Western threats effectively.

▪️ Morocco has chosen Israel's Elbit Systems as its primary defense supplier, signing a deal to acquire 36 Atmos 2000 self-propelled artillery systems. This move follows increasing tensions between the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces (FAR) and France's KNDS, Morocco’s previous main arms provider, according to La Tribune.

[beardedmrbean]

Less than two years ago, Iran’s government sounded triumphant.

It was November 2023, just weeks after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and a senior Iranian general was predicting that the regime and its proxy forces in Gaza and Lebanon were poised to vanquish Israel, the United States and other enemies.

“We are fighting America, Zionism and all those who are targeting the greatness and honor of the Islamic Revolution of Iran,” Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in the city of Kazvin.

“We are on the verge of conquering great heights. ... We are completely overcoming the enemies.”

Now Iran is in its most precarious position since the early 1980s.

Its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon have been devastated, Hamas has been eviscerated in Gaza, Tehran’s nuclear sites have been heavily bombed, and Israel’s military now owns the skies over Iran.

As for Salami, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike this month.

How Iran got here can be traced to a series of miscalculations and strategic blunders, experts and former officials say, a result of decisions made both decades and only months ago.

Tehran’s often obstinate diplomacy, overreliance on regional militants and shoddy security left it vulnerable to adversaries with much more powerful militaries. And at a crucial moment, the regime’s leaders failed to grasp the intentions and capabilities of its arch foes in Jerusalem and Washington, with no foreign partner ready to come to its aid.

“Iran was too inflexible when it had to be less stubborn,” said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think tank. “It never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Among its more recent missteps, Iran failed to learn from how other countries managed their relations with President Donald Trump or how the ground had shifted after Israel devastated Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, Vaez said.

But perhaps Iran’s biggest mistake was counting on those Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon in the first place to serve as a “forward defense” against any possible attack by Israel. That approach worked for years, and it dealt Israel a blow when it sent ground troops into Lebanon.

But everything changed when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Iran had armed, trained and financed Hamas, and the group’s onslaught set off a chain of events that has left the regime in Tehran severely weakened and its regional power diminished.

“I think there is a direct line from Oct. 7 to today,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official.

While Israel hammered away at Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza after Oct. 7, Iran and its Hezbollah allies prepared for an eventual ground attack from Israel into Lebanon. Instead, Israel took a different tack, targeting Hezbollah’s commanders and its top leader through airstrikes and booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah’s members. Israeli forces staged only a small incursion into southern Lebanon.

Alex Plitsas, a former Defense Department official with the Atlantic Council think tank, said, “The dominoes that fell after Oct. 7th left Iran’s proxy network in shambles, eroded deterrence and reduced its counterstrike capabilities.”

But he said Iran failed to adapt and refused diplomatic overtures from Washington despite its increasingly vulnerable position.

Seth Jones, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that after the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Tehran invested heavily in arming and training militias in the region through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, with Hezbollah as the anchor of an “axis of resistance.”

The scheme worked for decades, Jones said, but it neglected the country’s armed forces, which have fallen far behind.

“What it means is that your conventional forces don’t get the same level of focus,” Jones said.

During Israel’s air campaign, “the Iranians were fighting an enemy that’s got fifth-generation F-35 stealth aircraft.”

“They just don’t have an answer to that,” Jones added.

Iran has also faltered on the diplomatic front.

In talks over its nuclear program, Iran’s leaders stuck to an uncompromising stance mistakenly believing they could buy more time and secure more concessions from Trump, as well as his predecessor, Joe Biden, experts said.

Over four years, Iran dragged its feet and delayed talks with the Biden administration, which had expressed a willingness to revive and revise the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump had abandoned in 2018, Western officials say.

When Trump returned to the White House, his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, offered Iran a way to continue to enrich uranium for a period of years, while other countries in the region would help it develop a civilian nuclear energy program. The Israeli government and Republican hawks were worried that Trump’s offer was too generous. But Iran appeared to misread Trump, calculating that it could extend the talks over a longer period, experts and Western officials say.

In the end, the billions of dollars and decades of effort Iran devoted to its nuclear program “provided the nation neither nuclear energy nor deterrence,” Karim Sadjadpour, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on social media.

Relying on Russia

Apart from its regional network of proxy forces stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, Iran had long relied on the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad as its only genuine ally. But Sunni rebels ousted Assad in December, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers are no longer welcome in Damascus.

Iran also had portrayed its increasing cooperation with Russia as a “strategic” partnership, with Tehran providing thousands of Shahed drones for its war on Ukraine, as well as technical advice to help Moscow build the unnamed aircraft on Russian territory. In return, Iran acquired some Russian air defense systems, but promised fighter jets and other hardware never materialized.

Over the past two weeks, Israel’s air force destroyed Iran’s radars and Russian anti-aircraft weaponry, with Tehran losing control over its airspace.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made no mention of providing military assistance to Iran when he met Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Moscow on Monday.

Despite Iran’s hard-line rhetoric about conquering its enemies and its extensive intelligence and security apparatus, Israel has repeatedly carried out sabotage and assassinations of top military officers, nuclear scientists, the leaders of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the leaders of Hamas in Gaza. The operations have humiliated Iran’s regime and shown that the country’s intelligence services are unable to protect top-ranking officers or other key figures.

“Iran’s entire investments in its forward defense, missiles program and nuclear capabilities evaporated in the course of 12 months of regional war and 12 days of war on its own territory,” said Vaez, of the International Crisis Group. “Judging by that outcome, there is no question that Iran miscalculated at every turn.”

[fnatweety]

RK Gold

@RKGold

Let’s take a moment and consider the entire threat picture we are currently facing.

Jihadist threat: al-Qaeda, ISIS etc are planning lone wolf attacks on the American homeland. The plan as gathered by the HUMINT community (Sarah Adams, Scott Mann, Legend, CommandEleven, HardenTF_up etc) will start with lone wolf ISIS inspired attacks. Next will be the multi city coordinated attacks on Hospitals, stadiums or some type of large gathering, lets just call it a soft target, picked for mass casualties and secondary attacks on first responders. al-Qaeda’s larger plan includes an attack on our airlines that is intended to be bigger than 9/11. This had an initial time frame for sometime in 2025.

State Actors: China, Russia, Iran etc. Could launch cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, utilities, air traffic control, supply chain etc. With Russia just having 40 or so aircraft destroyed by the secret Ukraine drone operation, Putin is likely to think they had help from the U.S. or NATO. Retaliation should be expected on some level. I don’t expect direct military retaliation, but cyberattacks, cable cutting, and assassinations are completely within his power to carry out.

China has prepositioned itself in our critical infrastructure via a cyberwarfare group called Volt Typhoon and others. They have been actively inside our energy and utility grids for years. They intend at some point to invade Taiwan and are thought to be setting up a scenario where they cause us enough trouble that we don’t have the time, attention, or resources to defend Taiwan, because we will be too busy solving the chaos that they have created for us.

China has also borne the brunt of President Trumps tariff policy and has been suffering economically. This gives them plenty of incentive to cause trouble right now, or increase their prepositioning efforts for a later date. China also owns farmland near some of our most sensitive military bases and institutions. They could easily launch a Ukraine type of drone attack on those installations, physical power grid infrastructure, communication systems or railways systems. You only need to use your imagination to come up with other targets. They also have tens of thousands of nationals that have come across our southern border in recent years, who could easily be here to pilot drones, or launch physical attacks on the electrical infrastructure around our country. Most are guarded by only a chain link fence.

Iran should not be overlooked as a state actor because they have not forgotten that we killed Major-General Qassem Soleimani, the late commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a drone strike. Because of that assassination, Iran had threatened to assassinate our own President Trump.

If you recall, Iran even made a video of a drone strike assassination while the President would be on his golf course. Early on in the second Trump campaign for President, there was talk of Iranian missiles which were thought to have been smuggled into America across our southern border. Then candidate Trump, was taking unmarked aircraft to lower his profile while flying so as to not to make himself an obvious target and avoid having his aircraft shot down. Let’s not forget that Iran backed Hezbollah has had a strong presence in South America for years.

The nightmare scenario: The worst possible outcome from any of this would be if the state actors took advantage of the chaos that ISIS and al-Qaeda create through their homeland attacks. The cyberwarfare component, if launched during or after a terror attack would make any physical attack by the jihadists many times worse. Again, use your imagination, a terror attack kicks off and the power goes out, cell phone towers stop working, air traffic control goes dark, banking systems are frozen, debit or credit cards don’t work. Any and all of that is possible.

What can you or I do about it? We can sound the alarm and warn our family, friends and community. We can only control what we control. So the only solution is to prepare yourselves and your family. Acquire resources that will fill in those gaps left by the attack, if any or all of these scenarios were to play out.

The main thing is to not procrastinate, act on what you know, because none of us know when or exactly how this will eventually shake out.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from the violent firebelts rocking the Shaboura Refugee Camp, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, following bombing by the Israeli occupation forces on Friday morning. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

DAY 231 OF ISRAELI OCCUPATION GENOCIDE IN GAZA: U.S. TO BE INVOLVED IN GAZA SECURITY PLANS AFTER WAR, BORDER CROSSINGS REMAIN CLOSED, HUMANITARIAN AID DELIVERIES SLOW TO A DRIP, TORTURE WIDESPREAD IN ISRAELI PRISONS

On 231st day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 9 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 91 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 112 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted, as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

The Biden administration intends to appoint a "civilian advisor" to oversee a "mostly Palestinian" peacekeeping force after the Israeli occupation's genocidal war in Gaza comes to an end, suggesting the administration intends to be deeply involved in Gaza's affairs long after the end of the war. That's according to four American officials speaking with Politico, an American online newspaper, under the condition of anonymity.

According to Politico, an American civilian advisor based in the Egyptian Sinai or Jordan would "advise" the commanding officer of an interim peacekeeping force composed of Palestinians, but also forces from local Arab countries such as Egypt, Morrocco and the United Arab Emirates, which would work to "maintain security and avoid an insurgency that could plunge the enclave into more turmoil."

The coded language of the Politico piece seems to suggest the United States would use the proxy of a potential peacekeeping force to suppress the Palestinian resistance in order to bolster the defenses of the Israeli occupation.

The US would help protect the Israeli entity's internal security within the borders of occupied Palestine, while the Israeli occupation could refocus on potential external threats such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran.

At the same time, the United States would work with regional players to create a "Palestinian Council", made up of "Palestinians from Gaza," to "serve as an interim governing structure."

Politico says fierce debates are raging within the Biden administration, and with America's regional partners, about the makeup of such a peacekeeping force and what authorities it might be given, as well as intense debates over the governing structure of Gaza and what level of US involvement there would be following a potential end to the war.

“We have talked about a number of different formulas for some kind of interim security forces in Gaza,” a senior administration official told Politico, “and we have talked to a lot of partners about how the United States could support that with all of our capabilities from outside Gaza.”

Any potential force comprised of Palestinians would also face intense push-back from the Israeli occupation authorities, particularly Netanyahu's far-right regime, which opposes any kind of scenario that gives recognition to a Palestinian State.

In other news, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said she has received information about the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians detained in prisons overseen by the Israeli Prisons Authority and also in Israeli occupation army camps, according to reporting published in the Palestinian media.

According to local reporting, Edwards, who has been conducting a ""thorough review over the past two months," discusses information she received describing cases of Palestinian prisoners who "were beaten and detained while blindfolded and handcuffed for long periods in cells, in addition to being deprived of sleep and threatened with physical and sexual violence."

Edwards said the information she received also included details suggesting that Palestinian detainees were subjected to "degrading treatment," including photos taken of them in "offensive positions."

Edwards, an independent human rights expert previously appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, said she raised her concerns for the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees with the Israeli authorities, asking them to investigate and to give herself, along with "international human rights monitors and humanitarian observers" access to Palestinian prisoners.

Edwards said It was "very important that there be independent inspections," and urged the occupation authorities to "investigate all complaints and reports of torture or ill-treatment promptly, fairly, effectively and transparently."

She also added that officials from all levels of the Israeli occupation's prison system "must be held accountable."

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation continued its mass murder campaign across the entirety of the Gaza Strip, slaughtering dozens of Palestinians, including large numbers of women and children.

At the same time, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continued its closure of the Rafah and Karm Abu Salem border crossings for the 18th consecutive day, further preventing thousands of humanitarian and medical aid trucks, along with fuel deliveries, from entering the Gaza Strip, while also preventing hundreds, if not thousands, of severely sick and wounded Palestinians from leaving Gaza for medical treatment abroad.

At the same time, the Israeli occupation continues to deliberately put Gaza's hospitals out of service, launching violent raids of hospitals and medical centers, while also cutting off their supply of fuel for electricity generators.

According to local medical sources, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, one of the largest hospitals in the Strip, has lost power due to running out of fuel, portending a healthcare catastrophe for the Palestinian population of central Gaza.

Similarly, the Kuwait Specialized Hospital in Rafah City is also facing a potential shutdown due to continued attacks by the Israeli occupation army, along with a shortage of fuel for generators.

Occupation forces are also advancing towards Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, while all the remaining hospitals still functioning in Gaza are operating well beyond their capacities.

Gaza's healthcare system is also being overwhelmed by the dead and wounded in the Israeli occupation's ongoing bombardment.

In just a few examples, occupation warplanes bombed a residential apartment last night belonging to the Al-Ayoubi family, in the Shabiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of at least 10 civilians, including women and children, while a number of others were wounded in the strike.

In another war crime, Zionist fighter jets bombed a warehouse for the distribution of humanitarian aid in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, leading to the deaths of no less than 12 civilians, mostly women and children, while dozens of others were wounded.

Another series of occupation airstrikes targeted house in the Al-Fakhoura neighborhood, west of the Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, murdering another 5 Palestinians and wounding several others.

The slaughter continued when Zionist air forces bombarded a residential home belonging to the Al-Masry family, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, killing two citizens.

IOF artillery detatchments also shelled several neighborhoods of Gaza City, including the Al-Zaytoun, Tal al-Hawa, Al-Rimal, Al-Janoubi, Al-Sabra, Sheikh Ajlin, and Juhr al-Dik neighborhoods, while occupation soldiers and armored vehicles continue advancing towards Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya where they surrounded some medical staff and patients.

In another criminal assault, IOF warplanes bombed another residential apartment belonging to the Abu Al-Laban family on Al-Nafaq Street, north of Gaza City, resulting in a number of casualties.

Zionist soldiers and armored vehicles also fired machine guns in the vicinity of the Ali bin Abi Talib Mosque and Street 8 in Gaza City, while occupation gunboats fired missiles towards the coast of the city.

Two more civilians were killed in yet more occupation airstrikes along the coast of the town of Al-Zawaida, in the central Gaza Strip.

South of Gaza, Israeli occupation quadcopters fly near the European Gaza Hospital, while at the same time, Israeli Merkava tanks advanced from neighborhoods east of Rafah towards the central areas of the city, and along the outskirts of the Shaboura Camp, coinciding with the firing of IOF missiles, shells and hails of gunfire.

In Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, at least four Palestinians were killed after an Israeli quadcopter drone dropped a bomb on a group of civilians, while occupation aircraft bombarded Al-Rashid Street, adjacent to Al-Nuseirat, with no casualties were reported in the strike.

Occupation bombing and shelling also targeted the Juhr al-Dik area north of the Bureij Camp.

Israeli warplanes also participated in the assassination of Major General Diyaa Al-Sharafa, the Assistant Commander of the National Security Forces in the Gaza Strip, with four other officers wounded in the strike as Al-Sharafa conducted an inspection tour near the Saraya junction in central Gaza.

Meanwhile, for the 13th consecutive day, the Israeli occupation army continued its incursion into Jabalia, in the north of Gaza, coinciding with intense volleys of missile and bomb strikes.

Communications with staff at Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia continued to be cut off as medical personnel and patients were forced to evacuate after IOF soldiers stormed the hospital.

In Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah, large explosions continue to be heard in neighborhoods east of the city, along with downtown Rafah and south of the city.

At least one civilian was killed, and others wounded, following an Israeli bombing in the vicinity of the Kiir Junction in central Rafah, while occupation artillery shelling and gunfire from drones and helicopters continue intermittently in central Rafah and east of the city.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the death toll has risen once again, now exceeding 35'800 Palestinians killed, including over 15'000 children and upwards of 10'000 women, while another 80'200 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

May 24th, 2024.

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[blingblong55]

Walking in the wind-141

A/N: sorry but I'm a directioner at heart babes so the title was a must

GN!Reader, angst, some fluff, platonic!relationship, death of character

20 years later, 141 was officially retired, all married, happy families, peaceful sunny days and most importantly, no war, no guns, just peace.

A week ago you said to me "Do you believe I'll never be too far?" If you're lost, just look for me You'll find me in the region of the summer stars

Every month, no matter where either one of the people in the team was in the world, they would fly to a small home in town in the southern part of the U.S. And arrive between 6-7 in the afternoon, to talk and catch up because it's better to see the person than to text them. The stories shared between all, the wives/husbands, kids and how old they were getting. Unlike the rest, you moved to America, and wanted that movie-like life, in some small town, driving a truck, passing through quiet streets where all anyone worried about was the leaves that would fall in autumn. You and your partner opened a small pub.

The name for it was 'R/N's Place" This was after you finally get out of the toxic part of your life, the family and the ache it gave you when you were there. Not a normal name for a pub but the locals loved it. Your favourite part was that you received lots of veterans, they all told you about their time serving and you, like the proud friend you are displayed a picture of you and the team in your first and last mission together.

It was almost around the time the men arrived, Price being the first, followed by Gaz who flew in with him. Soap arrived late, his children wanted to talk to their father before bedtime and Ghost arrived last, getting a call from his partner to which he always answered, he always made it clear his partner was a priority now that he is retired. You waited by the table with the rest for Ghost, your wife/husband serving the clients. "And there he is, Simon." Price smiled a little, proud to see his family again. "Alright, who's first?" Gaz asked and drank from his pint.

"I'll go first," Ghost said, which was a definite first. "Go on, son." Price passed all a cigar. A tradition he started once his grown soldiers/children were all retired. "Me and my partner are expecting a son." A secret he kept until it was assured the baby would make it this time. "Congrats mate!" Soap hugged him, feeling proud of a man he considered his oldest brother. "That's very much well deserved, man." Gaz smiled and you stared in awe. Price looked down with a soft chuckle, wanting to dismiss the tears that formed in his eyes. His wallet would be getting a new picture of the newest addition to the family soon. --- "R/N, I won't make it, go!" Ghost said to which you shook your head. "No, this is the one command I will not take! You will get old and fat but you will NOT die on me lieutenant, not today!" you yelled over the loud noises. ---

He looks at you and you hug him, whispering in his ear, "See, I told you it would be possible this time, Simon. I'm so happy and proud of you." Words that definitely made the tears well up in his eyes.

The fact that we can sit right here and say goodbye Means we've already won A necessity for apologies between you and me Baby, there is none

"Now you are all making me feel old." Price jokes and finally looks up. The four people he fought with through wars, all living the lives he knew were all much earned. Through the wounds, blood and sacrifice, somehow, five mad people are still alive. And the entire night, Soap told stories of his farm, and Gaz gave advice on how to fix some stuff, a trip he would soon have to make to Scotland. Gaz on the new tricks his little ones make, how he knows karma got to him and his back aches, so much for the jokes he told about Price. Ghost with his wood-making business, one he started in the backyard and now in Manchester's best small business. Price on how his kids are now in uni and the youngest one is in secondary.

And then you, with their favourite pub in the entire world, how you adopted a child and your eldest in primary already. Your wife/husband watching you smile from afar. You always were excited for these meetings, it was the one time someone other than the local veterans understood the stories you told.

We had some good times, didn't we? We had some good tricks up our sleeve Goodbyes are bittersweet But it's not the end I'll see your face again

And, as each month passed by, it turned into 10 years later. You and the other men in the team gathered not in America but back home in England. All in black dressing, lifting the coffin of the father you all shared. Price had peacefully passed on a calm night. As his wife puts it, he was finally ready to go, his mission was over and the children he raised were all old enough to understand and his little soldiers as he called you were well off in life, the one he made sure you all had. In years you had never seen so many of the toughest and now retired soldiers you worked with cry so much. You did too. The ceremony was as expected, memorable, beautiful and for the last time in John Price's life, peaceful.

Yesterday I went out to celebrate the birthday of a friend But as we raised our glasses up to make a toast I realised you were missing

You all flew back to the first ever pub he took you to. Raise your glasses and shed more tears. You see, this was a promise you all made. An oath between Task Force 141. When one passes, those that remain must go to the first pub we talked to as not a team but a family, and just then we can mourn but also celebrate we once lived.

And I know we'll be alright, child Just close your eyes and see And I'll be by your side Any time you're needing me Oh, yeah

Ghost chuckles, "And he told me, 'you reckon I can make it?' and that old man did it, the deadliest move ever and he fuckin' made it." he takes a sip of his drink. Gaz smiles, fond memories shared between him and Price, to be remembered until his final breath. "He used to do this trick with the smoke from his cigar just for my little girl to giggle, and man does she still ask for that trick," Soap shared. All four of you, smoking a cigar, just like he would've. "Can you believe the old man never complained too much about his back?" you ask to which all others nod. Now in your late 40's to early 50's, you never understood how he never once complained of the aching bones or back, proving he was and will always be the strongest and toughest man to ever grace your lives.

And you will find me Yeah, you will find me In places that we've never been For reasons we don't understand

tags: @warenai @liyanahelena

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

The Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization Hezbollah has already begun rebuilding its military capabilities and financial operations, just over a week since a ceasefire with Israel went into effect after 13 and a half months of war.

While the IDF’s aerial and ground offensives severely degraded the Iranian proxy’s terrorist infrastructure and forces, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has started recruiting new fighters, boosting domestic weapons production and looking for ways to continue smuggling arms in via Syria.

Reuters cited a senior American official, an Israeli official, and two U.S. lawmakers briefed on the intelligence in its reporting published on Wednesday.

According to the terms of the Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah is prohibited from rearming.

Hezbollah lost more than half of its weapons stockpiles and thousands of fighters during the war with Israel, according to American assessments. However, it has not been destroyed, with the sources saying that it still has thousands of short-range rockets and will try to rebuild using weapons factories in neighboring countries with transportation routes into Lebanon.

One of the lawmakers told Reuters that Hezbollah has been “temporarily weakened” and its command-and-control capabilities diminished. However, the lawmaker notes, “This organization is built to withstand disruption.”

Washington is particularly concerned about Syria, where Turkish-backed jihadist terrorist groups recently launched offensives in Aleppo and Hama, in a major challenge to the Assad regime and its Iranian and Russian backers. Israel continues to target Hezbollah smuggling routes in Syria and at the Syrian-Lebanon border and to disrupt Iranian weapons shipments via Syria.

A senior U.S. official revealed that Washington is urging Syrian President Bashar Assad to restrict Hezbollah’s activities, with other regional countries being enlisted to assist in this effort. Reuters reported earlier this week that the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates discussed the possibility of lifting sanctions on the Assad regime, provided, among other conditions, he halts the weapons supply routes to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah officials assert that the group will maintain its “resistance” against Israel. However, sources in Lebanon indicate that Hezbollah’s primary focus at the moment is on rebuilding and restoring homes damaged by Israeli airstrikes in Southern Lebanon and Beirut.

Hezbollah’s financial system

Meanwhile, Saudi-owned, London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Hezbollah has begun assessing repairs to its financial arm, Al-Qard al-Hassan, which was heavily damaged by Israeli attacks during the war.

The Iranian proxy plans to pay housing grants through the bank to repair the homes of families impacted by the war. Each family may receive $12,000 for rent and home repairs.

Despite, suffering severe blows in an Israeli aerial operation on Oct. 21, the bank resumed operations a week after the ceasefire.

The Saudi newspaper highlighted that “the announcement of the bank’s resumed operations contradicts Israeli claims of its destruction.” However, a source close to Hezbollah confirmed that the group had suffered significant financial losses during the war. The source further explained that the funds for rehabilitation will not come from Al-Qard al-Hassan’s resources, but from recent financial transfers from Iran to Hezbollah.

Iran transferred $1 billion via a regional intermediate on the first day of the ceasefire, which Hezbollah plans to use for its rehabilitation efforts.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Gary Wilson

Panama’s opposition parties accused the U.S. of launching a “camouflaged invasion” amid escalating tensions over the U.S. military presence in the country. Following U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent visit, President Donald Trump confirmed troop deployments, stating, “We’ve moved a lot of troops to Panama.”

Opposition leader Ricardo Lombana condemned the U.S. actions as an invasion “without firing a shot.”