bolverk

Wordle 1,090 3/6 🟨⬛🟨🟨⬛ ⬛🟨🟨🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #368 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Daily Quordle 871 5️⃣4️⃣ 7️⃣8️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜🟨🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

My only edit to my post was to add the word "concept." It was one of those occasions when I accidentally skipped a word as I was typing and saw my mistake after hitting reply. No worries, though. I wasn't offended then (a few years ago) or now in the present. I was genuinely surprised when you told me that not believing in the Trinity was heresy. Just another ex-Baptist learning something I should've been taught 45 years too late.

Isn't it funny how @ousuxndallas and @ChickenSandwich stopped posting in this thread when it became apparent most of this shit is coming from their own side?

Yeah, I remember all that, too. It was going on about the time I started to become aware of not only how hypocritical it was but also how it was becoming increasingly conservative. I vaguely recall chatter around then about the conservative attempts to take over Baylor, but I was more or less checked out and only went when absolutely forced to by my parents. I ended my participation with all youth group shit around 1984-85 (I would've been 13-14) when we got a new youth pastor who was a real freaky fire and brimstone guy. In the very last meeting I attended, he began by having us gather around, dimming the lights, making us watch him light a candle and letting it drip into a bucket, and then telling us each drop was a soul descending into hell. I was absolutely done after that.

A reminder that prosecutors for the International Criminal Court (independent of the UN) found sufficient evidence of war crimes committed by Hamas and Israel to recommend arrest warrants recently.

It's hard to believe today, but the SBC was pro-choice back in the 1970s and praised Roe v. Wade. I distinctly recall my mom coming home one evening around 1980 from some church meeting where the topic must've been discussed and suddenly becoming vocally and vehemently anti-choice when she'd never expressed an opinion on the topic before. When Roe was first decided, most of the Southern evangelicals who today make up the backbone of the anti-abortion movement believed that abortion was a deeply personal issue in which government shouldn’t play a role. Some were hesitant to take a position on abortion because they saw it as a “Catholic issue,” and worried about the influence of Catholic teachings on American religious observance. Shortly after the decision was handed down, The Baptist Press, a wire service run by the Southern Baptist Convention — the biggest Evangelical organization in the US — ran an op-ed praising the ruling. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” read the January 31, 1973, piece by W. Barry Garrett, The Baptist Press’s Washington bureau chief. So, yeah, SBC dogma became rather fluid around the time that modern efforts to tear down the wall between church and state began to be a thing again.

Understood, but your ire was directed at a separate report that is just a footnote to the main article. For specificity, you can access the primary source here, which includes a link to the full report that has plenty of specificity on the war crimes committed by both Hamas and Israel. There are details of sexual and gender-based violence on the civilian population in the main report.

@Chopper Israel refuses to allow the Red Cross to visit this hospital. Israel maintains a shadowy hospital for Gaza detainees. Critics allege mistreatment Patients lying shackled and blindfolded on more than a dozen beds inside a white tent in the desert JERUSALEM -- Patients lying shackled and blindfolded on more than a dozen beds inside a white tent in the desert. Surgeries performed without adequate painkillers. Doctors who remain anonymous. These are some of the conditions at Israel's only hospital dedicated to treating Palestinians detained by the military in the Gaza Strip, three people who have worked there told The Associated Press, confirming similar accounts from human rights groups. While Israel says it detains only suspected militants, many patients have turned out to be non-combatants taken during raids, held without trial and eventually returned to war-torn Gaza. Eight months into the Israel-Hamas war, accusations of inhumane treatment at the Sde Teiman military field hospital are on the rise, and the Israeli government is under growing pressure to shut it down. Rights groups and other critics say what began as a temporary place to hold and treat militants after Oct. 7 has morphed into a harsh detention center with too little accountability. The military denies the allegations of inhumane treatment and says all detainees needing medical attention receive it. The hospital is near the city of Beersheba in southern Israel. It opened beside a detention center on a military base after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel because some civilian hospitals refused to treat wounded militants. Of the three workers interviewed by AP, two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared government retribution and public rebuke. “We are condemned by the left because we are not fulfilling ethical issues,” said Dr. Yoel Donchin, an anesthesiologist who has worked at Sde Teiman hospital since its earliest days and still works there. “We are condemned from the right because they think we are criminals for treating terrorists.” The military this week said it formed a committee to investigate detention center conditions, but it was unclear if that included the hospital. Next week Israel's highest court is set to hear arguments from human rights groups seeking to shut it down. Israel has not granted journalists or the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the Sde Teiman facilities. Israel has detained some 4,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, according to official figures, though roughly 1,500 were released after the military determined they were not affiliated with Hamas. Israeli human rights groups say the majority of detainees have at some point passed through Sde Teiman, the country's largest detention center. Doctors there say they have treated many who appeared to be non-combatants. “Now we have patients that are not so young, sick patients with diabetes and high blood pressure,” said Donchin, the anesthesiologist. A soldier who worked at the hospital recounted an elderly man who underwent surgery on his leg without pain medication. “He was screaming and shaking,” said the soldier. Between medical treatments, the soldier said patients were housed in the detention center, where they were exposed to squalid conditions and their wounds often developed infections. There was a separate area where older people slept on thin mattresses under floodlights, and a putrid smell hung in the air, he said. The military said in a statement that all detainees are “reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity.” It said they receive check-ups upon arrival and are transferred to the hospital when they require more serious treatment. A medical worker who saw patients at the facility in the winter recounted teaching hospital workers how to wash wounds. Donchin, who largely defended the facility against allegations of mistreatment but was critical of some of its practices, said most patients are diapered and not allowed to use the bathroom, shackled around their arms and legs and blindfolded. “Their eyes are covered all the time. I don't know what the security reason for this is,” he said. The military disputed the accounts provided to AP, saying patients were handcuffed “in cases where the security risk requires it” and removed when they caused injury. Patients are rarely diapered, it said. Dr. Michael Barilan, a professor at the Tel Aviv University Medical School who said he has spoken with over 15 hospital staff, disputed accounts of medical negligence. He said doctors are doing their best under difficult circumstances, and that the blindfolds originated out of a “fear (patients) would retaliate against those taking care of them." Days after Oct. 7, roughly 100 Israelis clashed with police outside one of the country's main hospitals in response to false rumors it was treating a militant. In the aftermath, some hospitals refused to treat detainees, fearful that doing so could endanger staff and disrupt operations. They were already overwhelmed by people wounded during the Hamas attack and expecting casualties to rise from an impending ground invasion. As Israel pulled in scores of wounded Palestinians to Sde Teiman, it became clear the facility's infirmary was not large enough, according to Barilan. An adjacent field hospital was built from scratch. Israel's Health Ministry laid out plans for the hospital in a December memo obtained by AP. It said patients would be treated while handcuffed and blindfolded. Doctors, drafted into service by the military, would be kept anonymous to protect their "safety, lives and well-being." The ministry referred all questions to the military when reached for comment. Still, an April report from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, drawing on interviews with hospital workers, said doctors at the facility faced “ethical, professional and even emotional distress.” Barilan said turnover has been high. Patients with more complicated injuries have been transferred from the field hospital to civilian hospitals, but it has been done covertly to avoid arousing the public's attention, Barilan said. And the process is fraught: The medical worker who spoke with AP said one detainee with a gunshot wound was discharged prematurely from a civilian hospital to Sde Teiman within hours of being treated, endangering his life. The field hospital is overseen by military and health officials, but Donchin said parts of its operations are managed by KLP, a private logistics and security company whose website says it specializes in “high-risk environments.” The company did not respond to a request for comment. Because it’s not under the same command as the military’s medical corps, the field hospital is not subject to Israel’s Patients Rights Act, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. A group from the Israeli Medical Association visited the hospital earlier this year but kept its findings private. The association did not respond to requests for comment. The military told AP that 36 people from Gaza have died in Israel’s detention centers since Oct. 7, some of them because of illnesses or wounds sustained in the war. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has alleged that some died from medical negligence. Khaled Hammouda, a surgeon from Gaza, spent 22 days at one of Israel's detention centers. He does not know where he was taken because he was blindfolded while he was transported. But he said he recognized a picture of Sde Teiman and said he saw at least one detainee, a prominent Gaza doctor who is believed to have been there. Hammouda recalled asking a soldier if a pale 18-year-old who appeared to be suffering from internal bleeding could be taken to a doctor. The soldier took the teenager away, gave him intravenous fluids for a few hours, and then returned him. “I told them, ‘He could die,'" Hammouda said. “‘They told me this is the limit.'”

@Chopper I just did a quick Google search to find a story about an Israeli field hospital operating on Palestinians without anesthesia but came up with this article from Reuters posted just five hours ago. Palestinian detainees say they faced abuse in Israeli jails GAZA, June 12 (Reuters) - Palestinians held in Israeli detention since the start of the war in Gaza said they faced systematic ill-treatment by prison authorities whom they accused of deliberately withholding vital medical treatment. Human rights groups and international organizations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the occupied West Bank or during its military advance through in Gaza. They described abusive and humiliating treatment including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment. "We have left but we call on you to get the rest out," said former detainee Ataa Shbat, at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza, where he was taken following his release. He said many detainees believed their families assumed they were dead. "People are dying. Torture which you cannot imagine unless you taste it (experience it). Suffering which you cannot imagine unless you experience it," he said. The Israeli military has said it is investigating allegations of mistreatment of detainees at facilities in Israel but has declined to comment on specific cases. A spokesperson said on Wednesday that details of the investigation would be shared when they were ready. At least 18 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since the start of the war, the Palestinian Prisoners Association said on Wednesday, six of whom were from Gaza, including orthopaedics surgeon Adnan al-Bursh. More than 9,170 Palestinians from the West Bank have been arrested by Israel since Oct. 7, it said, with thousands more "forcibly disappeared" from Gaza. It said their exact number was unknown as Israel has refused to disclose how many Palestinians from Gaza it was holding. Last week, Israeli state attorneys said authorities had begun transferring prisoners from Sde Teiman, a former military base in the Negev desert, after groups including Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) demanded the closure of the site. Widespread reports of mistreatment of detainees in Israeli prisons have added to international pressure on Israel for its conduct of the Gaza war, now in its ninth month. Last month, the U.S. State Department said it was looking into allegations of Israeli abuse of Palestinian detainees. The main United Nations relief agency for Palestinians UNRWA said in a report from April that prisoners reported ill-treatment throughout their detention. It said this included beatings, being deprived of food, denied access to water or toilets and having their hands and feet bound with plastic ties. "The prisoners are dying every day. There is no food or drinks or medicine. There is no food or clothing. The disease is eating their bodies and no one is looking at them," said former detainee Aalam Hijazi. "The water is not suitable for drinking," he told Reuters. "I have worn these clothes for eight months."

Are you just going to gloss over the numerous stories of civilian Palestinian hostages detainees being mistreated in Israeli prisons? The report said that frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes against Palestinians by Israeli security forces during the period late last year amounted to signs that some forms of such violence “are part of ISF operating procedures.”

They could also go the bilateral route and get security guarantees from individual Euro countries. I vaguely recall Macron signing some papers with Armenia a couple of months ago right after they lost that exclave to Azerbaijan.

Iran might be running out of choppers, too, for that matter.

They live in a pretty rough neighborhood with Turkey to the west and Azerbaijan to the east. Curious to see who they'll go to for security assistance: NATO or Iran.

Conversation has picked back up in the Christ Followers thread. Just read the last page or so. You can start here.

Hahaha! @statsman got butthurt over a fucking Associated Press article and felt compelled to neg me. That's not the first time his delicate little sensibilities have been traumatized. Citing the UN definition of ethnic cleansing set him off last time. I guess the suggestion that Israel is capable of doing bad things, too, hurts his fee-fees. There's nothing more cowardly you can do on Surly than to lob neg bombs from the sidelines while refusing to join in on a conversation.

Curious how many of those lost members were from deaths by Covid.

Report by UN-backed experts cites crimes by Israeli forces, Palestinian militants starting 0ct. 7 GENEVA (AP) — U.N.-backed human rights experts say in a report issued Wednesday that Israeli forces and Palestinian militants engaged in sexual and gender-based violence during the first months of the Israel-Hamas war. The independent experts, in a detailed chronicling of events that have mostly been reported in the media, said Israeli forces and Palestinian militants committed war crimes, while Israel was also said to have committed crimes against humanity. Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the body and accused it of bias, rejected the allegations. The report, which covered the time between the Oct. 7 rampage and the end of last year, laid out a wide array of alleged rights violations and crimes by both sides during the conflict. It said Israeli forces had committed acts including forced starvation, murder or willful killing, collective punishment and intentional attacks on civilians, and that the military wings of Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups had performed deliberate killings and mistreatment of civilians and hostage-takings. The findings come as the conflict has entered its ninth month with few signs of letting up. The report said that frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes against Palestinians by Israeli security forces during the period late last year amounted to signs that some forms of such violence “are part of ISF operating procedures.” Despite noting denials by Hamas’ military wing of sexual violence against Israeli women, the report said the experts had documented “cases indicative of sexual violence” against women and men near the site of a large music festival, a military outpost and several kibbutzim that the raiders attacked. The expert panel was commissioned in 2021 by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council to look into rights violations and abuses in Israel and the Palestinian areas it controls. Led by Navi Pillay, a former U.N. human rights chief, they are independent experts and do not speak for the world body itself. Israel has refused to cooperate with the team of experts. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva responded that the report “outrageously and repugnantly attempts to draw a false equivalence between IDF soldiers and Hamas terrorists with regards to acts of sexual violence” and reiterating longstanding claims of anti-Israel discrimination by the experts. The report and Israel’s response marked the latest sign of the growing gulf between the U.N. and its affiliate institutions and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its response to the deadly Oct. 7 rampage and hostage-takings in Israel by armed Palestinian militants. On Tuesday, the U.N. human rights office — which is separate from the panel of independent experts — cited possible war crimes by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in connection with a deadly raid by Israeli forces that freed four hostages over the weekend and killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Oklahoma Supreme Court Dismisses Tulsa Massacre Lawsuit The last known remaining survivors of the 1921 attack by a white mob were hoping for their day in court. A historic quest for justice by the last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre ended with a state court ruling on Wednesday. The Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of their lawsuit, the final legal stop for Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Ford Fletcher, 110. The women, who were small children at the time, argued that the destruction of what was then known as Black Wall Street and the massacre of up to 300 African Americans by a white mob amounted to an ongoing public nuisance, and they sought reparations. The ruling concludes the lawsuit that Ms. Randle and Ms. Fletcher filed in 2020. Last year, another survivor of the massacre, Hughes Van Ellis, the younger brother of Ms. Fletcher, died at 102. In the early part of the 20th century, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa was a cultural and economic success story that came to be known as Black Wall Street. On May 31, 1921, a white mob gathered outside a county courthouse in Tulsa where a young Black man was being held over allegations that he had assaulted a young white woman. White men deputized by the civil officials assaulted the neighborhood from the ground and the sky. Within two days, Greenwood was no more: 35 city blocks were reduced to heaping ashes, up to 300 of its citizens were dead and thousands were left homeless. The attack erased generational wealth that had been built at a time of great racial oppression. No person or entity was ever held responsible, and no survivors were ever formally. compensated for their losses. The lawsuit, filed under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, contends that the massacre’s impact continues to be felt acutely more than a century later. Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead lawyer for the survivors, said the city’s enduring racial disparities, economic inequalities and trauma among survivors and their descendants are evidence of the massacre’s long reach. Officials have argued that while the massacre was horrific, they should not be held accountable for events that happened in 1921.

From that old dialect survey:

Oh, I'm very aware, and that's why I ended my post with this: Yet, even if you live your whole life as an asshole to others (thief, murderer, etc.) or a plain-old "sinner," you'll go to heaven if you believe in your heart in Jesus on your deathbed. Seeing the blatant hypocrisy all around was one of the fundamental reasons I stopped going. L'enfer, c'est les autres.

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Growing up in that denomination, there were basically only two major often-stated principles: To be saved, you have to believe Jesus Christ, who died for your sins, is the son of God and that he died and was resurrected. Once saved, always saved. Despite its name, Baptism isn't necessarily required to be saved because children can die before that happens, and they delay baptisms because it has to be a choice to do so. From my recollection and understanding, those are pretty much the only fundamental creeds required in Southern Baptism when you boil it all down. In principle, it's a very streamlined faith. Of course, they also expect you to (demand you) socially conform to a whole bunch of other stuff that bleeds into culture war stuff. Yet, even if you live your whole life as an asshole to others (thief, murderer, etc.) or a plain-old "sinner," you'll go to heaven if you believe in your heart in Jesus on your deathbed.

What do you mean "its cooled down somewhat"? Just last year, we experienced the second hottest summer on record in Texas, only behind 2011. Since 2000, only four summers have been cooler than the 20th-century average, and only one of those has happened in the last ten years. Shit's getting hotter, yo.

I mentioned to Anastasis before that I was raised Southern Baptist and never really understood what the Holy Spirit was supposed to be. Still, then again, the concept was hardly ever mentioned. Growing up, I basically thought "the Trinity" was just some weird Catholic thing like saints and popes and stuff that was part and parcel of a religious hierarchical bureaucracy. Our family attended church virtually every Sunday morning, including Sunday Bible school, until I was in junior high school. Maybe the First Baptist Church in my hometown was simply an outlier, not too big on anything other than the repetitive retellings of parables and Old Testament stories. Anyway, the more I read these religion threads on Surly, the more I realize what a piss poor religious education I got as a kid. Certainly, deeper discussions never really took place, and I don't recall questions being highly encouraged. It was always just, "Shut up and believe, or you're going to hell." At least, that was the implied message. At the end of the day, I'm not sure it would've prevented me from losing my faith as a teen, but maybe. Back to my original purpose for posting here, this is a reminder to Anastasis that he once mentioned to me that not believing in the Holy Spirit was considered heresy. This honestly kind of took me aback since I didn't realize that something so amorphous and ill-defined (and not emphasized at all in my church-rearing) was such a big deal. Hell, I just had to use Google to remind myself exactly what the Nicene Creed is because it was never mentioned in the church where I grew up. I think I first heard of it in my 20s on some Discovery Channel ancient history documentary. So, yeah, maybe the SBC is heretical, or maybe that particular small-town congregation just didn't have its shit together. I dunno.

Something to consider is that he turned over two of the three pistols he owned to NYPD last year, so it's not like he can plead ignorance. Mar-a-Lago is his little fiefdom where laws don't apply, and he can simply squirrel away shit he wants to keep from the government.