All the pieces of your life do, or will, fit together, no matter how many are scattered across the floor. Much like LEGO bricks. Those were the words of HG, author at Canary Media who compiled a series of quotes and interviews of people using one of the world’s most famous toys to heal from […] The post How LEGO Is Being Used to Reduce Stress, Combat Childhood Trauma, and Manage PTSD appeared first on Good News Network.

A Bronze Age burial mound surrounded by Iron Age cremation burials has been discovered in Petershagen, northwestern Germany. Archaeologists excavated the site before expansion of a gravel mine after aerial photography revealed rich plant growth in a large circle. The vegetation, which contrasted sharply with the dry gravel around it, was a signal to the archaeologists that there was almost certainly a burial mound there. The mounds were bordered by ditches that were infilled with rich soil which provided a welcoming home for plant life, unlike the gravel. The Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL) Archaeology unit followed up with test excavations based on the aerial data. They found a cremation burial almost immediately, and then more, both cinerary urns and graves consisting of funeral pyres buried after the ceremony. They were buried around the perimeter ditch of the burial mound, using the much earlier Bronze Age mound, which at that time would have loomed large on the landscape, as a monumental centerpoint of a necropolis. The preliminary dating of the graves is based on the shapes and ornamentation of the urns. The earliest of them date to the 7th to 5th centuries B.C. when the Iron Age Nienburg group occupied the area. According to the previous classification of the recovered finds, the cremation graves were buried in the ground between the 2nd century BC and the turn of the era. To date the graves without grave goods, the age will be determined using radiocarbon dating of charcoal. According to the scientists, surprises are always possible. The actual period of use of the necropolis can therefore only be clearly assessed in conjunction with the results of the scientific dating. Sebastian Düvel, scientific advisor at the LWL Archaeology for Westphalia, on the new discoveries: “The monuments, which are still clearly visible centuries after they were built, represented an important reference point in the landscape. In this case, they were the central element for further burials in the 7th to 5th centuries BC and in the 2nd to 1st centuries BC. The new sites clearly consolidate the image of an extensive burial landscape with dozens of mounds and adjacent burials along the Westphalian Middle Weser.”

The United States and Russia have completed a 24-person prisoner swap, the largest in post-Soviet history, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational…

It is very strange to see yourself addressed in third person in major publications after giving an RNC speech and after opening a campaign rally for vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, but it has been…

The foreign policy establishment has been shaken by scandal.  A former CIA operative and member of the George W. Bush National Security Council staff, Sue Mi Terry, was recently indicted by the U.S.…

European leaders fear that the substitution of Vice President Kamala Harris for President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, even in the case of a Democratic victory in November, could lessen the U.S.…

Politics Why Middle Class Americans Are Praying for a Trump Return Only one candidate has promised to address America’s fundamental problems. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images It is very strange to see yourself addressed in third person in major publications after giving an RNC speech and after opening a campaign rally for vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, but it has been a blessed few months.  First and foremost, I am a single mother currently residing in Arizona, working two jobs. However, readers of this magazine might remember me as a speaker at this year’s Republican National Convention. I moved to Arizona three years ago from Los Angeles, where I initially moved to volunteer at a community center. Ironically, when I started my own family, it didn’t take long to realize that we had to escape the ever-changing fortunes of LA, which has transformed from the second-most prosperous city in the U.S. to “Lost Angeles.” I watched my neighborhood decline in real time. Proposition 47 was passed in 2014, making drug possession punishable only as a misdemeanor with no jail time. Crime, drugs, and prostitution in downtown LA skyrocketed. Dealing with this crime and social tragedy every day was heartbreaking and terrifying. The suicide attempts and drug use on the streets made a hell of the beautiful city of angels.  I had a more personal connection to the tragedy, which was the direct result of progressive policies. My now ex-husband, one of the many people affected by this growing epidemic, fell into drug addiction. We tried everything to help him defeat this stronghold, but it was a demon that held a tight grip as the city’s lax policies on drugs only made it more difficult to deter his use. It finally reached a point where there was no other option left in front of me than to separate from my husband, to protect myself and my son, leaving our future in the hands of God. We continue to pray for his complete restoration. Transitioning from a two parent household to a single parent home has been challenging, exhausting, and is an increasing issue in America.  But the greater problem which often goes unnoticed is how the family breakdown is being facilitated by the state—in my case, the liberal uniparty state of California. It is the state that encourages women to value competition over fostering any connections or support systems. It also looks away from the disorder in the streets filled with crime and addiction, where some of the most vulnerable in society have suffered. The breakdown of churches has added to this suffering. As a single mother, you feel that there are never enough hours in a day to be everything you need to be, to everyone. You want to perform at work, and have to, regardless of whether your child is sick or on break, to pay the bills. On the other hand, you want to be present for your children who are growing up so fast and need your presence, love, and affirmation to become responsible contributors to our society and country. You have to constantly be on guard, to provide and protect, all while knowing that women aren’t equipped to do all of this alone.  Nevertheless, we do what we need to do to raise our kids the best we know how as our children are nothing short of a beautiful blessing from God. An opportunity presented itself to work in ballot-chasing in Arizona, and I listened to the tug on my heart to make a change and take action for God and country. A few days later, I received a call to speak at the RNC Convention. It was exactly the divine intervention I needed. I had one week to prepare to speak and felt so blessed to have the opportunity.   Let me reiterate one of the points I made in my RNC speech, as well as in subsequent speeches, which I think is the key to why middle class Americans like me are longing for a Trump return. It is only President Trump who can remedy the open border which is flooding our nation with poison. The border crisis has played a huge role in the drug epidemic. It has not only led to increased rent, soaring house prices, and fewer jobs, but it has also enabled human trafficking and drug smuggling. Major cities are greatly affected as they house most illegal immigrants, especially in border states. But make no mistake, they are coming to the streets near you. The former president has promised to crack down on the border and send those who entered illegally back home. Only he is willing to do that is necessary to stop human traffickers and our misguided NGOcracy. Only he wants to declare war on drug cartels along our southern border and within our cities. Only he genuinely wants to ease the financial burdens of working class people. Most importantly to me, he encourages the practice of faith which will ensure that we remain one nation under God. I empathize with the pain some immigrants are facing in their countries; however if we do not have law and order, America may become like those countries which they have fled. We are a beacon of hope to others for a reason, and we must lead by example. Americans like myself have been forgotten by both the Democratic and Republican elite. That has to change. I believe a Trump-Vance ticket can affect that change.   Vance rightly said that America is not just an idea, but it is also a nation bound by common history, common geography, and common laws, along with a single-tiered justice system. In life, there are tradeoffs, as are there in politics. He said, “America’s ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price.” Arizona is a major swing state and the 2024 election will be decided in swing states. Some are already working towards that end, as there is nothing more important this year than to usher in a second Trump presidency and make America great once again. The post Why Middle Class Americans Are Praying for a Trump Return appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Boot’s Big Grift Max Boot and his ilk make a big business of “anti-authoritarianism” to the detriment of the national interest. Credit: Wikimedia Commons The foreign policy establishment has been shaken by scandal.  A former CIA operative and member of the George W. Bush National Security Council staff, Sue Mi Terry, was recently indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for acting as a foreign agent for South Korea for over a decade.  Terry, who, until the scandal broke, was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is married to the neoconservative chicken hawk (forgive the redundancy) Max Boot. Boot, a columnist at the Washington Post, also worked alongside his handbag-loving spouse as the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Boot’s political trajectory tracks with those of other high-profile neocons away from the GOP, announcing in an October 2021 column,  I’m a single-issue voter. My issue is the fate of democracy in the United States. Simply put, I have no faith that we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power. Thus, although I’m not a Democrat, I will continue to vote exclusively for Democrats. He was also among the highly-placed Washington propagandists who helped create, then cash in on, the wholly fabricated narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election. According to Boot, the authoritarian menace posed by Putin’s Russia is as serious as that posed by American citizens (invariably those who live in less exalted zip codes than the Boots’) with whom he disagrees. Trump voters, as well as conservative and progressive advocates for peace, realism, and restraint, are all consigned to the “Useful Idiot” bin by Boot and his colleagues at the Washington Post. Boot’s speciality has long been to accuse those with whom he disagrees of acting as apologists for the Kremlin. These self-styled protectors of “democracy” yell at the top of their lungs about various and sundry threats to American democracy all the while doing their very best to undermine it by anathematizing and marginalizing those who dissent from the prerogatives of the D.C. foreign policy Blob. Needless to say, they make a handsome living in the process. For all the richly deserved opprobrium that has come Boot’s way as a result of the scandal, Terry and Boot are hardly alone among establishment elites, who as a matter of course abuse their positions of influence in order to further the interests of foreign countries.  The twin, indeed conjoined, careers of Anne Applebaum and her husband, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, is another such relationship, rife with conflict of interest and dual loyalties. While the similarities are obvious, both Boot and Applebaum are neocons-turned–liberal darlings who have made lucrative careers out of scaremongering, their differences are equally important: Boot is a simpleton for whom war is always the answer; Applebaum is far more formidable. In the space of four years, Applebaum has published dozens of articles and two book-length contributions to the literature of the new Cold War. Released in 2020, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends resembles nothing so much as Norman Podhoretz’s Ex-Friends, one of the silliest neocon tracts to ever see print (and that is saying something).  Applebaum’s book is an account of the political migration of her former cohort from what she describes as the “the pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, pro-market” center-right to what in her eyes are far less reputable precincts of political thought. At its core, it is an effort to shift responsibility away from where it rightly belongs; after all, Applebaum and her set, including Boot, William Kristol, David Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a host of other neocons-turned-MSNBC fixtures, were nothing if not enthusiastic supporters of the neoliberal economic and militaristic foreign policies that have so badly damaged this country.  This summer saw the release of a second title, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, a book that purports to be about the threat posed by, as Applebaum puts it, “the strongmen who lead Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan, and perhaps three dozen others.” Yet one can’t escape the feeling that her intended target is closer to home, what she calls “the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.” The historian Heather Penatzer writes, “Applebaum’s narrative is a story of a cabal of financial elites pulling the strings of history from their headquarters in Trump Tower in close coordination with the Kremlin.”  Indeed, any opposition to the policies Applebaum favors (war in Ukraine, war in Syria, NATO expansion, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) can be traced back to the sinister machinations of a global “cabal” of authoritarians. And how else to explain why over 70 million people voted for the American “autocrat” in 2020? It couldn’t possibly be that Midwesterners actually want, you know, jobs. As we head closer to the November election, expect more of this kind of thing. Last week, to take one example, the Soros-funded Just Security website launched its “American Autocracy Threat Tracker” which purports to catalog all of the “actions to be taken during a second Trump presidency that directly threaten democracy, the rule of law, as well as U.S. (and global) security.”  In the end, liberals’ tarring of their domestic political opponents as “authoritarian” is simply Russia-gate under a different guise; it is a way to smear Middle Americans as unpatriotic and, here’s the real trick, somehow also foreign—outside the acceptable, even legal bounds of American politics. Put simply: It is a scam, one that began during the 2016 campaign and continues to haunt our politics. Boot and Applebaum and their like-minded acolytes at Just Security are neither protectors of democracy, nor avowed enemies of authoritarianism. They’re grifters, and should be treated accordingly. The post Boot’s Big Grift appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs In 2024, the Party is Over for European Free-Riding on Defense No matter who wins the upcoming election, American subsidization of European defense policy is on the way out. European leaders fear that the substitution of Vice President Kamala Harris for President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, even in the case of a Democratic victory in November, could lessen the U.S. commitment to defend Europe. And well they should, because Biden is about as strong a traditional trans-Atlanticist as they come. Although Harris has trans-Atlanticist advisors, the U.S. public sphere has become more antsy about the huge continuing bills U.S. taxpayers are footing in an open commitment to Ukraine when that country’s stated war aims—to regain all its territory from their Russian aggressor—seem like a fantasy.   Although a recent Russian offensive has failed to gain much territory, the likelihood of the much smaller (in both economic output and population) Ukraine—even with Western-supplied weapons, technology, and training—completely recovering its territory through military means seems like a pipe dream, despite the legitimate desires of its government and population. Perhaps the Ukrainians, Europeans, Americans, and the world need to focus instead on what the Ukrainians have already accomplished, and put that into historical perspective, rather than focus on what has been lost. These heroic underdogs fought off a Russian invasion that Moscow expected would take only a few days to topple the Ukrainian government. They turned it into a Russian quagmire that has lasted two-and-a-half years—with only about 18 percent of Ukraine’s territory now being occupied by Russian forces.  The Ukrainian “David” fighting off the Russian “Goliath,” with all the advantages of a great power, resembles Finland’s fending off a Soviet invasion in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Even in that conflict, perceived by history as a victory for Finland, the scrappy Finns had to make territorial concessions to Stalin’s USSR. Ideally, any peace settlement of the war would include referendums in the occupied territories so that the inhabitants could decide whether they want to be part of Russia or Ukraine. Some of the occupied territory is populated by Russian-speaking people who might choose to be controlled by Russia if given the choice in a referendum. When Russia invaded and occupied eastern Ukraine in 2014, it got help from Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists. Thus the Russians can claim some public support in that part of Ukraine, although the Russians’ tendency to impose corrupt and brutal rule in areas they occupy might have attenuated some such desire. In sum, to the extent that legitimate, non-coercive, and internationally monitored referendums could be held in occupied lands, it would allow both combatants a fig leaf to accept territorial concessions, which might provide incentives for a more stable settlement of the conflict. Ukraine has always been more strategic to Russia and Europe than it is to the faraway United States. Ukraine was always an agricultural breadbasket and, in its east, an industrial center during Soviet times. The country is still on one of the invasion corridors into Russia from the West, which has seen many bloody foreign incursions over the centuries—the last of which led to 25 to 30 million deaths during World War II at the hands of Adolf Hitler. Also, the Crimean Peninsula is navally strategic because it is a warm water port, which is scarce in Russia.  Although Russia is somewhat of a menace to Europe, it has always been absurd to say that the Europeans could not defend themselves against a country with the GDP about the same as that of Italy. Even though remnant Russia was not the threat of the more potent Soviet Union, stories abounded about how Vladimir Putin had restored the luster of the Russian military after the Soviet collapse; then the abject Russian failure in Ukraine happened. The claims of some NATO countries that “Russia will not stop at Ukraine” seem laughable after the bloody nose Putin has taken in that country, which exposed the massive corruption and incompetence in his armed forces. To take the most striking example, the Russian Navy has been decisively beaten by a country with no warships. It has been said that the Europeans don’t have the will to do more in their own defense; of course not, because the United States has been providing a security umbrella for them since the end of the Second World War. The only way that situation will change is if the United States makes it clear under Harris or Trump that it will continue to expect the Europeans to do more. The United States always claims to want its European allies to bear more of the alliance burden, but then it also wants to retain ”leadership” of the alliance. Those American goals are often at cross purposes. To start Europe down the path to greater responsibility for its own defense, if Ukraine is understandably resistant to negotiate an end to the conflict before it wins back all its territory, it could continue the fight with military and economic support from the wealthy Europeans—with the already heavily indebted United States bowing out. Perhaps the Europeans will realize that the last of the great American trans-Atlanticists is passing the scene and that either Harris or Trump will be less than “all in” on the huge expenses of a perpetual war in Ukraine. The post In 2024, the Party is Over for European Free-Riding on Defense appeared first on The American Conservative.

"That lasted about a year." The post Ian Gillan on his time with Black Sabbath: “That was the longest party that I ever went to” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.