Claiming Victory Quotes

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.

Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories...

I kissed him, let him kiss me, let him clutch my hips, curl his fingers into the fabric of my shirt, slide his hands around my waist and splay them against my back, pull me infinitesimally closer. He made a sound, a growl or purr, some predatory noise that rumbled in his throat, then said my name. And this time, it wasn’t a question but a sound of victory, a claim on his prize.

We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.

if you hurt deeply, then it means you love deeply too. love is powerful thing, Jaron. In the end, love will help you win this war." I chuckled, "that'd be a fine new strategy, I think. When the enemy wields a sword against me, I'll simply express my love for them. They'll be so shocked, they'll collapse on the spot and the victory will be mine." "I daresay you will be the first to claim victory that way

All right’ is when you’re bleeding black but it’s not as bad as bleeding red. When the world crashes but you’re not alone when it does. When the darkness is absolute but you hunt down the smallest flame and coax it brighter. When you carve the good out of every bad and claim it a victory.

Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignations.

Food won't go down when you know your mother didn't want you, never liked to feed you, always hated you in her rooms. You were wrong to clutch and swallow and move your mouth. You must not be flushed, layered in fat or ripe from meat or she will despise your sight. Your skeleton cries, "I make no demands, I am ashamed of my needs, I am unworthy. I'm aware of those more deserving, those with prior and urgent claims to food." Skeleton says, "My safety is in slightness, my pride is denial. My victory is no gluttony, no guilt.

This is the part no one talks about anymore. Not in civilized company at least. When a war is over, you stop discussing the cost. The reality. The blood-soaked soil or the grave markers or the collateral damage. The ways we kill our enemies in order to claim victory. History is written by the men who live. Not the ones who die. But I’ve heard these stories myself.

How is it,” Stix asked, “that men always seem to claim victory over the triumphs earned by women?

According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.

When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience.

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

The god of Delos, proud in victory, Saw Cupid draw his bow's taut arc, and said: 'Mischievous boy, what are a brave man's arms To you? That gear becomes my shoulders best. My aim is sure; I wound my enemies, I wound wild beasts; my countless arrows slew But now the bloated Python, whose vast coils Across so many acres spread their blight. You and your loves! You have your torch to light them!Let that content you; never claim my fame!' And Venus' son replied: 'Your bow, Apollo, May vanquish all, but mine shall vanquish you. As every creature yields to power divine, So likewise shall your glory yield to mine.

remember the two signatures of modern war: (1) You never win, exactly; you claim victory. (2) Perception is paramount.

But don't they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere." "'They?' Who are 'they?'" "I don't know. Just people." "That's what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. 'All is fair.' 'The end justifies the means.' Is that what you believe?

Joy is meant to be felt; its not meant to be detained. It is meant to be shared with others; not to be felt alone. When all the mouths smile out their teeth together, thats when the greatest happiness can be measured. You don't smile in order to see your friends cry and claim your joy is divine.

I claim no victory. But there was blood on my gloves when I hung them up. When was the last time you did a story like that, out of pure indignation?

The thing about life, I thought as Star drank his mother's warm milk, is that you have to choose it. And then you have to keep choosing it, again and again. You can choose it by staring out at the vast horizon. By focusing on the smallest stone. By feeling humbled by the greatness of others. By claiming victory in a challenge. By judging. By loving. Through balance. Through knowledge. In wisdom. In grace.

But if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however he likes? Dostoievsky asserted, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” Today’s believers use this formula for their own advantage. To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, and his victories as well.

This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.

Just as a state's police swear to prevent and punish murder, so the signers of the Genocide Convention [in 1948] swore to police a brave new world order. The rhetoric of moral utopia is a peculiar response to genocide. But those were heady days, just after the trials at Nuremberg, when the full scale of the Nazi extermination of Jews all over Europe had been recognized as a fact of which nobody could any longer claim ignorance. The authors and signers of the Genocide Convention knew perfectly well that they had not fought World War II to stop the Holocaust but rather--and often, as in the case of the United States, reluctantly--to contain fascist aggression. What made those victorious powers, which dominated the UN then even more than they do now, imagine that they would act differently in the future?

Good stories are never about a string of successes but about spectacular defeats,” Støp had said. “Even though Roald Amundsen won the race to the South Pole, it’s Robert Scott the world outside Norway remembers. None of Napoleon’s victories is remembered like the defeat at Waterloo. Serbia’s national pride is based on the battle against the Turks at Kosovo Polje in 1389, a battle the Serbs lost resoundingly. And look at Jesus! The symbol of the man who is claimed to have triumphed over death ought to be a man standing outside the tomb with his hands in the air. Instead, throughout time Christians have preferred the spectacular defeat: when he was hanging on the cross and close to giving up. Because it’s always the story of the defeat that moves us most.

When you have set out the goals that you are claiming is yours in life and, more importantly, relentlessly taking the actions to produce, it’s only a matter of when. We are wired to win. You are wired to win. Define your game. Embrace the challenge. And strive to understand yourself in deeper and more meaningful ways. True understanding of yourself and your personal constraints allows for ever unfolding degrees of freedom and success. The more aware you become of your hard wiring, the more space and opportunity become available in those areas. Step out there. Trust yourself. Give yourself fully to your vast capacity for victory. Set the the challenge of winning in new and exciting ways. Demand your greatness of yourself and repeat after me: I am wired to win.

Claims have been made that I've been on a strict workout routine regulated by co-stars, whipped into shape by trainers I've never met, eating sprouted grains I can't pronounce and ultimately losing 14 pounds off my 5'3" frame. Losing 14 pounds out of necessity in order to live a healthier life is a huge victory. I'm a petite person to begin with, so the idea of my losing this amount of weight is utter lunacy. If I were to lose 14 pounds, I'd have to part with both arms. And a foot.

To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God's absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, & his victories as well.

I am not a well educated man except that I have educated myself, and, because I have educated myself, what I say will not stand up, for lack of recognized authority. This in turn leaves me free to say what I will, in the hope that, like those small forces that do not threaten empires and are thus not fully pursued, the things in which I believe can survive in some high and forgotten place until the power of empire subsides. And although I know that few will listen to or credit this, I think we are in a lost age, in which holiness and charity have been traded for the victory and penetration of knowledge, though all the knowledge in the world has not brought us any further than where we can go without it even in the outermost halls of grace. I believe that more is to be known and apprehended from the beauty of a face than in delving, no matter how deep, simply into how things work, no matter how marvelous that may be. The greatest substance of the world is immaterial, the province of the heart, and its study cannot be forced or reasoned. Merely to touch upon the edge of things in parsing their mechanics is to forswear their fullness, for the entry to this fullness lies not in science but in art. I cannot prove this, for it cannot be proven, but I claim, assert, and have seen it.

One can believe James's claim to an "imagination of disaster"; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend on such high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole.

In the arena, he continued, it won't be enough just to fight your best. It's never enough to simply win the battle. What you have to win is their hearts. Caesar's heart. Charm them, beguile them, seduce the mob. That will make him fall in love with you. Because unless Caesar loves you, you cannot truly claim Victory.

My claims were justified in all men's sight; I put my trust in equity and right; Yet, to my horror and the world's disgrace, Justice is mocked, and I have lost my case! A scoundrel whose dishonesty is notorious Emerges from another lie victorious!

A great blow it was,' he said in expensive tones, 'worthy of the mightiest warrior and truly struck upon the nose of the foe. The bright blood flew, and the enemy was dismayed and overcame. Like a hero, Garion stood over the vanquished, and, like a true hero, did not boast nor taunt his fallen opponent, but offered instead advice for quelling that crimson blood. with simple dignity then, he quit the field, but the bright-eyed maid would not let him depart unrewarded for his valor. hastily, she pursued him and fondly clasped her snowy arms about his neck. And there she lovingly bestowed that single kiss that is the true hero's greatest reward. Her eyes flamed with admiration, and her chaste bosom heaved with newly wakened passion. But modest Garion innocently departed and tarried not to claim those other sweet rewards the gentle maid's fond demeanor so clearly offered. And thus the adventure ended with our hero tasting victory but tenderly declining victory's true compensation.

There were lots of early Christian groups. They all claimed to be right. They all had books to back up their claims, books allegedly written by the apostles and therefore representing the views of Jesus and his first disciples. The group that won out did not represent the teachings of Jesus or of his apostles. For example, none of the apostles claimed that Jesus was “fully God and fully man,” or that he was “begotten not made, of one substance with the Father,” as the fourth-century Nicene Creed maintained. The victorious group called itself orthodox. But it was not the original form of Christianity, and it won its victory only after many hard-fought battles.

The significance of the resurrection claim within “true” Christian descriptions of the self, world and God is that, despite how tragic and hopeless present situations and circumstances appear to be, there is a God who sits high and looks low, a God who came into this filthy, fallen world in the form of a common peasant in order to commence a new epoch, an epoch in which Easter focuses our attention on the decisive victory of Jesus Christ and hence the possibility of our victory over our creature hood, the old creation and this old world, with its history of oppression and exploitation. So to be a Christian is to have a joyful attitude toward the resurrection claim, to stake one’s life on it and to rest one’s hope upon its promise — the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

I swear, if Dan had claimed he could saw off more of his fingers than I could of my own, then one of us would’ve pointed a hand-turned-stump at the other and cackled with victory.

I decided that the only way my attackers could claim victory over me was if I let fear rule my life.

War always claims the best. Those selfless fighters who at all times, in life, in death, in victory or defeat, establish the ethos of pure comradeship and genuine soldierhood

Each of the five tribes claims to have been the victorious attacker. Each recalls the slaughter with relish. Each believes it was ordained by their own god as righteous vengeance, because of the unholy practices carried on in the city. Evil must be cleansed with blood, they say. On that day the blood ran like water, so afterwards it must have been very clean.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound. It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us. Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith. Why? The truth is plain: We were not born to be niggers.

Ajax defending his honor when he fought against Troy along with Ulysses, who claimed his actions enabled the Greeks to be victorious. The chiefs side with Ulysses, and Ajax, having lost his honor as a warrior, draws his sword and proclaims: "But this at least is mine, or does Ulysses claim this also for himself? This I must employ against myself; and the sword which has often reeked with Phrygian blood will now reek with its masters, lest any man but Ajax ever conquer Ajax.

That it was his habit to call fake news on anything showing himself or the government in a bad light. That it was also his habit to proclaim fake news a good thing, since it forced people to question what they heard. That such contradictions allowed him to claim victory in every argument.

They are all negros. And the Fascists won’t be called black because of their racial pride, so they are called White after the White Russians. And the Bolsheviks want to be called Black because of their racial pride. So when you say black you mean red, and when you mean red you say white and when the party who call themselves blacks say traitors they mean what we call blacks, but what we mean when we say traitors I really couldn’t tell you. But from your point of view it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots, and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But, of course, it’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain?

I stand on victory ground for today. I claim all the work of the cross of Jesus, His resurrection power, His ascended authority, and Pentecost for  all my victory. You are Lord of all my life this day. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pallas dropped to his knees in front of Damen, almost glowing with the distinction of what his three victories allowed him to do. ‘If it please my lords and ladies,’ said Pallas, ‘I claim the honour of combat with the King.’ There

We live sacrificially when we’re outside the will of God, giving up all sorts of things that were meant to be ours in Christ. We want to claim those things back, but in the process we’re going to be putting a few other things on the altar.

The Devil wants nothing more than to crush you. He wants to steal from you everything you value. He wants to kill everything in your life that's good. Ultimately, he wants to destroy you. If he can claim the victory over your mind, he can eventually claim the victory over your life. But the message of Psalm 23 is that the Good Shepherd prepares a table for you. It's a table for two, and the Devil is not invited to sit.

Yet, in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other and nothingness will claim the universe.

Our time prides itself on having finally achieved the freedom from censorship for which libertarians in all ages have struggled...The credit for these great achievements is claimed by the new spirit of rationalism, a rationalism that, it is argued, has finally been able to tear from man's eyes the shrouds imposed by mystical thought, religion, and such powerful illusions as freedom and dignity. Science has given us this great victory over ignorance. But, on closer examination, this victory too can be seen as an Orwellian triumph of an even higher ignorance: what we have gained is a new conformism, which permits us to say anything that can be said in the functional languages of instrumental reason, but forbids us to allude to...the living truth...so we may discuss the very manufacture of life and its 'objective' manipulations, but we may not mention God, grace, or morality.

The Russian Civil War lasts almost six years and ends in victory for the Bolsheviks. It claims the lives of more than 10 million people—five times more than the number of Russian casualties in the First World War, which the Bolsheviks promised to end. Of that figure, 2.5 million are killed in battle, another 2 million fall victim to the Red (and White) Terror, while around 6 million die from hunger and disease. On top of that, approximately 2 million emigrate.

I am a man that knows of the possibility of failure. I have suffered defeat. I have created miscalculations. I have even abandoned victory, and fallen in shame. I can claim my arrogance. I can claim my ignorance. I can claim my naiveté. However, the creation of those possibilities were simply due to a lack of understanding of who I was. I have conquered my Id. I have conquered my Ego. I have conquered my Spirituality. I am a man that knows of the possibility of failure, but because I have mastered the principles of nothing, possibility, and uncertainty, failure simply tags along with me, unable to grasp my glory.

Resisting her hold over him, the vampire yelled to the crowd, “Mark me, and listen well! I’ve won this tournament. . . . No one here can deny my victory. . . . I’ve won this crown”—he pointed his bloodied sword at her—“and Bettina as my wife.” Claws digging into his chest, lungs failing, he bellowed, “I forsake you both!

To win their battles, these kinds of underdogs rely on their own and one another's ability to absorb violence. They find their might in their nature. They believe victory is assured by their nature, and as long as they act in accordance with their nature, they will claim it. Because they are able to fight, they must fight.

We fight from the victory of Jesus, not for victory. Victory has already been claimed at the Cross.

If you cheat to win you really can't claim victory because you did not play fair. 

Victory claimed by violence is tantamount to defeat for it is momentary

Time may claim many victories, but not the victory over grief. The great consolation for the loss of the dead who are gone is to be found in the great necessity of thinking of the living who remain.

There is a particular kind of thinker, one who becomes more entrenched in their single big idea about how the world works even in the face of contrary facts, whose predictions become worse, not better, as they amass information for their mental representation of the world. They are on television and in the news every day, making worse and worse predictions while claiming victory, and they have been rigorously studied.

In 1960, The New York Times printed an advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices” that attempted to raise money to defend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against perjury charges in Alabama. Southern officials responded by going on the offensive and suing the newspaper. Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan and Governor Patterson claimed defamation. A local jury awarded them half a million dollars, and the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan changed the standard for defamation and libel by requiring plaintiffs to prove malice—that is, evidence of actual knowledge on the part of the publisher that a statement is false. The ruling marked a significant victory for freedom of the press, and it liberated media outlets and publishers to talk more honestly about civil rights protests and activism.

We claim the victory over the power of the enemy not by our might nor by our power, but by His Spirit, says the Lord (Zech. 4:6). Never—and I mean never—allow the enemy to convince you that your situation is hopeless.

Every ruler makes enemies. The Lady is no exception. The Sons of the White Rose are everywhere.… If one chooses sides on emotion, then the Rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honor: freedom, independence, truth, the right.… All the subjective illusions, all the eternal trigger-words. We are minions of the villain of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance. There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.

OBEDIENCE IS NOT ENOUGH. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.

The “confusion” that straight and gay colonizers claim bisexuals experience is because there are no influential cultural templates for bisexuals/ fluid/pansexual people to cling to, nor is their experience politically validated.

Emily wasn’t aware that only the quick thinking of the dinosaur in question had, early on in their naval career, saved her husband from a potentially horrible fate involving a Thai prostitute who’d actually turned out to be a man…

I love you, Blue. Have I always? Haven’t I? When did it happen? Or has it always happened? Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignation.

I love you, Blue. Have I always? Haven’t I? When did it happen? Or has it always happened? Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignations. There was, I am sure, a time I did not know you. Or did I dream that me, as I’ve so often dreamed of you? Have we always fulfilled one another in the chase? I remember hunting you through Samarkand, thrilling to think I might touch the loosening strands of your hair.

The display, which was called 'Can Democracy Survive the Internet?' was dedicated to a 'global election management' company called Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica claimed to have gathered 5,000 data points on every American voter online: what you liked and what you shared on social media; how and where you shopped; who your friends were... They claimed to be able to take this imprint of your online self, use it to understand your deepest drives and desires, and then draw on that analysis to change your voting behaviour. The boast seemed to be backed up by success: Cambridge Analytica had worked on the victorious American presidential campaign of Donald Trump; it had also run successful campaigns for US Senator Ted Cruz (twice); and others all across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America.

The origin of morality may be traced to two ideas: “The community is of more value than the individual,” “The permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary.” The conclusion drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the prolongation of his existence. Even if the individual suffers by an arrangement that suits the mass, even if he is depressed and ruined by it, morality must be maintained and the victim brought to the sacrifice. Such a trend of thought arises, however, only in those who are not the victims—for in the victim's case it enforces the claim that the individual might be worth more than the many, and that the present enjoyment, the “moment in paradise,” should perhaps be rated higher than a tame succession of untroubled or comfortable circumstances. But the philosophy of the sacrificial victim always finds voice too late, and so victory remains with morals and morality. But this is really nothing more than the sentiment for the whole concept of morals under which one lives and has been reared—and reared not as an individual but as a member of the whole, as a cipher in a majority. Hence it constantly happens that the individual makes himself into a majority by means of his morality.

When employees at all levels share a common understanding of where the company is headed, what success looks like, whom their competitors are, and what needs to be achieved to claim victory, there is a remarkably low level of wasted time and energy and a powerful sense of traction.

All right is when you’re bleeding black but it’s not as bad as bleeding red. When the world crashes but you’re not alone when it does. When the darkness is absolute but you hunt down the smallest flame and coax it brighter. When you carve the good out of every bad and claim it a victory.

THE QUESTION seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.” Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities and churches and political constitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he has had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name and taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of compliment in that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that of the brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be a patriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have always had a curious feeling that though we crucified Christ on a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan. There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster, which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious than the one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part of Annas went home and died of horror. But responsible people have never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable, capable world has been steadily anti-Christian and Barabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrine of Jesus has not in all that time been put into political or general social practice.

Someone said that I am a survivor but I believe I am much more than that. I prefer to claim outright victory in this war against the residential-school experience. Even though I sometimes barely survived, I didn’t become one of the terrible statistics of Aboriginal people. In the end, I win!

When we rebuff the enemy in the name of Jesus Christ, when we stand our ground, when we resist his wiles and claim the victory of faith, when we shake off discouragement in the name of our Lord, Satan falls from heaven faster than lightning. He is drowned in the Red Sea of the blood of Jesus Christ.

In our Western world we don't do well with grief and suffering. Our rugged individualism has trumped the call to shared grief. And many of us believe that it shows a lack of faith to lament. We want to move too quickly to our claims of victory in Jesus. We neglect the need within our souls to cry out.

Soon you shall be landing In the battleground, ensure you have the right weapons to fight the enemy; ensure you know your enemy and what he is capable of; take them unprepared to gain the victory and stand with your head held high; show it to the world the cause you have been fighting for, deception is the key, challenge your enemy when it is least expected; break them mentally before breaking them physically. You are a soldier; your enemy is a soldier and you are facing the best, both sides have a lot of similarities only variation lies in the cause. Cause is driver for the battle; cause is binding comrades together and even if the victory is gained the cause stays undefeated. You stand defeated for your strategy, tactics and leaders but never for the cause, it’s still alive, it shall always be alive with the men who have sacrificed their lives, with the men who are still alive. They stand defeated with the physical strength but not for the cause they have believed in and you can never take it away from them. Fight for a cause and you shall stay invincible. A war story is always biased towards one side and it’s hard to narrate a true war story. We choose and make our heroes from what we have read, heard and believed in. If we know the cause both sides are standing for, it will become difficult to take sides. Always respect your enemy, respect for the fact they are standing neck to neck with you, respect them for the courage they have shown to defend the other side, their land, respect them for whatever you have earned the respect for from your men, from your country and from your people. Powerful strategies, tactics, weapons, leaders are allies to the war, they support but never claims victory all my themselves Greatest wars won always had the greater cause. Rebel without a cause is never a rebel just an aimless person whose fate lies in the defeat.

First-century Jews looked forward to a public event … in and through which their god would reveal to all the world that he was not just a local, tribal deity, but the creator and sovereign of all … The early Christians … looked back to an event in and through which, they claimed, Israel’s god had done exactly that.

My cause is defeated if I am not leader of this host," said Dmitrii. "For Rus' will fracture, if I am not lord. They will be as leaves in defeat, scattering in a strong wind, or they will be overproud in victory, each trying to claim a greater share than the others. No, I will play for the great prize. What else is there?

Love is both hard and soft. It is the most believable truth and fiction. It is something we fight for and fight with. It is the yin and yang. It is the most contradictory of emotions, making you believe in both the extraordinary existence of heaven and scorches of hell. If you allow it, a saturation of complexities can destroy it and leave you desperately choking for the remnants, clawing for a miniscule flake of ash of what you had . True love is a rare miracle held in the highest veneration. Blessed are those who even come close its illumination. Only those who are selflessly brave can become victorious and claim this exceptional phenomenon, if just for a memory in time.

Can people be persuaded?' is a very different question from 'Can arguments be won?' People change their minds about things all the time, but I'm not sure that anybody ever wins an argument. Persuasion is not a zero-sum game. It occurs when somebody moves, even slightly, away from one position and toward another. It is entirely possible for two (or more) people to move closer to each other's positions during an argument without either one being able to claim victory over the other. But we like to win, and we hate to lose, so the fact that people don't usually win arguments doesn't stop most of us from trying. And we all think we know what winning means: It means crushing opponents and making them cry. It means humiliating them in front of a crowd. And it means displaying our power and our rightness for all the world to see and acknowledge. And this means that we often end up trying to win by employing rhetorical strategies that are fundamentally incapable of persuading anybody of anything. And that looks a lot like losing.

While Grant was celebrated as a victorious wartime general and the president who had peacefully settled the Alabama claims, most gratifying to him was being honored as the protector of freed people. A delegation of painters marched by, hoisting a picture that depicted the shackles of slavery being struck off beside the words “Welcome to the Liberator.

To the people, Morel was the hero of a cause that had nothing to do with nations and political ideologies, a cause that had nothing to do with Africa and touched what was deepest in them — a secret rancor — a confused dream of being able one day to emerge victorious from the difficulty of being a man. They were staking a claim to respectful and decent treatment.

And it is certainly possible that lying played a role in the failure of the polls to predict Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. Polls, on average, underestimated his support by about 2 percentage points. Some people may have been embarrassed to say they were planning to support him. Some may have claimed they were undecided when they were really going Trump’s way all along.

Leadership is life-oriented in scope and transferable from one environment to another. Mainly, the goal for any leader should be to move past obstacles – to claim a triumph. Being in tune with the landscape of people, processes, and priorities can guarantee such an accomplishment. From this experience, a personal victory narrative can take shape, one that becomes solid and surefire.

(Phormio:) But the superiority which we allow to them on land we may justly claim for ourselves at sea; for in courage at least we are their equals, and the superior confidence of either of us is really based upon greater experience. The Lacedaemonians lead the allies for their own honour and glory; the majority of them are dragged into battle against their will; if they were not compelled they would never have ventured after so great a defeat to fight again at sea. So that you need not fear their valour; they are far more afraid of you and with better reason, not only because you have already defeated them, but because they cannot believe that you would oppose them at all if you did not mean to do something worthy of that great victory. (Book 2 Chapter 89.3-5)

God knows aiming low is seductive. Self-esteem is a huge factor in negotiation, and many people set modest goals to protect it. It’s easier to claim victory when you aim low. That’s why some negotiation experts say that many people who think they have “win-win” goals really have a “wimp-win” mentality. The “wimp-win” negotiator focuses on his or her bottom line, and that’s where they end up.

Never in America’s history, though—however many sideburns Bowery barbers shaved or immigrants came ashore—had a losing presidential candidate argued that the whole nation had been swindled. When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, his victory so outraged his opposition that an entire region of the country broke away. But in loss Stephen A. Douglas never claimed the election was “rigged.

You are now Korwahk warriors. You serve me,” she said just after Lahn thumped his chest. “You serve your golden queen,” she said after Lahn, not looking back, swung a muscular arm and pointed my way before dropping it. “You know nothing now but horseflesh between your legs, steel in your grip, blood on your tongue, victory your only focus. There is no other path. You have no mother. You have no father. You have no brothers except those who wear the paint. You have only The Horde. You are The Horde. You serve me, your queen, your Horde. You will seize bounty; you will claim your bride. You will grunt and sweat and bury your seed to create warriors. You do not own your flesh; The Horde owns your flesh. You sink your blade into flesh; you do it for The Horde. You will wake up a warrior, you will sleep a warrior and you will die a warrior.

But your last letter… I am so good at missing things. At making myself not see. I stand at a cliff’s edge, and–hell. I love you, Blue. Have I always? Haven’t I? When did it happen? Or has it always happened? Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignations. There was, I am sure, a time I did not know you. Or did I dream that me, as I’ve so often dreamed of you? Have we always fulfilled one another in the chase? I remember hunting you through Samarkand, thrilling to think I might touch the loosening strands of your hair. I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious–I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand.

The people of Rome had particular reason to associate a god more commonly worshipped as the patron of prophecy and self-discipline with vicious cruelty. In the Forum, next to the sacred fig tree, there stood the statue of a pot-bellied man with a wine-sack on his shoulder. This was Marsyas, a satyr who had once challenged Apollo to a musical contest, been cheated of the victory that was rightfully his, and then been flayed alive for his presumption. Such, at any rate, was the version of the story told by the Greeks – but in Italy an altogether happier ending was reported. Marsyas, they claimed, had escaped the irate Apollo and fled to the Apennines, where he had taught the arts of augury to the natives and fathered the snake-charming Marsians. Rome was not the only city to commemorate him. Statues of Marsyas were to be found in public squares across Italy.

Hierarchies must rise and conglomerate as they extend over fewer and larger corporations. A seat in a high-rise job is the most coveted and contested product of expanding industry. The lack of schooling, compounded with sex, color, and peculiar persuasions, now keeps most people down. Minorities organized by women, or blacks, or the unorthodox succeed at best in getting some of their members through school and into an expensive job. They claim victory when they get equal pay for equal rank. Paradoxically, these movements strengthen the idea that unequal graded work is necessary and that high-rise hierarchies are necessary to produce what an egalitarian society needs. If properly schooled, the black porter will blame himself for not being a black lawyer. At the same time, schooling generates a new intensity of frustration which ultimately can act as social dynamite. 6

And then it hit me. Don’t we claim to know how the game of life ends? And if we do, shouldn’t that affect the way we interpret and respond to the Enemy’s short-term victories and temporary advances? If our sins are forgiven and our destiny assured, if we are joint heirs with Jesus and certain he’s coming back to set all wrongs right, then despair and panic over the latest court decision, or even the steady erosion of morality in our culture, hardly seem like appropriate responses.

Authority does not have to be a person or institution which says: you have to do this, or you are not allowed to do that. While this kind of authority may be called external authority, authority can appear as internal authority, under the name of duty, conscience, or super-ego. As a matter of fact, the development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Kant's philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man's own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of his natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, his nature, by another, his reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issued by man's conscience are ultimately not governed by demands of the individual self but by social demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be his own; how can he rebel against himself? In recent decades "conscience" has lost much of its significance. It seems as though neither external nor internal authorities play any prominent role in the individual's life. Everybody is completely "free", if only he does not interfere with other people's legitimate claims. But what we find is rather that instead of disappearing, authority has made itself invisible. Instead of overt authority, "anonymous" authority reigns.It is disguised as common sense, science, psychic health, normality, public opinion. It does not demand anything except the self-evident. It seems to use no pressure but only mild persuasion. Whether a mother says to her daughter, "I know you will not like to go out with that boy", or an advertisement suggests, "Smoke this brand of cigarettes--you will like their coolness", it is the same atmosphere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole social life. Anonymous authority is more effective than overt authority, since one never suspects that there is any order which one is expected to follow. In external authority it is clear that there is an order and who gives it; one can fight against the authority, and in this fight personal independence and moral courage can develop.But whereas in internalized authority the command, though an internal one, remains visible, in anonymous authority both command and commander have become invisible.It is like being fired at by an invisible enemy. There is nobody and nothing to fight back against.

The nations of the earth through the centuries of time have waged war to gain territory. I think ours is the only nation on the face of the earth which has not claimed territory gained out of conflict. I have stood in the American Military Cemetery in Suresnes, France, where are buried some who died in the First World War. Among those was my eldest brother. It is a quiet and hallowed place, a remembrance of great sacrifice 'to make the world safe for democracy.' No territory was claimed by America as recompense for the sacrifices of those buried there. I have stood in reverence in the beautiful American military cemetery on the outskirts of Manila in the Philippines. There marble crosses and the Star of David stand in perfect symmetry marking the burial places of some 17,000 Americans who lost their lives in the Second World War. Surrounding that sacred ground are marble colonnades on which are incised the names of another 35,000 who were lost in the battles of the Pacific during that terrible conflict. After so great a sacrifice there was victory, but there was never a claim for territory except for some small islands over which we have had guardianship. I have been up and down South Korea from the 38th parallel in the North to Pusan in the South, and I have seen the ridges and the valleys where Americans fought and died, not to save their own land but to preserve freedom for people who were strangers to them but whom they acknowledged to be brothers under the fatherhood of God. Not an inch of territory was sought for nor added to the area of the United States out of that conflict. I have been from one end of South Vietnam to the other in the days of war. More than 55,000 Americans died in the sultry, suffocating heat of that strange and foreign place fighting in the cause of human liberty without ambition for territory. In no instance--not in the First World War or the Second, not in the Korean War or in Vietnam--did our nation seize and hold territory for itself as a prize of war.

the Fates weren’t true immortals. They didn’t age, but they could die. Most of the city adored the sisters for their victory over the Fates, but some believed the new empress was actually a Fate. The scandal sheets claimed that she could read minds and her fiancé was a pirate covered in a web of scars. Evangeline knew better than to believe all the rumors. Yet she was still anxious about the mind reading. She didn’t want the empress seeing her thoughts and learning that Evangeline was not the savior everyone believed.

Sonia Gandhi and her son play an important part in all of this. Their job is to run the Department of Compassion and Charisma and to win elections. They are allowed to make (and also to take credit for) decisions which appear progressive but are actually tactical and symbolic, meant to take the edge off popular anger and allow the big ship to keep on rolling. (The best example of this is the rally that was organised for Rahul Gandhi to claim victory for the cancellation of Vedanta’s permission to mine Niyamgiri for bauxite—a battle that the Dongria Kondh tribe and a coalition of activists, local as well as international, have been fighting for years. At the rally, Rahul Gandhi announced that he was “a soldier for the tribal people”. He didn’t mention that the economic policies of his party are predicated on the mass displacement of tribal people. Or that every other bauxite “giri”—hill—in the neighbourhood was having the hell mined out of it, while this “soldier for the tribal people” looked away. Rahul Gandhi may be a decent man. But for him to go around talking about the two Indias—the “Rich India” and the “Poor India”—as though the party he represents has nothing to do with it, is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, including his own.) The division of labour between politicians who have a mass base and win elections, and those who actually run the country but either do not need to (judges and bureaucrats) or have been freed of the constraint of winning elections (like the prime minister) is a brilliant subversion of democratic practice. To imagine that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are in charge of the government would be a mistake. The real power has passed into the hands of a coven of oligarchs—judges, bureaucrats and politicians. They in turn are run like prize race-horses by the few corporations who more or less own everything in the country. They may belong to different political parties and put up a great show of being political rivals, but that’s just subterfuge for public consumption. The only real rivalry is the business rivalry between corporations.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

By the time the child grows up, the inverted search for a personal existence through perversity gets set in an individual mold, and it becomes more secret. It has to be secret because the community won't stand for the attempt by people to wholly individualize themselves. If there is going to be a victory over human incompleteness and limitation, it has to be a social project and not an individual one. Society wants to be the one to decide how people are to transcend death; it will tolerate the causa-sui project only if it fits into the standard social project. Otherwise there is the alarm of "Anarchy!" This is one of the reasons for bigotry and censorship of all kinds over personal morality: people fear that the standard morality will be undermined-another way of saying that they fear they will no longer be able to control life and death. A person is said to be "socialized" precisely when he accepts to "sublimate" the body-sexual character of his Oedipal project. Now these euphemisms mean usually that he accepts to work on becoming the father of himself by abandoning his own project and by giving it over to "The Fathers." The castration complex has done its work, and one submits to "social reality"; he can now deflate his own desires and claims and can play it safe in the world of the powerful elders. He can even give his body over to the tribe, the state, the embracing magic umbrella of the elders and their symbols; that way it will no longer be a dangerous negation for him. But there is no real difference between a childish impossibility and an adult one; the only thing that the person achieves is a practiced self-deceit-what we call the "mature" character.

Especially important are the political implications of the idea that the new possibilities opened by a certain act are part of its content - this is the reason why, to the consternation of many of my friends (who, of course, are no longer my friends), I claimed apropos the US 2016 presidential elections that Trump's victory would be better than Clinton's for the future of progressive forces. Trump is highly dubious, of course, but his election may open possibilities and move the liberal-Left pole to a new more radical position. I was surprised to learn that David Lynch adopted the same position: in an interview in June 2018, Lynch (who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary) said that Trump 'could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.' While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. 'Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.

A collective agreement may be operating in a very high way, but most of the agreements you’ve claimed that we wish to attend to here are the collective agreements to war, to starve your fellows, to claim victory over the landscape you live in at the cost of your well-being and the well-being of others. The belief in poverty and scarcity, the belief in idiotic rule by those who would govern, and the acquiescence to structures of power that are not born in truth must all be addressed now, for humanity is waiting to tip the scales toward her benefit, toward her freedom, and toward the claim of who and what she is.

More than 100,000 soldiers will soon return home with the post-traumatic stress I know so well, not to mention the mysterious effects of deplted uranium...and the ripples of resentment and animosity this war has sent throughout the world will inevitably wash up on U.S. shores. As I write this, mainstream political dialogue is still focused on the crazy idea that we can somehow still "win" the war in Iraq. For someone like me, a citizen of both countries, what outcome would constitute a victory? When you're talking about war, about so many thousands dead, so many families shattered on both sides, how can anyone claim victory?

We believe djinns moved into this palace around the time our las kings died, their hearts broken by the crooked victories of white men who claimed to be our rulers. No one knows where the djinns came from, if Allah-Ta'ala sent them, or if they were summoned here by the feverish utterances of the devout. They have been here for so long, they must watched the walls of this palace crumble, the pillars soften with moss and creepers, and pythons slither over cracked stones like dreams wavering in the light of dawn. Every year they must feel the wind trembling the champa trees in the garden, shearing flowers as fragrant as vials of attar.

From the outside, it was barely recognisable. Gaping holes in the walls and piles of smoking rubble had irrevocably altered the once imposing facade of l’Hôpital Saint Germain. The Allied propaganda machine had claimed the Battle of Amiens as a great victory – a turning point, spelling an end to the horrific futility of trench warfare. It was here in Amiens, the victors crowed, that the Germans had stumbled their first steps towards surrender. Yet as Dr Richard Buckley picked his way through the decimated city, he saw nothing about Amiens to suggest a city basking in the glory of victory. Instead, he found himself thinking: So this is what winning looks like. He

HOW GOOD A GENERAL WAS GEORGE WASHINGTON? IF WE CONSULT the statistics as they might have been kept if he had been a boxer or a quarterback, the figures are not encouraging. In seven years of fighting the British, from 1775 to 1782, he won only three clear-cut victories—at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. In seven other encounters—Long Island, Harlem Heights, White Plains, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth—he either was defeated or at best could claim a draw. He never won a major battle. Trenton was essentially a raid, Princeton was little more than a large skirmish, and Yorktown was a siege in which the blockading French fleet was an essential component of the victory.

The Devil wants nothing more than to crush you. He wants to steal from you everything you value. He wants to kill everything in your life that’s good. Ultimately, he wants to destroy you. If he can claim the victory over your mind, he can eventually claim the victory over your life. But the message of Psalm 23 is that the Good Shepherd prepares a table for you. It’s a table for two, and the Devil is not invited to sit. This book offers an all-encompassing message that can be applied to any number of hard situations. It will help you find encouragement, hope, and strength in the midst of your valley. You don’t need to listen to the voices of fear, rage, lust, insecurity, anxiety, despair, temptation, or defeat.

From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon—and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad’s claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include: Allah will grant victory to his people against foes that are superior in numbers or firepower, so long as they remain faithful to his commands. Victories entitle the Muslims to appropriate the possessions of the vanquished as booty. Bloody vengeance against one’s enemies belongs not solely to the Lord, but also to those who submit to him on earth. That is the meaning of the word Islam: submission. Prisoners taken in battle against the Muslims may be put to death at the discretion of Muslim leaders. Those who reject Islam are “the vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6) and thus deserve no mercy. Anyone who insults or even opposes Muhammad or his people deserves a humiliating death—by beheading if possible. (This is in accordance with Allah’s command to “smite the necks” of the “unbelievers” (Qur’an 47:4)). Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad—a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the conflicts of today.

A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode. This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains. Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.

It was not the fault of Christian censors or a theological thought-police that the “other” Gospels were criticized and rejected. The “other” Gospels were not recognizable as “gospel,” and they failed to capture the hearts, minds, and imaginations of Christians in the worldwide church. The proof of this is the limited number of extant manuscripts for many of these “other” Gospels and the fact that many Jesus books were not known beyond their own immediate circles. The exclusion of other Gospels was not the result of the victory of the orthodox. It was rather based on an objective claim as to who more properly transmitted the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. In the end, the reason the “other” Gospels lost out is that they simply failed to convince the majority of their antiquity and authenticity as stories of Jesus.

On December 1, 2006, federal deputies were brawling in Mexico’s Congress hours before Felipe Calderón was due to enter the chamber to be sworn in as president. It was a fight for space. The leftist deputies claimed their candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had really won the election but been robbed of his rightful victory. They were trying to gain control of the podium to stop Calderón from taking the oath and assuming office. The conservative deputies were defending the podium to allow the presidential accession. The conservatives won the scrap. There were more of them, and they seemed to be better fed. Among those attending the ceremony were former U.S. president George Bush (Bush the First) and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was covering the Congress door, snatching interviews as guests went in. The elderly Bush hobbled past with six bodyguards with bald heads and microphones at their mouths. I asked him what he thought about the ruckus in the chamber. “Well, I hope that Mexicans can resolve their differences,” he replied diplomatically. Schwarzenegger strolled past with no bodyguards at all. I asked what he thought about the fisticuffs. The Terminator turned round, stared intensely, and uttered three words: “It’s good action!” I phoned the quote back to headquarters and it went out on a wire story. Suddenly, Schwarznegger’s statement was being bounced around California TV stations. Then the BBC led their newscast with it: “It takes a lot to impress Arnold Schwarznegger but today when he was in Mexico …” I got frantic phone calls from the governor’s office in Los Angeles. Was his quote perhaps being used out of context? Well, I replied, I asked him straight and he told me straight.

It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.[...]Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels, but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God. To renounce every value, therefore, amounts to renouncing rebellion in order to accept the Empire and slavery. Criticism of formal values cannot pass over the concept of freedom. Once the impossibility has been recognized of creating, by means of the forces of rebellion alone, the free individual of whom the romantics dreamed, freedom itself has also been incorporated in the movement of history. It has become freedom fighting for existence, which, in order to exist, must create itself. Identified with the dynamism of history, it cannot play its proper role until history comes to a stop, in the realization of the Universal City. Until then, every one of its victories will lead to an antithesis that will render it pointless. The German nation frees itself from its oppressors, but at the price of the freedom of every German. The individuals under a totalitarian regime are not free, even though man in the collective sense is free. Finally, when the Empire delivers the entire human species, freedom will reign over herds of slaves, who at least will be free in relation to God and, in general, in relation to every kind of transcendence. The dialectic miracle, the transformation of quantity into quality, is explained here: it is the decision to call total servitude freedom. Moreover, as in all the examples cited by Hegel and Marx, there is no objective transformation, but only a subjective change of denomination. In other words, there is no miracle. If the only hope of nihilism lies in thinking that millions of slaves can one day constitute a humanity which will be freed forever, then history is nothing but a desperate dream. Historical thought was to deliver man from subjection to a divinity; but this liberation demanded of him the most absolute subjection to historical evolution. Then man takes refuge in the permanence of the party in the same way that he formerly prostrated himself before the altar. That is why the era which dares to claim that it is the most rebellious that has ever existed only offers a choice of various types of conformity. The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

I’m not a coward.” He didn’t speak loud, but his voice carried. His father turned slowly to the challenging words. “I’m not a coward,” Wintrow repeated more slowly. “I’m not big. I don’t claim to be strong. But I’m neither a weakling nor a coward. I can accept pain. When it’s necessary.” A strange odd light had come into Kyle’s eyes. The beginnings of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. “You are a Haven,” he pointed out with a quiet pride. Wintrow met his gaze. There was neither defiance nor the will to injure but the words were clear. “I’m a Vestrit.” He looked down to the bloody handprint on Vivacia’s deck, to the severed forefinger that still rested there. “You’ve made me a Vestrit.” He smiled without joy or mirth. “What did my grandmother say to me? ‘Blood will tell.’ Yes.” He stooped to the deck and picked up his own severed finger. He considered it carefully for a moment, then held it out to his father. “This finger will never wear a priest’s signet,” he said. To some he might have sounded drunken, but to Vivacia his voice was broken with sorrow. “Will you take it, sir? As a token of your victory?” Captain Kyle’s fair face darkened with the blood of anger. Vivacia suspected he was close to hating his own flesh and blood at that moment. Wintrow stepped lightly toward him, a very strange light in his eyes. Vivacia tried to understand what was happening to the boy. Something was changing inside him, an uncoiling of strength was filling him. He met his father’s gaze squarely, yet his own voice was nothing of anger, nor even pain as he stepped forward boldly, to a place close enough to invite his father to strike him. Or embrace him. But Kyle Haven moved not at all. His stillness was a denial, of all the boy was, of all he did. Wintrow knew in that instant that he would never please his father, that his father had never even desired to be pleased by him. He had only wanted to master him. And now he would not.

It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon foreign leaders to intervene in American presidential elections. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to appoint advisers with financial interests in Russian companies. It is not patriotic to appoint a National Security Advisor who likes to be called “General Misha,” nor to pardon him for his crimes. It is not patriotic when that pardoned official calls for martial law. It is not patriotic to refer to American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” It is not patriotic to take health care from families, nor to golf your way through a national epidemic in which half a million Americans die. It is not patriotic to try to sabotage an American election, nor to claim victory after defeat. It is not patriotic to try to end democracy.

Winning will make you famous. Losing means certain death. The nation of Panem, formed from a post-apocalyptic North America, is a country that consists of a wealthy Capitol region surrounded by 12 poorer districts. Early in its history, a rebellion led by a 13th district against the Capitol resulted in its destruction and the creation of an annual televised event known as the Hunger Games. In punishment, and as a reminder of the power and grace of the Capitol, each district must yield one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 through a lottery system to participate in the games. The 'tributes' are chosen during the annual Reaping and are forced to fight to the death, leaving only one survivor to claim victory. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as District 12's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart Peeta, are pitted against bigger, stronger representatives, some of whom have trained for this their whole lives. , she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that Mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all,

The road to success is rarely a straight line. For me, it’s always been more like a maze. Many times, when I thought I’d finally cracked the code, had it all figured out, and found the straight path to certain victory, I hit a wall or got spun into a turnaround. When that happens, we have two choices. We can stay stuck or regroup, back up, and try again. That’s where evolution begins. Hitting those walls time and again will harden and streamline you. Having to back up and formulate a new plan without any assurances it will ever pan out will tune your SA up and develop your problem-solving skills and your endurance. It will force you to adapt. When that happens hundreds of times over the course of many years, it is physically exhausting and mentally draining, and it becomes damn near impossible to believe in yourself or your future. A lot of people abandon belief at that point. They swirl in the eddies of comfort or regret, perhaps claim their victimhood, and stop looking for their way out of the maze. Others keep believing and find a way out but hope to never slip into a trap like that ever again, and those skills they’d honed and developed whither. They lose their edge.

Sin matters, and forgiveness of sins matters, but they matter because sin, flowing from idolatry, corrupts, distorts, and disables the image-bearing vocation, which is much more than simply “getting ready for heaven.” An overconcentration on “sin” and how God deals with it means that we see things only with regard to “works,” even if we confess that we have no “works” of our own and that we have to rely on Jesus to supply them for us. (Equally, an underemphasis on “sin” and how God deals with it is an attempt to claim some kind of victory without seeing the heart of the problem.) The biblical vision of what it means to be human, the “royal priesthood” vocation, is more multidimensional than either of the regular alternatives. To reflect the divine image means standing between heaven and earth, even in the present time, adoring the Creator and bringing his purposes into reality on earth, ahead of the time when God completes the task and makes all things new. The “royal priesthood” is the company of rescued humans who, being part of “earth,” worship the God of heaven and are thereby equipped, with the breath of heaven in their renewed lungs, to work for his kingdom on earth. The revolution of the cross sets us free to be in-between people, caught up in the rhythm of worship and mission.

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain. As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public. The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hed­worth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’. The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corrobo­rating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital. ~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43

Many scholars believe the Arab-Israeli conflict did not start out as a war between religions, but as a territorial dispute between two competing groups—Jews and Arabs—with nationalist claims and aspirations, and that religion was one of the characteristics that identified the competing nationalist groups. I will agree that that is what it might look like on the surface. But for these two particular groups whose religion, at least for the Muslims, is a significant daily part of their lives, it is hard to believe that religious beliefs do not influence their thinking and aspirations. All you have to do is read a few scriptures from the Koran about the Jews and hear the holy book recited weekly in every mosque and you’ll begin to understand where this resentment is coming from, regardless of what country this hate verbiage is coming out of. The major difference between the religions is that Judaism does not aspire to convert the world as Islam does. Jews can live within the context of a different society without seeking converts. Jews do not go to temple every Friday and read that God’s will is victory over all Muslims. They do not read that all Muslims are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Allah, which is what Muslims teach about Jews in their mosques. Muslims are out to convert everyone. Once they have the upper hand, they want to run the whole show and subject everyone to their own rules.

Is there not also the profoundest pleasure in bitterness? No satisfaction, no victory, will ever be the equivalent of the bitter plenitude of the sense of injustice. It revels in itself. It draws on the very roots of an inner revenge on existence. Who, in the light of that, could claim to give a definition of happiness? Complex as is this entanglement of good and evil, so too is it difficult to pass beyond good and evil when the very distinction between the two has disappeared. One may reject all this. The fact remains that the hypothesis of evil, of the lack of distinction between good and evil and our deep complicity with the worst, is always present, rendering all our actions impenetrable. But it is itself a principle of action and doubtless one of the most powerful. I am playing devil's advocate here. But if you reject this hypothesis you can always think in terms of a wager of the Pascalian type. What Pascal says, more or less, is this: you can always content yourself with a secular existence and its advantages, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of God. With just a few sacrifices to make in exchange for eternal salvation, the advantages are much greater. Where we are concerned, this same wager becomes: you can always get by with the hypothesis of good and happiness, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of evil. A variant of the same wager would be: you can always get by with the hypothesis of reality, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of radical illusion.

Under the cover of darkness, Kutuzov withdrew that night, having lost an immense number of casualties – probably around 43,000, though so dogged was the Russian resistance that only 1,000 men and 20 guns were captured.106 (‘I made several thousand prisoners and captured 60 guns,’ Napoleon nonetheless told Marie Louise.107) The combined losses are the equivalent of a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into an area of 6 square miles every five minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on board. Kutuzov promptly wrote to the Tsar claiming a glorious victory, and another Te Deum was sung at St Petersburg. Napoleon dined with Berthier and Davout in his tent behind the Shevardino Redoubt at seven o’clock that evening. ‘I observed that, contrary to custom, he was much flushed,’ recorded Bausset, ‘his hair was disordered, and he appeared fatigued. His heart was grieved at having lost so many brave generals and soldiers.’108 He was presumably also lamenting the fact that although he had retained the battlefield, opened the road to Moscow and lost far fewer men than the Russians – 6,600 killed and 21,400 wounded – he had failed to gain the decisive victory he so badly needed, partly through the unimaginative manoeuvring of his frontal assaults and partly because of his refusal to risk his reserves. In that sense, both he and Kutuzov lost Borodino. ‘I am reproached for not getting myself killed at Waterloo,’ Napoleon later said on St Helena. ‘I think I ought rather to have died at the battle of the Moskwa.

The very successes of the megamachine re-enforced dangerous potentialities that had hitherto been kept in check by sheer human weakness. The inherent infirmity of this whole power system lies exposed in the fact that kings, exalted above all other men, were constantly cozened, flattered, and fed with misinformation-zealously protected from any disturbing counterbalancing 'feedback.' So kings never learned from either their own experience or from history the fact that unqualified power is inimical to life: that their methods were self-defeating, their military victories were ephemeral, and their exalted claims were fraudulent and absurd. From the end of the first great Age of the Builders in Egypt, that of the Sixth Dynasty Pharaoh, Pepe I, comes corroborative evidence of this pervasive irrationality, all the more telling because it issues from the relatively orderly and unbedevilled Egyptians: The army returned in safety After it had hacked up the land of the Sand Dwellers ...After it had thrown down its enclosures... After it had cut down its fig trees and vines... After it had cast fire into all its dwellings... After it had killed troops in it by many ten-thousand. That sums up the course of Empire everywhere: the same boastful words, the same vicious acts, the same sordid results, from the earliest Egyptian palette to the latest American newspaper with its reports, at the moment I write, of the mass atrocities coldbloodedly perpetrated with the aid of napalm bombs and defoliating poisons, by the military forces of the United States on the helpless peasant populations of Vietnam: an innocent people, uprooted, terrorized, poisoned and roasted alive in a futile attempt to make the power fantasies of the American military-industrial-scientific elite 'credible.

This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception. He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.' After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism. Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.

person.” Nobody came to Slote’s flat on Sunday evening. The front page of the Zurich Tageblatt, lying on his desk Monday morning, had a spread of Japanese photographs about the Singapore victory, furnished by the German news service: the surrender ceremony, the hordes of British troops sitting on the earth in a prison compound, the celebration in Tokyo. The story about Father Martin was so short that Slote almost missed it, but there it was at the bottom of the page. The truck driver, who claimed that his brakes had failed, was being held for questioning. The priest was dead, crushed. 19 A Jew’s Journey (excerpt from Aaron Jastrow’s manuscript) APRIL 23, 1942. American bombers have raided Tokyo! My pulse races as it once did when, an immigrant in love with everything American, infected with baseball fever, I saw Babe Ruth hit a home run. For me America is the Babe Ruth of the nations. I unashamedly confess it. And the Babe has come out of his slump and “hit one over the fence”! Strange, how Allied airplane bombs infallibly fall on churches, schools, and hospitals; what a triumph of military imprecision! If Berlin radio speaks the truth—and why should Germans lie, pray?—the RAF has by now flattened nearly all institutions of worship, learning, and healing in Germany, while unerringly missing all other targets. Now we are told that Tokyo was unscathed in the raid except for a great number of schools, hospitals, and temples demolished by the barbarous Americans. Most extraordinary. My niece calls this “Doolittle raid” (an intrepid Army Air Corps colonel of that name led the attack) just a stunt, a token bombing. It will make no difference to the war; so she says. What she did, when the news came through on the BBC, was to entrust her baby to the cook, rush down to the Excelsior Hotel where our fellow journalists are housed, and there get joyously drunk with them. They are drunk nearly all the time, but I have not seen Natalie inebriated in years. I must say that when her chief local admirer, a banal-minded Associated Press reporter, brought her back, she was full of amusing raillery, though scarcely able to walk straight. Her mood was so gay, in fact, that I was tempted to disclose then and there the grave secret I have been harboring for two weeks, not even entrusting it to these pages. But I refrained. She has suffered enough on my account. Time enough to reveal

During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king. However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431. In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc. Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose. In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play Saint Joan. More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God.

In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio. Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie. He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?" So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks. PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?" His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?" Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend. "There's no body." "They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering. … The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols. He calls in one confirmed kill. ... Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade." "Yeah, we called that one in." "No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one." Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers. The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables. Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war.

Here we introduce the nation's first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history's first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union's man was one Rutherford B. Hates, an obscure Ohio politician described by a contemporary journalist as "a third rate nonentity." But the firm and its partner newswire, the Associated Press, wanted Hayes in office, for several reasons. Hayes was a close friend of William Henry Smith, a former politician who was now the key political operator at the Associated Press. More generally, since the Civil War, the Republican Party and the telegraph industry had enjoyed a special relationship, in part because much of what were eventually Western Union's lines were built by the Union Army. So making Hayes president was the goal, but how was the telegram in Reid's hand key to achieving it? The media and communications industries are regularly accused of trying to influence politics, but what went on in the 1870s was of a wholly different order from anything we could imagine today. At the time, Western Union was the exclusive owner of the nationwide telegraph network, and the sizable Associated Press was the unique source for "instant" national or European news. (It's later competitor, the United Press, which would be founded on the U.S. Post Office's new telegraph lines, did not yet exist.) The Associated Press took advantage of its economies of scale to produce millions of lines of copy a year and, apart from local news, its product was the mainstay of many American newspapers. With the common law notion of "common carriage" deemed inapplicable, and the latter day concept of "net neutrality" not yet imagined, Western Union carried Associated Press reports exclusively. Working closely with the Republican Party and avowedly Republican papers like The New York Times (the ideal of an unbiased press would not be established for some time, and the minting of the Time's liberal bona fides would take longer still), they did what they could to throw the election to Hayes. It was easy: the AP ran story after story about what an honest man Hayes was, what a good governor he had been, or just whatever he happened to be doing that day. It omitted any scandals related to Hayes, and it declined to run positive stories about his rivals (James Blaine in the primary, Samuel Tilden in the general). But beyond routine favoritism, late that Election Day Western Union offered the Hayes campaign a secret weapon that would come to light only much later. Hayes, far from being the front-runner, had gained the Republican nomination only on the seventh ballot. But as the polls closed his persistence appeared a waste of time, for Tilden, the Democrat, held a clear advantage in the popular vote (by a margin of over 250,000) and seemed headed for victory according to most early returns; by some accounts Hayes privately conceded defeat. But late that night, Reid, the New York Times editor, alerted the Republican Party that the Democrats, despite extensive intimidation of Republican supporters, remained unsure of their victory in the South. The GOP sent some telegrams of its own to the Republican governors in the South with special instructions for manipulating state electoral commissions. As a result the Hayes campaign abruptly claimed victory, resulting in an electoral dispute that would make Bush v. Gore seem a garden party. After a few brutal months, the Democrats relented, allowing Hayes the presidency — in exchange, most historians believe, for the removal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction. The full history of the 1876 election is complex, and the power of th

Napoleon, von Clausewitz wrote, “We do claim that direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration.... Once a major victory is achieved there must be no talk of rest, of breathing space... but only of the pursuit, going for the enemy again, seizing his capital, attacking his reserves and anything else that might give his country aid and comfort.

Claim that a failure is a tremendous victory, and the shameless grandiosity will retroactively make it so. That guaranteed that Donald would never change, even if he were capable of changing, because he simply didn’t need to.

Is the pain of revolution worth the gain? Cost-benefit accounting is a complicated business when applied to social transitions. But have we ever bothered to compare the violence of revolution against the violence that preceded it? "I do not know how one measures the price of historical victories;' said Robert Heilbroner, "I only know that the way in which we ordinarily keep the books of history is wrong." We make no tally of the generations claimed by that combination of economic exploitation and political suppression so characteristic of the ancient regimes: the hapless victims of flood and famine in the Yangtze valley of yesterday, the child prostitutes found dead in the back alleys of old Shanghai, the muzhiks stricken by cold and starvation across the frozen steppes of Russia.

As usual, the lesson Donald learned was the one that supported his preexisting assumption: no matter what happens, no matter how much damage he leaves in his wake, he will be okay. Knowing ahead of time that you’re going to be bailed out if you fail renders the narrative leading up to that moment meaningless. Claim that a failure is a tremendous victory, and the shameless grandiosity will retroactively make it so. That guaranteed that Donald would never change, even if he were capable of changing, because he simply didn’t need to. It also guaranteed a cascade of increasingly consequential failures that would ultimately render all of us collateral damage.

I'm always 2 steps ahead claiming my victory before the challenge, but I'm also 2 steps behind watching what everybody else is doing and doing it 2 times better.

the nation faced a constitutional crisis in which both major presidential candidates—Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden—claimed victory in the 1876 election, raising concerns about who would govern the Republic.

In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

Knowing ahead of time that you’re going to be bailed out if you fail renders the narrative leading up to that moment meaningless. Claim that a failure is a tremendous victory, and the shameless grandiosity will retroactively make it so. That guaranteed that Donald would never change, even if he were capable of changing, because he simply didn’t need to. It also guaranteed a cascade of increasingly consequential failures that would ultimately render all of us collateral damage.

Claim that a failure is a tremendous victory, and the shameless grandiosity will retroactively make it so. That

for heaven’s sakes,” they would say, by way of example. The fact is, though, this was a development that the majority of the dominant caste was not truly in a position to claim. The majority of white voters did not support him in either of his presidential bids. He had star power and a way with babies and pensioners, but no matter how refined and inspirational, well-spoken and conciliatory he was, Obama’s victory did not occur because most voters in the dominant caste had become more open-minded and enamored of him. As with other recent Democrats running for president, he won despite the bulk of the white electorate.

North and a South: two political aliens existing in a Union imperfectly defined as a confederation of States.” In Pollard’s formulation, the Lost Cause was both justified and enduring: It was not dead, but alive. The foe now was central authority and national will—Washington, D.C., writ large. “The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the war has conquered”—slavery and secession—“but they cannot be expected to give up what was not involved in the war, and voluntarily abandon their political schools for the dogma of Consolidation.” Pollard declared that a “ ‘war of ideas,’ ” a new war that “the South wants and insists upon perpetrating,” was under way. “The war has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own dead,” Pollard wrote. “Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and lessons sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.” It was a bold call to fight on in the face of loss. The war, Pollard wrote, “did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights….And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert them in their rights and views.” He enlarged upon this thesis in another book, The Lost Cause Regained, published in 1868. Pollard wrote that he was “profoundly convinced that the true cause fought for in the late war has not been ‘lost’ immeasurably or irrevocably, but is yet in a condition to be ‘regained’ by the South on ultimate issues of the political contest.” The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the “true cause of the war” and the “true hope of the South.” The reassertion of states’ rights and the rejection of federal rule was a holy cause. Likening the lot of the Southerner to that of Christ himself, Pollard spoke in terms religiously inclined Southerners—which was to say most Southerners—could understand, calling on the defeated Confederates to be patient in the tribulation of Reconstruction. The South, Pollard wrote, “must wear the crown of thorns before she can assume that of victory.” The blood of their brothers and the faith of their fathers had consecrated a postwar Southern path. There was to be only limited accommodation to the will of the majority. Though the North had triumphed on the field of battle, the South, anxious about ceding control of their particular affairs

With a raspy growl climbing up her throat, she bent and made a flawless, rounded snowball then sent it sailing into the tree trunk. It collided with a loud, invigorating splat. Taken aback, Cara’s mouth fell open and she looked from the powdered residue left as proof of her victory and then to Will. He stood at her side, a gentle, encouraging smile on his lips. “I-I did it.” “Of course you did,” he said and stooped forward. He constructed another missile and held it out. She claimed it without hesitation. “This is for forgetting me,” she called at her inanimate object. She tossed another ball and it found its mark. William proffered another ball. “This is for not allowing me to paint.” She tossed another. Her chest heaved with the force of her exertion, but the winter air purified her lungs, spreading its cleansing, healing power through her once-cold being. He continued to supply perfectly molded snowballs. “And for binding me to a man just like you.” This time, Cara bent and assembled her own. “And I am nothing like you,” she shouted into the quiet. Only, as she threw, she no longer knew if the furious energy lending her strength came from the sad, sorry little girl she’d been, alone in a loveless world, or the bitter, angry, friendless woman she’d become.

All that we require for growing in godliness, our God provides. In themselves our works provide no basis for boasting, no foundation for comparison to others, and no claim on heaven’s blessing. Though it flows through us, the righteousness that sanctifies us before God originates in him. We strive in the strength that he generates, reach for him with the love that he instills, and trust him with the faith that he provides. We are engaged in the battle against sin and Satan, but the victory is the Lord’s.

I declare that the Blood of Jesus sets me free from all curses, evil behaviors, attitudes, and personality. I am liberated from soul ties and demonic attacks from those who harbor hatred, anger, or jealousy towards me. The Blood of Jesus cleanses and protects me, and I walk in the freedom and victory that comes from Christ's sacrifice. I renounce all evil influences and claim the blessing of God's love, peace, and joy in my life. Amen.

Luther accused Henry and the papists of begging the question, of claiming that the traditions of the church should be observed merely because they were traditions, without considering whether they came from God or from human invention. "I cry gospel, gospel, Christ, Christ; they respond fathers fathers, custom, custom, laws, laws, where as I say truly that the fathers, custom, and law have often erred ... Christ cannot err."-'" Perhaps Luther's greatest insult was to say that no one imagined that Henry had written his book by himself.'' On Luther rolled in a torrent of abuse. "Draw near to my rod, you vainglorious Thomist," he cried. "I will teach you how to argue about dogma."22 At the end he crowed that he had been victorious over the king by opposing God's word to human custom." "Here I stand," he wrote, here I sit, here I remain, here I glory, here I triumph, here I contemn Papists, Thomists, Henricians, sophists, and all the gates of hell all the more in that they are led astray by the sayings of holy men or customs. God's word is over all. The divine majesty works with me, and I do not care if a thousand Augustines, a thousand Cyprians, a thousand churches of Henry stand against me. God cannot err or fail; Augustine and Cyprian like all the elects can err, and they did err.-" The issue, as any Catholic knew, was not whether the fathers could err as individuals; it was whether they had reached consensus on a core of doctrines necessary to be believed. Luther's furious language indicates a willingness to attack that ancient consensus in the name of the gospel and to elevate his own understanding above the agreements of centuries.

What difference can one man really make? A hundred years from now, will a single thing we do collectively truly matter? Will every victory we claim be wiped away by a thousand steps back?

You found me a female bodyguard? And you thought that would somehow make the job of bullying me into it easier?" She had the gall to grin. "Bingo. Wait here while I text her. We've made her wait long enough." He sank into a couch off in a private corner of the hospital waiting area. "I really pity poor Neel, you know that?" he said with all the spitefulness of a sibling who'd lost an argument. Her grin widened, a damn whoop of victory if he'd ever seen one. "You're so easy." He narrowed his eyes at her, deploying one of her own favorite strategies for getting her way. "You know Ma loves me more than you, right?" "Sorry, buddy, I'm the favorite by miles. Substantiate your claim by getting her to admit it, or shut up.

However, what is often not talked about is how the speed with which decisions are made plays a role in claiming victory.

The interval between the first and second wars in Iraq (1991 and 2003) has seen a remarkable shift from Clausewitz to Sun Tzu in the discourse about contemporary warfare. Clausewitz enjoyed an undreamed of renaissance in the USA after the Vietnam War and seemed to have attained the status of master thinker. On War enabled many theorists to recognize the causes of America’s traumatic defeat in Southeast Asia, as well as the conditions for gaining victory in the future. More recently, however, he has very nearly been outlawed. The reason for this change can be found in two separate developments. Firstly, there has been an unleashing of war and violence in the ongoing civil wars and massacres, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, in the secessionist wars in the former Yugoslavia, and in the persistence of inter-communal violence along the fringes of Europe’s former empires. These developments seemed to indicate a departure from interstate wars, for which Clausewitz’s theory appeared to be designed, and the advent of a new era of civil wars, non-state wars, and social anarchy. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War seemed to offer a better understanding of these kinds of war, because he lived in an era of never-ending civil wars. Secondly, the reason for the change from Clausewitz to Sun Tzu is connected with the ‘revolution in military affairs’. The concepts of Strategic Information Warfare (SIW) and fourth generation warfare have made wide use of Sun Tzu’s thought to explain and illustrate their position. The ‘real father’ of ‘shock and awe’ in the Iraq War of 2003 was Sun Tzu, argued one commentator in the Asia Times. Some pundits even claimed triumphantly that Sun Tzu had defeated Clausewitz in this war, because the US Army conducted the campaign in accordance with the principles of Sun Tzu, whereas the Russian advisers of the Iraqi army had relied on Clausewitz and the Russian defence against Napoleon’s army in 1812. The triumphant attitude has long been abandoned.

Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

Between the extremes of rejectionism and apologetics we have guarded our fragile egos; we have found it all too easy to rely on impulsive reactions, while evading the imperative of moral probity. We claim equality but deny it; we attack democracy but claim it, we brag about women's dignity but violate it; we praise freedom of speech but ignore it; we depend on the West but attack it; and we claim victories but live in defeat.

A critic could claim, “Why, you could find some of these prophecies fulfilled in Abraham Lincoln, Anwar Sadat, John F. Kennedy, Mother Teresa, or Billy Graham.” Yes, I suppose one could possibly find one or two prophecies coincident to other people, but not all sixty major prophecies and 270 ramifications. In fact, for years, the Christian Victory Publishing Company of Denver offered a one-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could find any person other than Jesus, either living or dead, who could fulfill only half of the messianic predictions outlined in the book Messiah in Both Testaments by Fred John Meldau. They got no takers.

The material in this work demonstrates that the Nazi leadership viewed radical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as indispensable points of entry into Arab and Muslim hearts and minds.29 Throughout the war, Nazi Arabic radio repeated the charge that World War II was a Jewish war whose purpose in the region was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine that would expand into and dominate the entire Arab and Muslim world. Moreover, the broadcasts asserted that the Jews in the mid-twentieth century were attempting to destroy Islam just as their ancestors had been attempting to do for thirteen centuries. They claimed that an Allied victory would be a victory for the Jews, whereas an Axis victory would bring liberation from first British and then American and also “Jewish” imperialism

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie—the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on. When I chose to hide my love for you, to disavow it in public and live it as a lie, I made it public property—and the public has claimed it in a fitting sort of manner. I had no way to avert it and no power to save you. When I gave in to the looters, when I signed their Gift Certificate, to protect you—I was still faking reality, there was nothing else left open to me—and, Dagny, I’d rather have seen us both dead than to permit them to do what they threatened. But there are no white lies, there is only the blackness of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. I was still faking reality, and it had the inexorable result: instead of protection, it brought you a more terrible kind of ordeal, instead of saving your name, it forced you to offer yourself for a public stoning and to throw the stones by your own hand. I know that you were proud of the things you said, and I was proud to hear you—but that was the pride we should have claimed two years ago.

This book was inspired by these words.” “The young man was a blacksmith in the village, a magnificent white charger horse was brought to him, and he was ordered to put iron shoes onto the horse's hooves. After doing this he took the horse for a ride in the open field, and thereby a Brook he met a fair maiden. He fell madly in love with her instantly, he claimed that he was a decorated knight, but she could see he was poor, and was a blacksmith. His black working hands betrayed him, but she never mentioned this to the young man. After talking, for about fifteen minutes, in perfect harmony and calm, their meeting was broken up when two ladies that were approached the maiden.” “The maiden took out her handkerchief and gave it to him, he took it without taking his eyes off of her. The maiden dashed off running towards the two women, assuring them that she was alright. That evening a guard came from the castle, took the white charger with the new horseshoes and left. The dashing young man got to work instantly. Making himself a beautiful sword like no other. He then made himself a silver shining armour, beautiful as any knight.” “The young man made wooden replicas of men in battle, and he would practice for hours, finding new ways of defeating the enemy. All of this because of a chance meeting in a field, and the handkerchief he kept pressed against his chest. The danger was looming and there was talk of an invasion, from another country. To preserve the dignity and the honour of the village and the castle that employed all the villagers. “ “The king asked for volunteers for the impending battle. The blacksmith went to the castle as one of the volunteers. He showed up on an old brown horse, that would not be able to stand the first charge in battle. Proudly he was dressed in his silver knight's armour, holding his handmade sword. One of the guards came and took away his horse, the young man looked on sadly as others around the courtyard mocked him. Another guard approached him with the white charger that he nailed the shoes to his hooves; “this will be your steed, the guard said and he helped him onto the horse. There was silence around the forecourt, he turned and rode with the knights out to meet the enemy.” “After five hours of battle, they had secured a brave victory. The young man performed above and beyond the call of duty. He was chosen to be knighted. As he entered the great hall in the castle, there were people on both sides of the hall as he walked up to the spot where he was to be knighted. Waiting patiently, to perform the ceremony of knighthood, was none other than the king himself, and next to him, his young daughter, a princess he met by chance in a field, after the ceremony of knighthood, the princess stepped forward and said, thank you for bringing my horse back to me, a young woman who overlooked his poverty, have him her white horse, and encouraged him with giving him her handkerchief, by speaking to him in a field with kindness, her father the king was rewarded with a knight of chivalry and virtue. All because of accidental meeting and events, that encouraged someone ready in life, to step forth, and take control of his dreams, as impossible, as they seemed at the time.

She thought it was after their last spar…the one where he claimed something more than victory from her.

In life's intricate game, every move shapes destiny's design, much like the pieces on a chessboard. At sixteen, victory seemed boundless; now, facing thirty, mortality's truth reveals itself. Were you sure of your end once, I was. To be buried hundreds yards from where I was born, A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, yet the soul's true journey lies within. Let virtue guide your path, for in the end, it is not titles or power that define us, but the purity of our intentions.

A person who professes to be a Christian, yet is ensnared in habitual addictions, immodest behavior, and profane language, is a contradiction in terms. For a true follower of Christ is transformed by His power, and their life bears witness to the victory of His grace over sin and darkness. But one who justifies and indulges in such behaviors, despite claiming Christ's name, is merely a pretender, a counterfeit Christian, whose life testifies to the dominance of their demons and addictions, rather than the triumph of Christ's redeeming love.

THE war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists could possibly have been brought to a quick conclusion after the victory of the White Rose at St. Albans, as Henry IV had done after the capture of Richard. If Richard of York had overcome his scruples about removing his cousin and had declared his own claim to the throne, he would have found little organized resistance at this point.

On September 11, 2001, there were no more than a few hundred al Qaeda members hiding out in Afghanistan. Three months later, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitaries, U.S. Army Delta Force and U.S. Air Force finished bombing them, and Osama bin Laden had escaped to Pakistan, there were not enough of the terrorists left alive to fill a 757. Now, 20 years after that brief, one-sided victory, there are tens of thousands of bin Ladenite jihadists thriving in lands from Nigeria to the Philippines. Recently, and for almost three years, some even claimed their own divinely ordained caliphate, or Islamic State, temporarily erasing the border between Iraq and Syria. Local chapters of their group keep popping up all over the region. The State Department consistently reports a vast increase in the number of global terrorism incidents compared to the pre-September 11th era. Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and their “lone wolf” copycats have carried out multiple, deadly attacks in more than a dozen major Western cities in the past decade, including Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London, San Bernardino, Orlando, New York City, Pensacola and Corpus Christi. Something must be wrong. The problem is that our government is ignoring and misrepresenting the real causes of the terrorists’ war against the United States.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who dreamed in prose and pretty phrases. She quickly learned that life is at its best unfair and at its worst perversely cruel. Her dreams became nightmares, nightmares made of monsters new and old. And so she summoned them, her five dark horsemen, to wreak havoc and sow chaos, to twist mayhem and denote anarchy, to declare victory over every wicked, ugly thing she’d ever seen. They came to her, those horsemen, and in return for their vile vengeance, they took her heart and held it in their inked hands. They claimed her flesh with carnal delight, but it was her soul that they craved most of all. And to them, she gave it freely and without restraint.

It is a shame for a Christian to claim victory over anything, for it is not in our doing that victory was gained but in the victory of our God through Jesus that victory was gained, and this is why we need to get back to the basic teaching that “We are more than conquerors through Jesus only!

Delicious shivers slid down her spine as she assessed his cool, sensual face. His eyes were the deepest shade of brown, dark like the forest floor she'd hidden on before she'd taken a chance to claim victory for her team. A hint of a cleft in his chin and full lips in a beautifully shaped mouth softened what might have otherwise been a severe expression. As his gaze raked up and down her body, her nipples tightened and she crossed her arms over her chest, silently thanking the '80s for her massive puffball sleeves.

Biden claimed a victory of sorts – “The press is ready to declare people dead quickly but we’re alive and we’re coming back and we’re going to win!” The media largely went along with his “comeback” framework,

Facing: The Stele of Merneptah (1213–1203): a record of victories claimed for the pharaoh which includes the earliest known reference to a people ‘Israel’.

Jews, therefore, as far as progressives are concerned, don’t represent anything outside of themselves. No victory is claimed by championing their experience, and this leads to a subtle—and unconscious—exclusion.

Arendt also carefully distinguishes public freedom from liberation. Liberation is always liberation from something or someone – whether it is liberation from the misery of poverty or from oppressive rulers. The distinction that Arendt draws between public freedom and liberation is one of her most important distinctions, and it is relevant to contemporary politics, where there is a tendency to fuse or confuse liberation and freedom. Consider, for example, one of the key claims that the Bush administration employed to justify the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The American public was led to believe that with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, freedom would flourish in Iraq and spread throughout the Middle East. We now know that this was a disastrous illusion. Liberation from oppressors may be a necessary condition for freedom, but it is never a sufficient condition for the achievement of positive public freedom. The overthrow of tyrants, dictators, and totalitarian leaders does not by itself bring about positive tangible freedom. This is a bitter lesson that must be learned over and over again. Even now in the war against ISIS, there is certainly no guarantee that “military victory” will bring about public freedom in the region.

The war has made me suspicious of any metaphors (and not only because poets turned into murderers). I put even less faith in metaphors derived from religious mythology: things belonging to “that” world, a world that can only be reached by passing through death, no longer concern the living. Thus, all responsibility for the commission of evil can be abdicated. If you follow through on this metaphor—and that is why it always made me uncomfortable—then you can remove any trace of responsibility from Karadžić’s hellish acts. That is how, to put it mildly, lies emerged victorious—and were measured out in drums of “non-Serbian” blood. Lies were the only political means in which Radovan Karadžić had absolute faith. Since everything he did in the name of racial “cleanliness” created a fact, so to speak—he was creating a reality to fit his lies—all he had left to do was keep repeating the lies until his accumulated acts made his lies seem irrefutable. Maybe that’s why it became so easy for so many of our “neighbors” to put stockings over their heads. The claim most often repeated by Karadžić—that people of different nationalities couldn’t live together in Bosnia—was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: peoples of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed.

But Canseco clearly wanted to be somewhere else—weary of the red, white, and blue bunting and all that other hype. He was still a prodigious hitter when he wanted to be, but what was the point of making a man play in the World Series who didn’t want to play in the World Series? He dogged a play in the outfield in Game 2 that cost the A’s a victory, so La Russa benched him in Game 4. He tried to cover for Canseco by claiming that he had an injury, and Canseco did in fact have an injury, the crippling baseball disease of disinterest that comes with too much security and too much money and too much attention. Of all the players La Russa

Those of us troubled by language about the “extermination” of Canaanite populations may find some comfort in the fact that scholars and archaeologists doubt the early skirmishes of Israel’s history actually resulted in genocide. It was common for warring tribes in ancient Mesopotamia to refer to decisive victories as “complete annihilation” or “total destruction,” even when their enemies lived to fight another day. (The Moabites, for example, claimed in an extrabiblical text that after their victory in a battle against an Israelite army, the nation of Israel “utterly perished for always,” which obviously isn’t the case. And even in Scripture itself, stories of conflicts with Canaanite tribes persist through the book of Judges and into Israel’s monarchy, which would suggest Joshua’s armies did not in fact wipe them from the face of the earth, at least not in a literal sense.)9 Theologian Paul Copan called it “the language of conventional warfare rhetoric,” which “the knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized as hyperbole.”10 Pastor and author of The Skeletons in God’s Closet, Joshua Ryan Butler, dubbed it “ancient trash talk.”11

You have to lose a few times before you win. The more you risk and the more you lose, the sweeter the success will taste when you claim your victories. You’ll never know how that feels if you play it safe. Put it all out there.

Prokhorovka became the kernel of the legend of Kursk as the “greatest tank battle of all time,” in which, Soviet accounts claimed, the vaunted Wehrmacht lost 2,900 tanks including 700 Tigers—a claim embraced by a popular Western historian in the 1974 study The Tigers Are Burning.21 The real story was nothing like this. By the time Hausser’s Second SS Panzer Corps engaged the Russians at Prokhorovka, his three armored divisions contained all of 211 operational tanks, of which only 15 were Tigers and none were Panthers. German losses at Prokhorovka between July 11 and 13, during the most intense fighting, amounted to 48 panzers, against Soviet losses of between 400 (Rotmistrov’s own estimate) and 650 tanks—a ratio favoring the Germans by nearly ten to one. Even the low-end Soviet estimate is now 1,614 tanks lost in the Kursk sector up to July 23, while some specialists believe the correct figure is 1,956. This compares to German panzer losses of 252 (low end) and 278 (the high estimate). The armor-loss ratio in this supposedly crushing Soviet victory thus favored the Germans by at least eight to one. The story was similarly lopsided in the air: the VVS saw somewhere between 459 and 1,961 warplanes knocked out of action, against Luftwaffe losses of 159.

Men of Gondor, hear now the Steward of this Realm! Behold! one has come to claim the kingship again at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor, Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor.

Father. You’re unnerved.” Another stab of his staff, and the floor vibrated as he moved closer. “Unnerved? I would be less unnerved if you did not parade yourself in such a manner. The realms have slowly been devolving into chaos. I need you more focused than ever. The Ig’Morruthens seek power over any realm they can claim, and if they grow in numbers, even we will not be prepared to stop them. I need you to be focused.” My breath left me in a sigh, knowing far too well what followed. “I am focused.” I swayed on my feet before correcting myself. “Did I not cease Namur? I have earned the name World Ender from the realms we have taken back. I deserve a moment of peace, without blood and politics. Are we not supposed to indulge after victorious battles, be amongst our people?” He sneered, shaking his head. “Our people can indulge. You cannot. You will be king. Do you not comprehend that? You have to show your face, not sway upon your feet or dip your cock in any celestial or goddess that shows you a sliver of attention.” He paused, a single hand rubbing his brow. “You have so much potential, my son, yet you squander it.

On the evening before the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon and a few of his officers were riding past a pyramid. A man wrapped in a red cloak stepped out of the pyramid and motioned to Napoleon to come forth. Napoleon obliged, telling his officers to wait outside as he stepped into the pyramid with this red-mantled stranger. After an hour of uneasiness, the officers were ready to enter and ensure Napoleon’s safety, but Napoleon stepped out of the pyramid. With a satisfied smile, he demanded they prepare for battle with the Egyptians. The officers were confused, given his previous reluctance, but they followed his orders, leading to their victory in the Battle of the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza The year after his invasion, Napoleon returned to Egypt, to the Great Pyramid of Giza. After discovering the Rosetta Stone—an ancient stone that helped scientists to understand how to read hieroglyphics—Napoleon began to believe that the pyramids held great mystique and spirituality. He spent the night inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, inside the king’s chamber that was about 32 feet long and 16 feet wide. For seven hours, he sat in the dark room, not emerging until sunrise. However, when he stepped out of the pyramid, his face was pale. Visibly shaken and terrified, he refused to tell anyone what he’d experienced, saying, “If I told you the truth, you would not believe me.” Even years later, when one of Napoleon’s men asked about the experience, Napoleon considered telling him but then decided against it, saying, “No, never mind” (Shkuro, 2019, para. 2). Considering Napoleon admired Alexander the Great, who had also spent the night in the king’s chambers and had an experience, some believe he may have been trying to claim a piece of Alexander’s legacy in that respect. He’s even been said to have created stories about himself that aligned with Alexander. Though, even his officers said he was clearly disturbed by whatever he saw.

Underlying Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is the cliche that one can only make peace with one's enemy. It is equally true, however, that one can only make peace with an enemy who truly wants peace. If the enemy is intent on remaining an enemy, if his objective is not peace but victory, if he believes your very existence is a stain on his honor and his God, peace is not possible. With such an enemy negotiations are futile. And concessions are mere appeasement, an invitation to disaster. . . . . The claim that there is no alternative to the peace process is a message of fanatical despair. There is an alternative: no peace process. No negotiations. And the separation of Israeli and Palestinian populations (no more Gaza workers in Israel, for example) to reduce the opportunity for terror. Divorce, suspension and vigilance until the Palestinians decide whether they want victory or peace. The double game -- talk and murder -- cannot continue.

the Israelis and Palestinians were at a demographic tipping point, with more-or-less parity in the number of Jews and Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The century-long struggle over the land was only becoming more intractable. The Israeli Zionist left had long warned that the dream was at stake and that Israel could not have it both ways: Without partition into two separate homelands for Jews and Palestinians, Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish democracy, however compromised those terms were, could not be sustained and Israel would inevitably become a binational country. If all the Palestinians were given equal rights and the vote in Israel, it would not have a Jewish majority. Without partition and without allowing Palestinians to vote for the government that controlled fundamental aspects of their lives, Israel’s claim to be a democracy would eventually implode. The temporary occupation had gone on so long that many critics were already describing the separate statuses of Israel and the occupied territories as a fiction meant to obscure what was already a binational, one-state reality. Instead of a light unto the nations, Israel was being cast by its harshest liberal-left critics and human rights groups such as B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as a single-state entity and territory that had already veered into a system of varying degrees of “Jewish supremacy” or racial “domination” over the Palestinians in different geographical areas that, they asserted, fit international definitions of apartheid and crimes against humanity. With a weak Palestinian leadership split between the increasingly autocratic Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza, and after years without any semblance of a peace process, Israel, more than seventy years after its founding, was more divided over its endgame than it was on the eve of its independence. Esh Kodesh and a rash of other settlement outposts had stepped into the void to try to determine the outcome and doom Israel to victory, or at least to deepen the entanglement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There’s bravery in knowing when to withdraw. Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it’s the quiet voice whispering, we will try again tomorrow. We will claim victory on our own terms. We will live to fight another day.

Too often we, as believers, receive the promise of something good, like healing, and apply our faith to achieve the potential within that word, but we ignore what Jesus did to empower us with the victory to possess the promise within that word!

We participate, without feeling it's significance, to a battle of the free life against the profitable agony. This battle is not lead the way military do. It never expects neither victory nor defeat, it does not rely on tactics, it mobilizes nor brute force nor the ruse. It is not based on any project, nor any action plan. It is a battle on between a decay of all things, a weariness of the people that convinced them to die, and the permanent revival of a life that will never give up, permanently claims rights, and progresses through its quiet determination to ignore the obstacles.

If liberalism were an ideological force determined to convert the masses through argument and activism, it would now consider itself victorious, and begin the less exciting task of maintaining and sustaining the “advances.” But liberalism, or progressivism, is exactly what it claims to be. It must keep moving. It must tear down walls it already tore down and vanquish enemies who’ve long since surrendered. Because it is not anchored in truth, it is not anchored at all. It cannot stay still and defend this New World it created, because it’s not the creation of something new that it’s interested in, but the destruction of something old. Progressivism is an ideology of anti’s. It

Ramesses had personal details inscribed that claimed, "No officer was with me, no charioteer, no soldier of the army, no shield-bearer..." and “I was before them like Seth in his monument. I found the mass of chariots in whose midst I was, scattering them before my horses..." In Luxor, it was written, “His majesty slaughtered the armed forces of the Hittites in their entirety, their great rulers and all their brothers ... their infantry and chariot troops fell prostrate, one on top of the other. His majesty killed them ... and they lay stretched out in front of their horses. But his majesty was alone, nobody accompanied him...” If the inscriptions were to be believed, the great warrior had singlehandedly ensured his own survival, even with all the odds stacked against him. Ramesses II successfully used propaganda inscribed onto the monuments and in the public places of Egypt to ensure that the people he ruled would deem him a victorious leader, even when he himself was faced with defeat. The

Being accused of microaggression can be a harrowing experience. Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald relates in City Journal how an incident got out of hand at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2013. Professor Emeritus Val Rust taught a dissertation preparation seminar in which arguments often erupted among students, such as over which victim ideologies deserved precedence. In one such discussion, white feminists were criticized for making "testimonial-style" claims of oppression to which Chicana feminists felt they were not entitled. In another, arguments over the political implications of word capitalization got out of hand. In a paper he returned to a student, Rust had changed the capitalization of "indigenous" to lowercase as called for in the Chicago Manual Style. The student felt this showed disrespect for her point of view. During the heated discussion that followed, Professor Rust leaned over and touched an agitated student's arm in a manner, Rust claims, that was meant to reassure and calm him down. It ignited a firestorm instead. The student, Kenjus Watston, jerked his arm away from Rust as if highly offended. Later, he and other "students of color", accompanied by reporters and photographers from UCLA's campus newspaper, made a surprise visit to Rust's classroom and confronted him with a "collective statement of Resistance by Graduate Students of Color". Then the college administration got involved. Dean Marcelo Suarez-Orozco sent out an e-mail citing "a series of troubling racial climate incidents" on campus, "most recently associated with [Rust's class]". Administrative justice was swift. Professor Rust was forced to teach the remainder of his class with three other professors, signaling that he was no longer trusted to teach "students of color". When Rust tried to smooth things over with another student who had criticized him for not apologizing to Watson, he reached out and touched him in a gesture of reconciliation. Again it backfired. That student filed criminal charges against Rust, who was suspended for the remainder of the academic year. As if to punctuate the students' victory and seal the professor's humiliation, UCLA appointed Watson as a "student researcher" to the committee investigating the incident. Watson turned the publicity from these events into a career, going on to codirect the Intergroup Dialogue Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. As for the committee report, it recommended that UCLA create a new associate dean for equity and enhance the faculty's diversity training program. It was a total victory for the few students who had acted like bullies and the humiliating end of a career for a highly respected professor. It happened because the university could not appear to be unsympathetic to students who were, in the administration's worldview, merely following the university's official policies of diversity and multiculturalism.

As he turned her face to study her, he said, “You have more courage than you have strength, Yellow Hair. It is not wise to fight when you cannot win.” Looking up at his carved features and the arrogant set of his mouth, she longed for the strength to jerk him off his horse. He wasn’t just taunting her, he was challenging her, mocking her. “You will yield. Look at me and know the face of your master. Remember it well.” Riding high on humiliation, Loretta forgot Amy, Aunt Rachel, everything. An image of her mother’s face flashed before her. Never, as long as she had life in her body, would she yield to him. She worked her parched mouth and spat. Nothing came out, but the message rang clear. “Nei mah-heepicut!” Releasing her, he struck her lightly on the arm. Wheeling his horse, he glanced toward the windows of the house and thumped his chest with a broad fist. “I claim her!” Loretta staggered, watching in numb disbelief as Hunter pranced his stallion in a circle around her. I claim her? Warily she turned, keeping him in sight, unsure of what he might do. He rode erect, his eyes touching on her dress, her face, her hair, as if everything about her were a curiosity. A taunting smile curved his mouth. His attention centered on her full skirt, and she could almost see the questions churning in his head. He repositioned his hand on the lance. The determination in his expression filled her with foreboding. He rode directly toward her, and she sidestepped. He turned his mount to come at her again. As he swept by he leaned forward, catching the hem of her skirt with his lance. Loretta whirled, striking out with her forearms, but the Indian moved expertly, his aim swift and sure, his horse precision-trained to the pressure of his legs. He was as bent on seeing her undergarments as she was on keeping them hidden. The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.

The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.” In that moment, what she felt for him went beyond hate, a black, churning ugliness that made her want to seize the lance he brandished and skewer him with it. I claim her. He planned to take her, then? Her gaze traveled from his woven wool belt of army blue to the muscular tracks that rippled in his belly. The hilt of his knife protruded from a leather scabbard on his hip. How many soldiers had he killed? One, a hundred, perhaps a thousand? Her hair hung from his belt, trailing in a spray of gold down the dark leather on his pants. She felt certain she had never seen him before. Yet he had her hair. The Indian down by the river must have given it to him, and he had come from God only knew where to get her.

Now, the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every claim for protection given by citizenship—on the issue. Victory, or the conditions imposed by the conqueror—must be the result.

Nei mah-heepicut!” Releasing her, he struck her lightly on the arm. Wheeling his horse, he glanced toward the windows of the house and thumped his chest with a broad fist. “I claim her!” Loretta staggered, watching in numb disbelief as Hunter pranced his stallion in a circle around her. I claim her? Warily she turned, keeping him in sight, unsure of what he might do. He rode erect, his eyes touching on her dress, her face, her hair, as if everything about her were a curiosity. A taunting smile curved his mouth. His attention centered on her full skirt, and she could almost see the questions churning in his head. He repositioned his hand on the lance. The determination in his expression filled her with foreboding. He rode directly toward her, and she sidestepped. He turned his mount to come at her again. As he swept by he leaned forward, catching the hem of her skirt with his lance. Loretta whirled, striking out with her forearms, but the Indian moved expertly, his aim swift and sure, his horse precision-trained to the pressure of his legs. He was as bent on seeing her undergarments as she was on keeping them hidden. The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.

The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.” In that moment, what she felt for him went beyond hate, a black, churning ugliness that made her want to seize the lance he brandished and skewer him with it. I claim her. He planned to take her, then? Her gaze traveled from his woven wool belt of army blue to the muscular tracks that rippled in his belly. The hilt of his knife protruded from a leather scabbard on his hip. How many soldiers had he killed? One, a hundred, perhaps a thousand? Her hair hung from his belt, trailing in a spray of gold down the dark leather on his pants. She felt certain she had never seen him before. Yet he had her hair. The Indian down by the river must have given it to him, and he had come from God only knew where to get her. With a start, she noticed the warrior had stretched out a hand to her. A wide leather band encircled his wrist to protect him from his bowstring. Staring at his dark palm and strong fingers, she shook her head in denial. “Hi, tai,” he said in a low voice. Guiding his stallion closer, he bent to touch her chin. Her eyelid quivered when he brushed at a tear on her cheek. “Ka taikay, ka taikay, Tohobt Nabituh,” he whispered. The words made no sense. Puzzled, she met his gaze. “Tosa ehr-mahr.” Raising his hand, he showed her the glistening wetness on his fingertips. “Silver rain, tosa ehr-mahr.” He compared her tears to silver rain? She searched his eyes for some trace of humanity and found none. After a moment he straightened, raising his lance in what looked like a salute. “Suvate!” he yelled, his glittering eyes sweeping the line of encircling riders. A low rumble of answering voices replied, “Suvate!

During a rabies scare in 1885, Pasteur concocted a treatment and gave the untested drug to a nine-year-old boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a grocer’s dog. Three weeks later, Meister had almost fully recovered. Pasteur’s legend received considerable help by the fact that Meister hailed from Alsace, a region controlled by Germany but claimed by France. The tricolor declared a victory for French science and for Pasteur who had beaten the German, Robert Koch, who had like Pasteur been working on vaccines. As a grown man, Joseph Meister took a job as a guard at the Institut Pasteur after Pasteur’s death. When German troops entered Paris in 1940, they swarmed the institute’s grounds and ordered that Pasteur’s crypt be opened. Meister likely had been one of several men who defended the crypt against the Wehrmacht and prevented its defilement. Shortly after, Meister inexplicably shot himself through the head. Even this act became part of Pasteur’s celebrity.

While some biographers claim Rommel had retrieved the goggles from an abandoned British vehicle, stating that “even a general was allowed a little booty,” a 2015 Daily Mail article claims that a British POW actually gave his goggles to the general.  After his capture, Major General Michael Gambier-Parry was invited to supper with Rommel, where he informed the field marshal that his hat had been stolen by a German soldier.  Rommel investigated, and returned Gambier-Parry’s hat, but asked if he could keep the British-issue goggles that the general had left in his staff car.[83]  They became part of his signature appearance, and he was rarely photographed without them after 1941.   Rommel would also receive his moniker, the Desert Fox, in the weeks following his victories there.  In German “Wustenfuchs,” it described a “small fox with a habit of burrowing quickly into the sand to escape predators, affording human occupants of the desert only an occasional fleeting glance.

Amabile goes on to observe that “The more complex the activity, the more it’s hurt by extrinsic reward.” Interestingly, the studies suggest that flat salaries don’t demotivate, but piecework rates and bonuses do. Thus, it may be economically smart to give performance bonuses to people who flip burgers or dug ditches, but it’s probably smarter to decouple salary from performance in a programming shop and let people choose their own projects (both trends that the open-source world takes to their logical conclusions). Indeed, these results suggest that the only time it is a good idea to reward performance in programming is when the programmer is so motivated that he or she would have worked without the reward! Other researchers in the field are willing to point a finger straight at the issues of autonomy and creative control that so preoccupy hackers. “To the extent one’s experience of being self-determined is limited,” said Richard Ryan, associate psychology professor at the University of Rochester, “one’s creativity will be reduced as well.” In general, presenting any task as a means rather than an end in itself seems to demotivate. Even winning a competition with others or gaining peer esteem can be demotivating in this way if the victory is experienced as work for reward (which may explain why hackers are culturally prohibited from explicitly seeking or claiming that esteem).

Worldly success was a potent force in the growth of Islam, and in the shriveling of Christianity. That fact may be troubling to Christians, whose faith so often extols the triumph of the meek and humble while rejecting worldly success, and who are so familiar with the concept of defeat as the root of long-term victory. In practice, though, Christians often had used material successes as proofs of their faith. As we have seen, church writers pointed to miracles and healings to vouch for the power of Christ, and such events often explained important conversions. Though such claims continued to be made, they were increasingly outweighed by the obvious successes of Muslim states and armies. At several critical moments, Muslim victories proved enormously damaging to the Christian cause, from the early triumphs over the Byzantine Empire onward. As the early Islamic convert 'Ali Tabari explained, “[Muhammad’s] victory over the nations is also by necessity and by undeniable arguments a manifest sign of the prophetic office.”20 If God had not been on his side, how could Muhammad’s followers possibly have won such stunning victories over ancient empires?

That kiss was a revelation- Patience had never imagined a simple kiss could be so bold, so heavily invested with meaning. His lips were hard; they moved over hers, parting them further, confidently managing her, ruthlessly teaching her all she was so eager to learn. His tongue invaded her mouth with the arrogance of a conquerer claiming victory's spoils. Unhurriedly, he visited every corner of his domain, claiming every inch, branding it as his- knowing it. After a lengthy, devastatingly thorough inspection, he settled to sample her in a different way. The slow, languid thrusting seduced her willing senses. She'd yielded, yet her passive surrender satisfied neither of them. Patience found herself drawn into the game- the slide of lips against lips, the sensual glide of hot tongue against tongue. She was more than willing. The promise in the heat rising, steadily building between them, and even more the tension- excitement and something more- that surged like a slow tide behind the warm glow, drew her on. The kiss stretched and time slowed- the drugging effect of shared breaths sent her wits to a slow spin.

It may sound like a bold statement for one to claim that he is the world's best at something but it's not an impossibility. I've done it many times, and so did Olympic athletes. It requires more boldness to distrust what I just said, as those who do won't read my books and access the reasons to why they're bestsellers.

The Roman vision incarnated in the divine Augustus was peace through victory. The Christian vision incarnated in the divine Jesus was peace through justice. It is those alternatives that are at stake behind all the titles and countertitles, the claims and counterclaims.

This recalibration of the “victim–oppressor dynamic” is exactly what Christian conservatives, with the aid of right-wing bloggers, put into motion after Brendan Eich resigned as CEO of Mozilla. They cast him as a victim of ruthless, organized gay activist groups that were taking away his “religious liberties”—a claim that could not be further from the truth. Too many gay opinion makers fell right into the trap, accepting this reframing, becoming fearful, and running away, fretting about the “optics” rather than challenging the accusation for what it was: a vicious lie and a deception, part of a plot to recast enemies of LGBT equality as victims while they trample hard-won rights. These LGBT thought leaders spoke for all of us who have been overcome with victory blindness and have impulsively reverted to covering our anger and our conviction. And we can’t let that happen again.

A villain will never claim victory. Victory only comes when all enemies have either perished or submit to you and they claim you victor. Otherwise, you are bound to be beaten just when you think you have won.

The sub-sector needed a person, preferably an officer, civilian or military, to handle logistics. We had information that a certain Lieutenant Enamul Haque, a native of Chapai Nawabganj had crossed over to India and was now living with relatives in Malda. Jahangir contacted him and invited him to the Sub-sector HQ through some of his relatives who were in our Sub-sector. After much persuasion, he agreed to come. Jahangir scheduled the meeting when the Sector Commander would be present. A couple of days later, Enam came to Mohidipur. Jahangir and I were also present in the meeting. Enam was a tall individual with a good physique but he seemed nervous. Colonel Zaman opened the conversation with the usual inquiries: when did he cross the border, where was he staying in Malda, what was he doing, et cetera. Enam was not doing anything; he was simply hiding in Malda. Colonel Zaman told him that to the Pakistan Army he was a deserter and a rebel, irrespective of whether he joined the Mukti Bahini or not. He implored him to join; we needed all the help we could get. Enam responded that he was from the EME; he was not a fighter. Colonel Zaman assured him he would not be given any combat assignments; he would have an administrative job. He was going to BDF HQ soon and could have Enam assigned to Mohidipur Sub-sector as logistics officer and Enam could even stay with relatives in Malda if he liked. No amount of persuasion could convince Enam. It surprised me a great deal that a Bengali military officer, who deserted the Pakistan Army and crossed over to India, was unwilling to make any contribution to the liberation war, even in a non-combat capacity[33]. This was true of many young and able university and college students especially from middle class families. I had met some of them in Calcutta. On one occasion. Sultana Zaman, Colonel Zaman’s wife, had asked a female MPA why her two university going sons had not joined the Mukti Bahini? The MPA replied that her boys were intellectual types not suited for fighting, implying that combat was the task for lesser beings. [33] In 1973, I met Enamul Haque in the Bangabhaban where he was ADC to the President. He was claiming to be a freedom fighter! He retired as a brigadier. After retirement, he became a state minister in Sheikh Hasina's government in 2009.

As the battle began Ivo Taillefer, the minstrel knight who had claimed the right to make the first attack, advanced up the hill on horseback, throwing his lance and sword into the air and catching them before the English army. He then charged deep into the English ranks, and was slain. The cavalry charges of William’s mail-clad knights, cumbersome in manœuvre, beat in vain upon the dense, ordered masses of the English. Neither the arrow hail nor the assaults of the horsemen could prevail against them. William’s left wing of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and retreated rapidly down the hill. On this the troops on Harold’s right, who were mainly the local “fyrd”, broke their ranks in eager pursuit. William, in the centre, turned his disciplined squadrons upon them and cut them to pieces. The Normans then re-formed their ranks and began a second series of charges upon the English masses, subjecting them in the intervals to severe archery. It has often been remarked that this part of the action resembles the afternoon at Waterloo, when Ney’s cavalry exhausted themselves upon the British squares, torn by artillery in the intervals. In both cases the tortured infantry stood unbroken. Never, it was said, had the Norman knights met foot-soldiers of this stubbornness. They were utterly unable to break through the shield-walls, and they suffered serious losses from deft blows of the axe-men, or from javelins, or clubs hurled from the ranks behind. But the arrow showers took a cruel toll. So closely, it was said, were the English wedged that the wounded could not be removed, and the dead scarcely found room in which to sink upon the ground. The autumn afternoon was far spent before any result had been achieved, and it was then that William adopted the time-honoured ruse of a feigned retreat. He had seen how readily Harold’s right had quitted their positions in pursuit after the first repulse of the Normans. He now organised a sham retreat in apparent disorder, while keeping a powerful force in his own hands. The house-carls around Harold preserved their discipline and kept their ranks, but the sense of relief to the less trained forces after these hours of combat was such that seeing their enemy in flight proved irresistible. They surged forward on the impulse of victory, and when half-way down the hill were savagely slaughtered by William’s horsemen. There remained, as the dusk grew, only the valiant bodyguard who fought round the King and his standard. His brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine, had already been killed. William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided. The last formed body of troops was broken, though by no means overwhelmed. They withdrew into the woods behind, and William, who had fought in the foremost ranks and had three horses killed under him, could claim the victory. Nevertheless the pursuit was heavily checked. There is a sudden deep ditch on the reverse slope of the hill of Hastings, into which large numbers of Norman horsemen fell, and in which they were butchered by the infuriated English lurking in the wood. The dead king’s naked body, wrapped only in a robe of purple, was hidden among the rocks of the bay. His mother in vain offered the weight of the body in gold for permission to bury him in holy ground. The Norman Duke’s answer was that Harold would be more fittingly laid upon the Saxon shore which he had given his life to defend. The body was later transferred to Waltham Abbey, which he had founded. Although here the English once again accepted conquest and bowed in a new destiny, yet ever must the name of Harold be honoured in the Island for which he and his famous house-carls fought indomitably to the end.

Or, to choose another example, we feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally—that is, for himself—which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and "common sense," which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life.

Though many people ask, “Why doesn’t God just prove Himself and His claims?” He will not allow every shred of doubt over His existence and creatorship to be removed. He isn’t about to give away all the answers, because our faith remains His favorite revelation to a lost world that He exists. God allows each of us to take our best shot at being God. Many intellectuals proclaim that God has been overruled or is dead, while they celebrate their heady victory. But God is secure. He knows who He is and what He’s going to do—in the course of time.

Warren began his Centennial meditation with big claims about the place of the Civil War in American consciousness. Boldly, he called the war "the great single event of our history ... our only felt history, history lived in the national imagination:" Until the i86os, the nation's founding and growth had been only a "daydream of easy and automatic victories, a vulgar delusion of manifest destiny, a conviction of being a people divinely chosen to live on milk and honey at small expense." Warren's "nation" here was the exclusive, mainstream, "white" population and not blacks or Indians, whom he would represent in other writing as unpersuaded by that vulgar delusion. These were a poet's broad strokes, indeed, but he made his point: only with the Civil War did Americans earn an "awareness of the cost of having a history"" Warren

If we are able to reach the critical point of a mountain, we would be able to easily to claim victory.

When you claim victory, you are much more likely to succeed. When you assume failure, you are much more likely to fail. You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you respond to it. Read that again: you cannot control what happens, but you can control how you respond to it. You are not a victim of your circumstances — you are a result of the story you tell yourself.

Without the withering criticism by nominalism, medieval Christian philosophy and theology would not have relinquished their claim to the role of knowledge in discovering the nature of things in light of higher principles; instead, it caused them to leave the field of battle without any defense before the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, and empiricism, which were, as a result, able to gain a remarkably easy victory.

Like the Israelites, you and I have been promised spiritual ground for great and abiding victory on a turf where our enemy stands in defiance. If you’re not presently occupying your Promised Land, rest assured the devil is. Are you going to stand by and let him get away with that? God has given you land, Beloved, but He’s calling you to go forth and take it. Your enemy is standing on your God-given ground, just daring you to take possession of it. Are you going to let him have it? Or are you going to claim your inheritance? Possession is the law of the Promised Land.