@demiliopics2
Bronx born Medievalist, Art Historian, Hispanist, Lover of Italy and Antiquity New site: www.jamesdemilio.com Swept up by politics these days, but I do post photos on ancient, medieval, and Christian art. Check @capitalsandmore.bsky.social for art only.
Side note: Media outlets that refused to cave to Pentagon press rules have been coming up with scoop after scoop from military sources. So much for Hegseth’s attempt to strangle journalism
how is "mayor chooses his words carefully" a NYT story but "president chooses his words like a haunted magic 8 ball on meth" not
The Strait of Hormuz may be 21 miles wide, but the navigable channel is only three kilometers wide — making a perfect kill zone. About 1/3 of the world’s fertilizer passes through there. The spring planting season is here. The world’s most vulnerable will go hungry and Trump dismantled USAID.
Netanyahu would welcome regime change, but main goal is to deliver as much death and destruction to enemy populations as possible with US, and rest of world, paying the bills. Trump missed chance for an early declaration of victory, now has to hope something turns up.
National Weather Service forecasts temperatures reaching 80 in Flagstaff, Arizona by the middle of next week. That would beat our all-time record high (73) for the entire month of March by a lot. San Francisco Peaks barely have snow on their south face: looks like a late May or even June snow cover.
We got a war (or excursion, or operation...)!
Now find a reason for it.
🧵🧵🧵
The responses given by the nominee, Lt General Rudd, at his hearing don't ease the concerns about his nomination.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...
Senator Wyden's reasons for holding up the nomination give plenty of grounds for concerns about the nominee, and particularly about a role in this administration with its contempt for civil rights and protections.
thehill.com/homenews/sen...
After a series of fatal strikes involving civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress directed the Pentagon to reduce civilian casualties as part of a 2019 law. During the Biden administration, the Defense Department created the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response initiative. The civilian mitigation teams – cut by 90% by Hegseth – work with military commanders on target planning, and making sure that targets are actually military sites. The teams help come up with "no strike" lists, including religious and cultural sites and schools
I knew that the Department of War shot a missile into a school & killed 175 civilians, mostly children.
This is learned today:
Secretary of War Hegseth had cut the teams assigned to prevent such tragedies by 90%.
www.npr.org/2026/03/11/n...
Photos are from Kawnat Haju (AFP)
Funeral for Lebanese paramedic, Youssef Assaf, a Red Cross volunteer killed by an Israeli air attack while in an ambulance on a rescue mission in southern Lebanon.
The link should go directly to the report and photos in the al-Jazeera feed below the headlines.
aje.news/2s21hi?updat...
NEW: Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly vowed Monday to vote against any additional funding for the war launched by President Trump against Iran in the last debate in the intense Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, hosted by @wttw.bsky.social.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi did not.
"Striking a school full of children is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades."
Don’t look away: this atrocity was carried out with our tax dollars. Trump's attempts to misplace fault won't wash away the blood on his hands. Or, alas, on ours.
Kristi Noem spent $220 million in taxpayer 💰 on a 1 minute ad starring herself. This ad cost more than the combined production & marketing budgets of most of this yr's Best Picture nominees
Meanwhile, Americans are struggling with ⬆️ Costs(food, energy), ⬇️Jobs, ⬆️Unemployment.
#EpsteinClass
I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.
State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.
www.wired.com/story/gramma...
I'm not a commodities guy but I don't know how many more events like this the markets will be willing to overlook because Trump occasionally shouts, "nearly done!" at a reporter from his golf cart.
New York Times report by Euan Ward, reporting from Beirut. "As night approached, a wave of heavy Israeli strikes on Beirut's southern outskirts reverberated across the Lebanese capital. It marked an escalation of the tit-for-tat attacks. More than 600 people have been killed inside Lebanon and over 800,000 displaced since the latest conflict began a week ago."
I respect the work of reporters in Beirut and the dangers they face. But, characterizing Israel's attacks as "tit-for-tat" suggests a proportionality absent in this war, as it was absent in Gaza. Over 600 dead in Lebanon, 800,000 displaced in barely a week. What are the comparable numbers in Israel?
Marco Rubio greets Chuck Schumer in January 2026 at the Capitol Visitor Center
A close-up of his foot shows his shoes are too big
hmm
Heron perched on branch, red eye.
Washington DC wildlife:
Black-crowned night heron yesterday by the Washington Marina. 🪶
Letter O on square background filled in purple with white highlights and framed in thin light purple, red and green frame. Inside multicoloured O there is a portrait of Christ with cruciform halo, holding an empty scroll in his both hands. He is dressed in blueish-purple and white, has a dark brown beard and long hair. His eyes are looking up to the right. Background is filled in with red. Gold highlights the halo and both the right and left curve of the letter O. Image is a detail from Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 380, f. 27r
One of our treasures is the sole surving copy of Robert of Cricklade's (OSA, prior of St Frideswide, Oxford | d. after 1188) 'Speculum fidei' (Mirror of Faith)
Christ is pictured with pensive eyes & an empty scroll; what could he be thinking?
CCCC MS 380, f. 27r
tinyurl.com/2am9zv2t
#MedievalMSS
I may agree with Rep. Massie on almost nothing.
I'd strongly oppose many of his positions.
But 270 or so cowardly Republicans in Congress could say how hard it is to stand up to Trump on anything (if they'd dare to issue a peep), so I genuinely admire his zeal in fighting over the Epstein case.
FYI, for Roman history it poses as @wmarybeard.bsky.social, Shelley Haley, @walterscheidel.bsky.social, Richard Alston, Moses Finley, Judy Hallett, Sarah Pomeroy, or Peter Garnsey.
Every bombed village is my hometown by Nikita Gill “Every bombed village is my hometown” - James Baldwin And every dead child is my child. Every grieving mother is my mother. Every crying father is my father. Every home turned to rubble is the home I grew up in. Every brother carrying the remains of his brother across borders is my brother. Every sister waiting for a sister who will never come home is my sister. Every one of these people are ours, Just like we are theirs. We belong to them and they belong to us. Copyright © 2024 by Nikita Gill
Every bombed village is my hometown
by Nikita Gill
“Every bombed village is my hometown” - James Baldwin
Copyright © 2024 by @nikitagill.bsky.social
Good that Representative @ericswalwell.bsky.social did this for the six-year-old deaf child, a student at a school for the deaf, deported without his assistive devices. Bring the family back.
The petty cruelty boggles the mind.
www.latimes.com/california/s...
“If preventative war were to be accepted morally, then all limits to the cause for going to war would be put in extreme jeopardy.”
-Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington DC
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
"A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening."
-Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago
www.archchicago.org/statement/-/...
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writing about the unfortunate director of the local paper factory
mannerofspeaking.org/2010/05/12/s...
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"It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.:
Source: docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
I was planning on doing #EncyclicalBites in reverse order from most recent, but the state affairs suggests jumping to John XXIII's Pacem in Terris (1963) is fitting. It's known in English as "On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty"