Seized And Devoured

[Cara Canellas]

In a bizarre incident, rats consumed about 10 kg of marijuana that was seized by police in Dhanbad, Jharkhand. The revelation came after the Rajganj Police Station recently informed the court that rodents were behind the consumption of the seized marijuana, previously seized as evidence.

Over the course of six years, when the 10 kg of marijuana was seized on December 14, 2018, the rats managed to devour the drug, according to the Rajganj Police Station. At the time, the police had confiscated the drug from accused Shambhu Prasad Agrawal and his son. Both were apprehended in connection with the case.

The investigation into this matter has been ongoing, with the court awaiting the testimony of the investigator. Despite previous directives from the court to present the seized drug as evidence, Investigator Jayaprakash Prasad failed to do so during his appearance.

More than 50 years ago, the state of Israel shocked the world when it seized the remaining Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, in a matter of six days.

The Naksa was a continuation of a prior central event that paved the way for the 1967 war. Nineteen years earlier, in 1948, the state of Israel came into being in a violent process that entailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

In 1967, Israel absorbed the whole of historical Palestine, as well as additional territory from Egypt and Syria. By the end of the war, Israel had expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, including 130,000 who were displaced in 1948, and gained territory that was three and a half times its size.

Firstly, there were frequent clashes on the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Jordanian armistice lines after the 1948 war. Thousands of Palestinian refugees tried to cross the border searching for relatives, attempting to return to their homes and to recover their lost possessions.

A few years later, the Suez Crisis took place in 1956. Israel, along with France and Britain, invaded Eygpt with the hope of toppling then President Gamal Abdel Nasser after he nationalised the Suez Canal Company. The company was a joint British-French enterprise which controlled and operated the strategic waterway.

Tensions between Syria and Israel was also brewing over disagreements on the use of the Jordan River water and Israeli cultivation along the border, which played a major role in leading up to the war.

On May 13, 1967, the Soviet Union falsely warned Egypt that Israel was assembling its troops to invade Syria. Under an Egyptian-Syrian defence treaty signed in 1955, the two countries were obliged to protect one another in the case of an attack on either.

The major West Bank cities of Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, fell to the Israeli army a day later. Israel also shelled the Abdullah and Hussein bridges over the Jordan River that linked the West Bank to Jordan.

After taking the Old City, Israeli forces demolished the entire 770-year-old Moroccan Quarter neighbourhood, to widen access to what the Jewish people call the Western Wall, (known to Muslims as the al-Buraq Wall.) The site holds religious significance to both Jews and Muslims.

In six days, Israel brought more than one million Palestinians under its direct control in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The 1967 war turned Israel into the country with the largest Palestinian population.

The shock of loss and defeat precipitated a revolutionary atmosphere among Palestinians, which spurred the emergence of armed resistance movements, vowing to take back Palestine by force throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

The belief that the outcome of 1967 was a miracle reinforced the idea to religious and messianic Zionists who believed, based on religious convictions, that they had a right to the entirety of the Holy Land.

The war unleashed the settler movement; a young generation of messianic Zionists decided to establish houses in the West Bank and Gaza, territory that is occupied and is not part of the state of Israel.

Just one year after the 1967 war, there were six Israeli settlements built in the Syrian Golan Heights. By 1973, Israel had established 17 settlements in the West Bank and seven in the Gaza Strip. By 1977, some 11,000 Israelis had been living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

Despite the war being between Arab countries and Israel, those who have lost the most are the Palestinians, who are marking 51 years of Israeli military occupation. The occupation is the longest in modern history.

The rest of the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, housing some 5.1 million Palestinians, remain under Israeli military control under the pretext of security. Their lives have been dictated by hundreds of military checkpoints, a colour-coded permit system, and a Separation Wall that has divided families.

All the while, Israel, since 1967, has proceeded with illegally building homes and transferring its Jewish citizens into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, on stolen Palestinian land. Today, at least 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Paragraph after rearranging the sentences: A hare, being pursued by an eagle, took himself for refuge to the nest of a beetle, whom he begged to save him. The beetle, therefore, interceded with the eagle, begging of him not to kill the poor suppliant, and pleaded with him not to kill so small an animal. But the eagle, in wrath, gave the beetle a flap of his wing, and straightaway seized upon the hare and devoured him. When the eagle flew away, the beetle flew after him, to learn where his nest was.

Hint

This is from earlier praeheda, literally "something seized before," from PIE *prai-heda-; for the first element see prae-; the second element is related to the second element in prehendere "to grasp, seize" (from PIE root *ghend- "to seize, to take").

In the scripture lesson for today (Mark l0: 46-52), we have the story of Bartimaeus crying out to Jesus. Like Bartimaeus, I have cried out, "Teacher, let me see again." Like Bartimaeus, I have been given the gift of a new way of seeing. I wonder if this is not what Gordon meant when he spoke of being seized by the power of a great affection.

We have heard in the last two weeks Kate and Sherri testifying in their own lives to the movement of the Holy Spirit. They have invited us to dialogue with them about new understandings, and I come today with a similar message. I believe that the moving of our physical space as a church is a catalyst for moving each of us inwardly. I rejoice in being community with you at a time of inward and outward shift! I want to share some of what has been arising thanks to the persistent efforts of the Holy Spirit.

I see that we all live on a planet that is in grave danger. The call to serve her is not optional. It is not like other calls. She gives us the foundation of life. She gives us the manifestation of creation. She gives us both literal and spiritual ground of being. She is losing species, soil, forests, air, clean water. Are we, too, losing parts of ourselves? I find myself increasingly centered on these questions and wondering how to explore them in ways that are life-giving. I see that loving the earth is essential to our own wholeness.

The Tempter: Of course we love the earth. Why is she harping on that? We all care. We just do not know what to do. What is the point of touching the love if it is all too big to do anything about? It is too overwhelming. I am not going there. As I said, it is a pit.

It was an experience of revolutionary expansion for me, of moving from a place of love so old and so ancient. I have never touched anything like it. Had a part of me been woken up doing the work with Joanna to name the grief, to feel it fully, and to unleash the power of love that comes when you integrate what you have been repressing?

Joanna teaches inner tools for people who care about the earth, who want the love and the interconnectedness to flow and who want to support each other in not staying stuck in the inevitable numbness and too much-ness. That is I. Maybe that is you, too.

The Tempter: Of course people are in despair. It takes 240,000 years for the plutonium our Dept of Energy disposed of in American soil to become non-toxic. We are poisoning our own nest. The polar cap will be reduced 50% in size from l950 to 2050. What kind of tools could you possibly have for that kind of reality?

What would enable such deep joy in you that you could look at the deepest of suffering and know that you have great hope? What would enable such a deep trust in the interconnectedness that you could look at the deepest of suffering and know that you have great heart? What is it for you to be seized by the power of a great affection?

To regard the poisoning of the earth as beyond us suggests that we do not take seriously the injunction to love. We are called to take heart. We are called to hope. May we begin to see each other and each person we meet in this new way, releasing each person gifts for the healing of the world, releasing in him or her powers that can resound to the joy of all beings for all time. May it be so. Amen.

Only a skull and a pair of pants were left after a suspected rhino poacher was attacked and killed by an elephant and then devoured by lions, according to the South African National Parks agency.

The men carried the poacher's remains to the road so that passersby could find it in the morning, and then left the park, according to police. They called a relative of the deceased man to tell them about the incident and alerted police.

Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise, it holds many dangers and this incident is evidence of that," Glenn Phillips, managing executive of Kruger National Park, said in a statement. "It is very sad to see the daughters of the deceased mourning the loss of their father, and worse still, only being able to recover very little of his remains."

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