How Trauma Shapes Your Mental Health—and What You Can Do About It
Musing in the morning with Joe, Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Hunting aliveness in a post-apocalyptic world. Tricking people into following me into their own catacombs. A little hope here, a little despair there. And somehow I roll through the day. Like a half domesticated tiger in a petting zoo. On reading the Cask of Amontillado with two teenagers.
Middle East Confessions, Musing in the morning with Joe, Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Why you are not made to feel the suffering in the world. Let’s reflect on the following for a few minutes: ‘After Israeli bombing, a 19yr-old woman was pinned inside 2 concrete slabs, her body severed: she died after hrs of pain’, Mahmoud Basal, Palestinian civilian defense.
Musing in the morning with Joe, Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Your brain and my brain could make babies today, but you’ll have to pauze the doom scroll for a few minutes. Notes from inside my – not so – secret social laboratory. People talk to soothe themselves, not to understand.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Thinking of a Palestinian mum begging for cream for her baby, all of his skin a screeching redness, while I am sitting in a kind of heaven.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Post-genocide life. Caring in a world that doesn’t.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Are you on Team Sedation or on Team Sanctification?
Short 7 point tour of the pro-Israeli fantasy world. The denial of zionist atrocities made simple.
Gaza war stories. Photographer Ibrahim had an eye for spotting the joy and innocence of children in the Gaza ruins. Now they can’t find his head.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
This title doesn’t bleed. You should stop scrolling anyway, cause it’s about what you crave more than you realize: raw musings on Friendship. The collapse of the Austro-Belgian Bund. No shots fired, but some casualties.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
This world cup feels like having a hyped up VIP party at a sprawling mansion with the mushy, frazzled corpses of children floating around in a sewage tank in the garden. On the messages hidden in my dreams.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Mourning the loss of a deep friendship cause I couldn’t accept how he embraced Israel. And something on boiled potatoes and beans in tomato sauce. Imagine what would fail the hardest on Instagram. That is this post.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
While others are melting in besieged tent camps my own most destabilizing moments are with a client who looks like Pamela Anderson and Heidi Klum had a baby.
Musing in the morning with Joe, Notes From The Mountain Fortress
On watching Minions with Bruno in a bunker. And a small personal adventure concerning the attempt to annihilate the Palestinians and what little we can do about it. An after hours talk at Amnesty International Bratislava
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
What I want my son to find when he opens the door. With the Slovak sky sounding like Israeli artillery enthusiastically finding targets in a tent camp where barefoot kids play soccer. What is in the day of a powerless person?
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
‘Tato, why do you never smile?’, asks Bruno, my six year old.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
10 points about a weekend spent as usual, between love and horror.
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Life among the colonized. Notes From the Mountain Fortress (5)
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
I identify as a perpetually horny bonobo with specific, though not exclusive, mating preferences. Notes from the mountain fortress (4)
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Dear God, there is a gorgeous cashier at the local Lidl. How much life can you squeeze out of a typical dead day in Boringslava? Notes From The Mountain Fortress (3)
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
Holding the Centre In A World Hitting Me With Sickening Noise. On Life After You Stop Checking The News. And On Enduring ‘Conversations’ about chasing money, status and culinary sensations, not soul, not depth, not connection, not meaning, not Eros, not tenderness, not vibrant beauty whatsoever. Notes From The Mountain Fortress (2)
Notes From The Mountain Fortress
10 characteristics of modern males trapped in optimization loops. Notes From The Mountain Fortress (1)
Understanding the Connection Between Trauma and Mental Health: A Path to Healing
My evil, but so sexy land. Can you love a monster? Yes, says Ari Shavit, if it’s hip, chic, sultry & … lecherous.
My Sexy Evil Land would have been a better title. Israeli books are at their most dangerous when they are self-critical and then celebrate how ‘sexy’ Israel is. Some notes while reading My Promised Land by Ari Shavit
ما انحنى في الصغر لا يستقيم في الكبر What bends in youth does not straighten in old age. Israel was born out of savagery, there will be no redemption.
The Israeli army worships an ancient doomsday sect, the Sicarii. Sounds bad? It is. The Myth of Masada. Understanding the Israeli drive for (self)destruction.
As I predicted a month ago US/Israel and Iran reach a ceasefire. But being right gets drowned in a sea of much more dopamine filled, bombastic predictions like ‘It’s over for Israel’ or ‘The US economy will collapse’ or ‘Tel Aviv will be flattened’. Preaching to a tribe is profitable, being sober is invisible. What I said versus what went viral, showing you we live in an attention economy
In 1982 ET came out, but something far more alien happened. A US president had the chutzpah to call out Israeli atrocities in Lebanon as a ‘holocaust’ and you could still find Israelis to protest against the Israeli engineered massacres of Sabra and Chatilla. Let’s dive deep⬇️
Why Aftercare Planning Is Critical for Long-Term Recovery Success
Not October 7th 2023, but October 5th 2004. Before Hind Rajab there was Iman Darweesh Al Hams.
Middle East Confessions, Travel, US Political Confessions
The US is probably a more restrictive society than Iran’s
Can I make you stop to read about some remarkable American generals you’ve likely never heard of? No worries, US leaders know far less about US history than you do (yes, don’t be modest).
Civil War Confessions, US Political Confessions
We see the Americans lose war after war, but somehow they never feel like losers. Well, here is why. On US Custerism and the war on Iran.
Authenticity Confessions, Middle East Confessions
A word on the Gaza stories and other anti-war stories I write
Books & Music, Cinema Confessions, Middle East Confessions
The most harrowing cinematic experience of my life :: The voice of Hind Rajab
Throwback to when I attended a lecture by Nawal El Sadaawi in Vooruit, Ghent, April 2009
on this day in history, Our Toxic Culture Confessions
The history update you didn’t ask for.
Civil War Confessions, on this day in history
Grant was no Trump. He didn’t do what got him attention, he did what got the job doneOn this day in history, March 10th 1864, Lincoln appointed Grant as commander in chief of all Union forces.
What the mainstream media is hiding about the war with Iran according to alternative media commentators. Satire in times of war.
On This Day In The American Civil War, 9th of March 1862 :: The first duel between ironclads ends in a draw. One of the two ships was ridiculed before the fight, but performed well. There is a lesson in that.
On This Day In History: 9th of March 1945, The US firebomb Tokio. Deadliest conventional bombardment in history. With a lesson strategists refuse to learn
On This Day In The American Civil War. 8th of March 1862 :: The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia blasts wooden ships into oblivion
On This Day In The American Civil War: 8th of March 1862 :: The Battle of Pea Ridge ends with a Union victory
History Confessions, on this day in history
On this day in history: On March 8, 1965, the United States landed its first combat troops in South Vietnam.
Media Confessions, Middle East Confessions
An amazing recap of optimism about Iran’s war strategy
Why a ceasefire with Iran is the most likely outcome. With both Iran and Trump/Netanyahu claiming victory
5 rules to getting to sober analysis of a war situation. How you avoid becoming William Scott Ritter. How not to sit in echo chambers when others sit in bomb shelters. Peddling revenge narratives isn’t analysis
History Confessions, on this day in history
The Confessor 