Okay, the name is a little silly but it’s a tasty dish. The problem with most beef stews for me is the potatoes are high in carbohydrates and actually spike my blood sugar something fierce. I’ve done beef stews using broccoli and cauliflower instead of potatoes and carrots with reasonable results. The one downside is if you save it to reheat, the vegetables go to mush.
This was something I tried using stuff I mostly had to hand.
4-5 lb beef chuck, cut into chunks
2 tbsp xantham gum
2 16 oz jars of salsa
1 4 oz can green chilies
1 14 oz can beef stock.
Salt and pepper to taste
Put the beef into a 5 quart slow cooker. Sprinkle the xantham gum over it.
Add the remaining ingredients except salt and pepper on top.
Cook 8-10 hours. Basically, you want the meat to fall apart when you stir it.
Stir. Season to taste. Truth is, with the other ingredients I need very little at this point for my taste.
When I last made this I used “Chi Chi’s Hot” salsa but the final result was actually quite mild. The other ingredients and the cooking moderated the heat considerably. That’s part of why I called it a stew rather than a chili–the result was more savory than spicy. Still quite tasty.
Nothing really grabbed me today as a blog topic so I go to my old fallback: a snippet from a work in progress. This is an urban fantasy tentatively titled “Alchemy of Shadows”.
I pressed the doorbell. A musical chime sounded inside. The door opened and a wizened man, my client Nobuto Tanaka, stood facing me.
The man stood about five foot six and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Grey salted his short-cropped hair, neither thinning nor receding. He wore a dress shirt and slacks, tie loosened but not yet removed. Mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and concealed his eyes.
“Mr Schmidt?”
I nodded, still looking at the sunglasses.
He must have noticed my stare. He waved in the direction of his face.
“Dilated. Eye doctor this morning. It’s why I was free to meet you. Please. Come in.” He stepped back.
I passed through the doorway into the lower level of a two floor apartment. A kitchen on my left opened into a dining and living area.
Tanaka pressed himself flat to the closet door to my right to allow me room to pass. I suspected the closet storage space extended underneath the stairs to my right that led up to the loft/bedroom.
Three torchiers illuminated the living and dining area and an LED bulb in a decorative ceiling fixture this short hallway. Heavy blackout curtains concealed the sliding doors that opened onto the balcony. A single futon and a small coffee table were the only other furniture visible.
“I don’t know what you expect from me,” I said as Tanaka closed the door behind me. Normally I work with remodlers, or even architects when people are building. If you’re just wanting decorating, I can give you the names of some good people who charge less than I…”
“No,” Tanaka’s voice came as little more than a whisper. “You’re the one we want.”
I froze, then slowly turned. “We?”
Tanaka reached out to a switch on the wall. His fingers slid down, flipping the toggle. The apartment went dark.
“We.”
I backed away. By the dim light spilling around the edges of the blackout curtain I saw Tanaka remove the sunglasses. Two centuries earlier, or even one, I might have imagined the black pools that filled his eye sockets. Now I knew better.
Scientists say that darkness is simply the absence of light. It’s not a thing in itself. They are wrong. Oh, how they are wrong. Darkness extruded from Tanaka’s eyes, reached for me.
I scrambled backwards. One of the tendrils lashed out and struck my right hand. My hand went dead, frozen from elbow to fingertips. It did not hurt. The pain, I knew, would come later. If I lived that long.
Another tendril lashed. I fell backward in a roll, avoiding it, barely. Something tapped the sole of my left shoe. My foot went numb.
My roll brought me next to the coffee table, a lightweight decorative piece, not the solid wood of my own day. I grabbed it with my left hand and hurled it in Tanaka’s direction. That bought me enough time to push myself unsteadily to my feet. I could not feel my foot but it held my weight so long as I did not rely on it for balance.
My right arm still was not functioning, hanging as dead weight from the elbow down. With my left I removed my LED flashlight from its holder on my belt. I pressed the button on the end.
Nothing happened.
Tanaka, or the thing in his place, cackled.
“You belong to us now.”
I backed up another step, coming to a stop as my back pressed the curtains into the closed sliding door.
I smiled.
Reaching up, I took a firm grip on the curtain and dropped, bringing my full weight onto the fabric, onto the rod mounted above the door.
The rod tore loose from its mounting and the curtain cascaded around me. Light, the diffuse light of the afternoon sky, but light, flooded the room.
The thing screamed, throwing an arm over the space where Tanaka’s eyes would be. It retreated back into the shadows of the hallway.
I untangled myself from the curtains.
Light, welcome light, my one weapon against these creatures.
The creature cackled again. “You are trapped ‘Schmidt” and we are patient. You have assaulted me in my home. The police will come. And you will have nowhere to run when we come to take you at last.”
I looked left, then right. No exits. Up. The loft? No. I knew the floorplan of these apartments. I’d reviewed it before accepting Tanaka’s request for a consult. No exit up there.
Working behind me, I slid open the door. I backed onto the patio. Fire escape?
Mounting brackets but no ladder.
I glanced over the railing. Fourteen stories. That was a long way down.
“You have lost. You are ours at last.”
“Will you shut up?” I fumbled in the inside breast pocket of my jacket for my emergency vial. I held the cap in my teeth and spun the vial under it. Once it opened I spat out the cap and poured the liquid within the vial down my throat.
I turned and backed to the doorway. I dashed forward and leaped.
“This…”
I got my good foot on the rail of the balcony.
“…is going…”
I propelled myself out into space.
“…to hurt.”
It takes just under three seconds to fall fourteen stories. You hit the ground at just under sixty five miles per hour. Even for me that could, probably would, be fatal. If I missed the pool. Even if I hit it, it would not be deep enough for what amounted to urban cliff diving.
Three seconds does not sound like much but it’s a long time when you are falling it. I twisted in the air. I hit the pool feet first. The water slowed me. Then I hit the bottom.
The bones in both legs shattered, tibia, fibula, femur, not to mention the splinters the impact made of the smaller bones in my feet. My left warm twisted, dislocating my shoulder. two ribs broke. One drove deep into my lungs. Just enough energy remained when my head struck the cement, face first, to break my nose and knock loose two teeth.
Then the elixer began to work. Bones realigned and knit. Torn muscle wove together. Marrow burned as it poured new blood cells into my veins. I stood, gasping. My right arm still hung limp, my left foot remained a nerveless lump at the end of my leg but of the damage from the fall, only the pain remained.
Coughing as my lungs expelled water, I staggered to the shallow end of the pool and rolled onto the deck.
Above, I could see people at windows and on balconies. Pointing. Shouting. There would be calls to for the police, for an ambulance. I had to get out of here.
I struggled to my feet and looked, spotting the gate. Limping heavily on my numb foot, I stumbled toward it.
I am more than a little pissed off about this incident.
I speak of young Charlie Gard, the boy in England who has a mitochondrial disorder for which the National Health Service has no treatment, much less a cure.
Charlie’s parents raised nearly 2 million dollars to cover the cost of bringing Charlie to the US where an experimental treatment offers hope of significantly extending young Charlie’s life, however the government-controlled hospital has refused to release Charlie to his parents, going so far as to go to court to terminate their parental rights to facilitate the hospital’s plans to place Charlie on the Liverpool Care Pathway, a supposed palliative care protocol that in function is used to hasten the death of problem patients.
Let me repeat that. The government run hospitals can’t help him. They propose to put him into a facility which basically drugs him into “comfort” while he dies. The parents have raised money on their own and want to take him to where he might be able to get a highly experimental treatment that, if successful, will allow him to live longer. It’s not a cure, so stipulated. It’s a palliative that might extend his life.
The hospital said “no”. They weren’t going to release him to his parents so they could take him for treatment and, as pointed out above, went to court to terminate their parental rights.
The hospital went to court for the “right” to let Charlie die rather than allow his parents, at their own expense, to seek an experimental treatment.
I have written in the past on profit motive vs. socialized medicine and how the former despite what “theory” might suggest, leads to better and more available care. But his case just highlights how utterly evil socialized medicine is. A profit centered system can only say “we’re not going to treat” or “we’re not going to pay for that”. This still leaves the individual with the ability to seek other options or funding–and people have done so, as these parents in the UK have done. Government run “socialized” systems, however, can shut you right down with force, as the NHS in the UK have done here.
Now, it happens from time to time that medical professionals and the government will interfere with parents’ rights over their children but usually it’s the other way around–when the parents for whatever reason refuse life-saving treatment for their children the law steps in to ensure the child gets the necessary treatment.
That’s bad enough, but the arguments I’ve seen justifying this atrocity (and it is an atrocity) are what really boil my blood. One example that’s just so horrifying that I’m loathe to name the person who made it because…well, look:
Even if the experimental treatment was successful, it is unlikely to undo any brain damage, and this poor child will become little more than an emotional and financial burden on the family, while simultaneously being of academic interest to scientists and medical professionals.
I am not a parent, so I can’t relate at all to the pain and love Charlie’s family experiences… But I am one of 7.3 billion people and one less human won’t lead us to extinction.
That language could have come right out of the early 20th century Eugenics movement, not the “selective breeding” part but the culling portion–the “euthanizing” of undesireables of people who are a “burden” on society.
I’m avoiding using a particular term here but with something so blatant it’s really difficult.
Maybe there’s little chance of this treatment helping. Maybe there’s little chance of his being approved for the treatment. Maybe it will all be for nothing.
But here’s the thing: That’s not your nor my call to make. The boy has parents who love him and want what they believe is best for him. And some faceless bureaucrat is overriding that. That might be understandable if the bureaucrat was choosing life for the boy, but when choosing death? In cold calculus, if choosing life is a mistake one can always change their mind later. Death is irrevocable. Thus, if given a choice, I’d rather err on the side of choosing life.
Apparently the British NHS is staffed by Klingons:
KRAS: What do Earth men offer you? What have you obtained from them in the past? Powders and liquids for the sick? We Klingons believe as you do. The sick should die. Only the strong should live. (Star Trek episode “Friday’s Child”)
Norse Magic, prophecy, goddesses, and a revenge denied…or is it?
THE SPAEWIFE
by
David L. Burkhead
The Norns speak to me. Not the great Norns, not Verthandi, Urd, and Skuld. No, I have never been to Urd’s Well, not even in vision. The lesser Norns speak to me, the Norns that follow each man, woman and child and dictate their fate.
The Norns speak to me and they tell me terrible things. I give thanks to the gods that I do not understand most of the things they tell me, for what I do understand is awful enough.
The oiled skin in the window glowed with the light of early morning as I kneaded the sourdough into fresh barley dough. My son, Asbjorn, had gone to the creek to see what fish our traps had caught and my daughter, Drifa still slept in the loft.
I formed the dough into mounds and placed it on the tray. I placed a fist-sized piece of the dough into a clay pot and set it aside to use for the next batch.
The latch on our cottage door rattled as Sveinna fumbled home after a long night at the Jarl’s longhouse with the other men.
The door open and Sveinna stepped in. “Woman! Where is my breakfast?”
His words were harsh but I saw the smile in his eyes. I felt warmth grow upward from my stomach and my own smile pulled at my lips.
Then I saw the Norn behind him. Her smile held nothing of joy or cheer. Her eyes narrowed.
Sveinna could not see her, nor could he hear as she looked at me and said, “Soon.”
The smile forming on my own face at Sveinna’s appearance froze.
I turned and put the tray of bread to rise by the hearth, still warmed with the banked fire. By the time I turned back to Sveinna, the smile was back on my face.
“Welcome home, my husband.”
“Welcome home is it?” He grabbed me and pressed me to him. Then, he let go and clutched his head. “Oh, the night was long indeed. There was too much talking, too much singing, and far too much ale.”
I swept up my mixing spoon in my hand and tapped him on the head. “And too many pretty thralls eager to keep you company?”
“There were thralls enough, goodwife,” he said.
“Comely ones?”
“Comely enough,” Sveinna said. From the first day we’d met, he had never lied to me. “And they would have kept me company had I wished. But what I wished was to be here with you. I have not tired of you yet, woman.”
With that he pulled me to him again and we tumbled to the straw-strewn floor.
#
“Ageirr claimed the field just east of ours,” Sveinna said around a mouthful of bread, “but he has not worked it, not in four summers. Kvigr said that he had strong sons who would work the land. After much talk, we agreed to cede the land to Kvigr, but he has to give half of the first harvest from it to Ageirr.”
I nodded and refil[d1] led his cup. Sveinna always told me about the Thing and the decisions made. “So Kvigr will be our neighbor?”
“Not Kvigr,” Sveinna said. “His sons.” He frowned and looked toward the door. “Speaking of sons, what is keeping that boy?”
“Momma?”
I looked up. Drifa peered down at me from the loft.
“Hey, little girl,” I said. My gaze flicked past her to the Norn who stood behind her but I could read nothing in its face. “You ready for breakfast.”
“Make water,” she said and began to climb down the ladder from the loft.
“Asbjorn!” Sveinna called behind me as he stepped out the door.
I took Drifa by the hand and draped her cloak over her shoulders against the morning chill.
“Momma! Now!”
“Patience, sweetling.” I grabbed my own cloak and frowned. Something was not right.
With Drifa in tow, I went out the door.
Sveinna stood just outside the door, unmoving, his hands spread slightly from his sides. His Norn looked at me, a broad grin on her face, then looked back the other way. I followed her gaze.
At the edge of the clearing around the house, where the path led to the river, stood five, no, six men. One of them held Asbjorn, who struggled in his grip and against the hand clamped over his mouth. Another stood next to him, his dagger hovering just in front of Asbjorn’s exposed throat.
“What do you wish with my son?” Sveinna’s voice was soft, like the low growl of a wolf before it leaps.
“Your son?” One of the men laughed. “I want nothing with your son. No, it’s her I want.” He pointed at me.
I pushed Drifa behind me. “Inside, sweetie,” I whispered.
Sveinna took a step toward the woodpile, toward the axe that the men across the field would be unable to see from where they stood. “And what do you want with my wife?”
Inside I screamed. Sveinna’s Norn? Was this the time? No. Please, no.
“She is a witch that tells the future,” the man, the leader I supposed, raised his open hand toward me. “I would have her tell it for me.”
“I tell when the rain will come, or the frost; when is best to plant and when to harvest,” I said. “Nothing more.”
“No?” The man gestured and the other pressed the dagger up against Asbjorn’s throat. “I think you can tell much more. Who lives. Who dies. What I must do to win battles.”
I shook my head. I had never spoken of the Norn’s words to me, ever. They frightened me. They told of wars where more people died in a single day of battle than lived in all our village, in all the Northlands even. Men would think me mad were I to tell such tales. I spoke instead as I had said, of weather, of harvest, of planting. No more than that. “I have never told more than those things.”
“But you can, can you not. What you have told, and what you can tell, are not the same.” He raised a hand. “Gefvaldr!”
The man holding the knife pressed it harder against Asbjorn’s throat. A trickle of blood ran along the blade.
“Yes!” I cried. “I can. Do not hurt him! My son!”
The man lowered his hand. The other, the one with the knife, removed it from Asbjorn’s throat. I could not look away from the line of red on his throat from which blood dripped.
“You!” The man pointed at Sveinna who now stood next to the woodpile. “Move no further.” He raised a hand again and two of the men raised spears, poised to hurl at Sveinna.
“Sveinna, my husband, please,” I whispered. I glanced at his Norn and turned my eyes from the look of glee on her face. “Anger them not.”
Sveinna stood straight, looked at me, and nodded.
“You will come with me,” the man said. “You will tell the future as I bid, when I bid. And in turn, I will leave these others in peace.” His voice grew hard. “And if you do not, I will kill them all and take you anyway.”
I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I had no choice. I took one step toward the man, then another. Numbly, I walked across the clearing to him.
“Hnaki, take her,” the man said. One of his companions, Hnaki, grabbed me by the arms from behind.
The man who had been speaking all this time raised a hand and pointed at Sveinna.
“No!” I screamed, but I was too late. The two men with poised spears hurled them. One buried itself in Sveinna’s stomach, the other in his chest. As I struggled in Hnaki’s arms, Sveinna sank to his knees. His right hand stretched out toward the axe, grasped the handle, raised it.
I could not turn away. Sveinna lifted the axe overhead, and then his hand opened. The axe fell. Sveinna tumbled to the cold ground.
“The girl is inside,” the man, the leader of these bandits, said. “Get her. Then burn the place.”
“The Jarl will not let you live,” I said, still staring at Sveinna’s body.
The man laughed. “The Jarl? He removed a bag from where it hung at his belt. He opened it and reached inside.
What can a spaewife do, when even the gods are against her and the future she foresees is full of horrors?
For years Katla Gudmarsdottir told no one of the things the Norns, controllers of fate, told her were coming. She shared forecastings of when to plant and when to harvest and other simple things, but not the dread visions the Norns gave her.
Now Ulfarr, the Foul one, has kidnapped her and holds her children hostage for her foretelling.
And alone, forsaken even by the Norns, Katla must save herself, her children and her people.
Updated version of a post I made several years ago.
I am not a Christian. I describe as an “Asatru leaning agnostic” or maybe “a practitioner, if not a believer, in Asatru”. Still, I’d I have to say that Christians make far better neighbors than many another group. Yeah, they have their bad apples but the comparison between Christians as a group, at least in the Western world, and Isis or the Taliban is beyond ridiculous. Part of that is simply a matter of civilization. People simply behave better in the civilized world than they do in the more barbaric regions. However Christians in the civilized world try to spread civilization. Groups like Isis and the Taliban try to spread barbarism. Apples and dark matter they have so little in common.
I have yet to meet a Christian who believes I must die for being asatruar (well, leaning that way anyway). They may try to convince me of their belief. They may be concerned for my immortal soul. But they do not say I should be killed for not believing in “the god of the book.” How have ISIS and the Taliban weighed in on that? Is, perhaps, the choice they offer Islam, Dhimmitude (for Christians and Jews–“people of the book”), or death?
The Crusades you say? Well, leave aside that the Crusades were quite a few centuries ago, you might want to look more deeply into the history behind them. It was a lot more complicated than simply wanting to kill the infidel in the name of Christianity.
As for folk like the abortion clinic murderers and the like that are often paraded about as examples of how “Christians are just as bad”, you might want to consider the religious leanings of the people who investigated those crimes, the people who caught the culprits, the people who tried them, the people who convicted them, and the people who punished them. Simple statistics suggests that the majority of them were some flavor of Christian.
How about ISIS or the Taliban? Same thing going on there? Violence in the name of their religion being punished by their religious peers? No? Sure some other Islamic nations are fighting them but not because they’re attacking Christians or other Infidels, but because Isis and the Taliban are attacking these other Islamic nations for not being Islamic enough. It’s not the crimes of ISIS and the Taliban they oppose. It’s who their targets are. “You aren’t supposed to attack us!”
Now, this is where some folk will scream about how racist I’m being and how I hate Muslims and…
First off, I never said “all Muslims”. I called out specifically ISIS and the Taliban and I’d expand that to other extremist groups as well. Some folk say that the problem is endemic to Islam, that the religion itself calls for that kind of extremism in its very principles and a read of its doctrinal documents combined with the doctrine of abrogation (that which came later–such as the more violent portions of the Quran written once Mohammed and his followers gained military power–supersedes that which was written earlier–the more peaceful and conciliatory passages written while they were few and powerless) would indicate that it is. But even if so, that still does not mean “every Muslim.” Just as there are Christians, many of them in fact, who do not follow every aspect of Christ’s teachings, so too will there be at least nominal Muslims who do not follow every aspect of Mohammed’s.
But even that does not make them equivalent. People tend to be people–some peaceful, some not. But ideologies are not all the same. And its not the peaceful lambs who are drawn to groups like ISIS.
And so I wish people would stop with the false comparison.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The Writer in Black 