Land of Promise (40 page)

YBIC: Your Brother In Christ.

Yehudim
: The Hebrew word used by Jews to describe their own faith.

Yeshua
: Hebrew for Jesus.

YMCA: Young Men’s Christian Association.

Yoridah
: Feminine singular Hebrew for “to go down [to]”, meaning someone emigrating from Israel. See also:
Aliyah
.

Yoridim
: Masculine plural Hebrew for “to go down [to]”, meaning groups of people emigrating from Israel. See also:
Aliyah.

YPJ:
Yekîneyên Parastina Jinê
. The all-female Women’s Protection Units armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan. See also: Peshmerga, PKK and PYD.

Zebu: A breed of cattle, sometimes known as humped cattle or Brahman. Zebu are characterized by a fatty hump on their shoulders, drooping ears and a large dewlap. They are well adapted to withstanding high temperatures, and are farmed throughout the tropical countries, both as pure zebu and as hybrids with taurine cattle, the other main type of domestic cattle. (WP) See also: Nguni.

Zomia: A geographical term coined in 2002 by historian Willem van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam to refer to the huge mass of the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments based in the population centers of the lowlands. Professor James C. Scott of Yale University used the concept of Zomia in his 2009 book
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
to argue that the continuity of the ethnic cultures living there provides a counter-narrative to the traditional story about modernity: namely, that once people are exposed to the conveniences of modern technology and the modern state, they will assimilate. Rather, the tribes in Zomia are conscious refugees from modernity itself, choosing to live in more primitive, locally-based economies. (WP)

About the Author:

James Wesley, Rawles
is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer. He is the founder and Senior Editor of SurvivalBlog, which since 2005 has been the Internet’s most popular and comprehensive resource on family preparedness. He has published two nonfiction books (
How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It
and
Tools For Survival
), as well as five novels (the
Patriots
series). Many of Jim’s books have ranked in the
New York Times
Bestsellers List. He recently founded Liberty Paradigm Press, a publishing company that provides a venue for aspiring fiction and nonfiction writers.