The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the US Maritime Alliance (USMX) have until January 15 to agree on a new contract. This is the result of a temporary deal reached in October.
President Trump announced his support for the workers’ position following a meeting with Harold Daggett, the president of ILA, and Dennis Daggett, the union’s executive vice president.
…the main point that most overlook.
In Asia and Europe, port automation is happening rapidly. However, in Asia and Europe they have rules and regulations against foreign ownership of their ports. In Europe, Asia and particularly China, ports are considered critical national security infrastructure by the politicians who represent the people. In the USA our politicians represent the multinational corporations and as a result we have sold the majority of our ports to Saudis, Qataris, Europeans and Chinese owners.
If Chinese ports are automated in China, they are operated by Chinese owners. If American ports are automated in the USA, they are operated by Chinese owners. It doesn’t take a genius to see the problem.
World-leading scientists have called for a halt on research to create “mirror life” microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an “unprecedented risk” to life on Earth.
The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.
Although a viable mirror microbe would probably take at least a decade to build, a new risk assessment raised such serious concerns about the organisms that the 38-strong group urged scientists to stop work towards the goal and asked funders to make clear they will no longer support the research.
“The threat we’re talking about is unprecedented,” said Prof Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “Mirror bacteria would likely evade many human, animal and plant immune system responses and in each case would cause lethal infections that would spread without check.”
Theise provides a good description of Right Samadhi at 6:02 min, prompted.
Buddhist philosophy and practice is founded on samadhi states, which might be described as the doors which open to the temple of Deepest Reality. Samadhi states are available to all people. They are the experiential part of Buddhism. They have to be experienced to make sense, and once experienced all of Buddhism will make sense.
Western civilization has almost no traditional awareness of samadhi. We have scores of philosophers and religious thinkers, but no samadhi. It is a glaring omission, one that has led us astray in many ways. Fortunately, today more people are beginning to see what samadhi states are, as Theise illustrates. Be sure to watch the whole clip as it will provide context to what he says about samadhi.
Buddhism is sort of implicitly ‘panpsychist’ or based on consciousness as a primary aspect of reality. Mind Only or Yogacara Buddhism makes this claim more explicitly. Samadhi is beautiful, joyful, wonderful. It will change you very deeply for the better or make you realize you don’t need to be changed at all. ABN
UPDATE: This is a very good discussion which can be understood within a Buddhist ‘mind only’ framework (or not). I have posted it especially because it seems to conform very well with what the Buddha might have thought and/or how later Buddhists came to understand Buddhist enlightenment, the cessation of all suffering through fully understanding all of reality. This video is the first part of a planned two-part discussion. The second part has not yet been posted. The second part is going to start with the question why the universal mind itself does not experience metacognition. I have some idea how Kastrup will answer that question, but will wait for his take before commenting further. Kastrup’s work in general seems to me to be a good way to consider Buddhist practice and thought from a modern point of view, using vocabularies and concepts we are familiar with or which can be readily accessed. It is important to know that the captions for the above video rarely correctly render the term Markov Blanket. This is an important term for understanding Kastrup’s ideas. More information can be found here: Markov Blanket. ABN
UPDATE 2: Near the end of the discussion linked above, Kastrup says he is incapable of meditation. I hope he reads this because I want to point out to him and others that meditation, or samadhi in Buddhism, is the method for the ‘small self’, which resides inside its Markov Blanket, to commune with the One Mind (Kastrup’s term, which works well with Buddhist thought). Samadhi is a natural state. When you take your attention away from Kastrup’s ‘dashboard’ and open the windows (let’s ignore the wind in his metaphor), your ‘small self’ perceives and experiences One Mind. Like all experience, samadhi states become richer and richer the more we experience and appreciate them. I would like to also encourage Kastrup and others to read this description of the Five Skandhas. The ‘consciousness’ which arises out of the first four skandhas is the consciousness of the small self, the self ensconced in its Markov Blanket. Whether he knows it or not, Kastrup has done an excellent job of describing Buddhist thought and practice in modern terms. I particularly like his work because, as far as I know, he has never mentioned Buddhism. For this reason, he provides a very refreshing take on the Dharma very clearly explicated and coming from a different angle from all others. ABN
Samādhi (Pali and Sanskrit: समाधि), in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools, is a state of meditative consciousness. In many Indian religious traditions, the cultivation of Samādhi through various meditation methods is essential for the attainment of spiritual liberation (known variously as nirvana, moksha).[1]
In the oldest Buddhist sutras, on which several contemporary western Theravada teachers rely, it refers to the development of an investigative and luminous mind which is equanimous and mindful. In the yogic traditions, and the Buddhist commentarial tradition on which the Burmese Vipassana movement and the Thai Forest tradition rely, it is interpreted as a meditative absorption or trance, attained by the practice of dhyāna.[5]
With so much now depending on what Christians, Jews and Muslims think and do and how they interact so poorly with each other and any one else and how their beliefs are based on old stories and not much else, this may be a good time to remind or inform anyone who wants to listen that there are much older and deeper traditions of the mind including how individuals should conduct themselves morally, ethically, spiritually. Samadhi states are but one aspect of ancient traditions that vastly predate Judaism and Christianity and also provide much deeper insights into the workings of the human mind and how to deal with the ever-changing conditions of life. The way the Abrahamic religions are behaving today is an embarrassment to all of humanity. ABN
Sexual jealousy is a major factor in all aspects of life. The jealous harass those whom they perceive as more attractive. Parasites revel in destruction of entire types, using their hatred to advance socially while simultaneously encouraging other parasitic groups to join their envy fray. This is a fundamental reason parasitic ideologies flourish and attract followers even as they clearly make little or no sense. Academia is an example of a large American subculture infested with parasites who enjoy ruining things. Pleasure in destruction is a parasitic trait, a cultural trait of parasitic groups. You can identify them by this trait alone. Since sexual jealousy is such a deep source of hatred, it fuels parasitic groups as much as does greed and lust for power. ABN
UPDATE: The period this statue dates from and the area in which it was found was Gandhara, which was a major center of Buddhism. A great deal of Buddhism went to China from Gandhara. Chinese Buddhist nuns, to this day, take Sarvastivadan monastic vows which probably came from Gandhara. Buddhist statuary developed in this area under the strong influence of Greek statuary which became prevalent in that region due to the Greek presence brought by Alexander the Great. The earliest attested Buddhist teachings come to us from this area through Pyrrho, the Greek skeptic, who studied with Buddhist monks. Skepticism is clearly based on Buddhist core teachings. See Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia for more on this topic. I highly recommend that book. ABN
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Wednesday he was stepping down as head of the bureau, just days after Republicans expressed a loss of confidence in him.
Wray, 57, told FBI employees in an afternoon town hall that “after weeks of careful thought,” he had decided to resign in January at the end of the current administration, caving to pressure from GOP senators and President-elect Donald Trump.
The ocean of dark money and power and secret groups that rule USA and the West have moved Wray out of the way. Trump had to have known, if he did not himself direct, that Wray would be pushed aside for Kash Patel or someone else. That same ocean of dark money and power moved some 7 million phantom votes into Biden’s column in 2020. Why exactly, no one knows. It does seem Trump represents a recognition within the dark money comitatus that we the plebs are seriously fed up while also that they the dark money have seriously fucked up. No worries. Change tack and sail on. Wray leaving is surely a good sign, indicating much needed reform will be coming. With the state police probably out of the hands of the Obama wing wingnuts, we probably will not see the sort of obstruction against Trump that we saw in 2017. A serious factor is the incoming public face of the dark money appears cooler, more hip and savvy, smarter, less full of BS, more on the side of we the plebs, better in tune with the reality of history, more grounded in the ocean of awareness that underlies everything and is infinitely greater than the dark ocean of money that merely rules USA in (covert) name only. ABN
American Buddhist Net 