UPDATE: Ron says he does not believe the Hamas raid of 10/7 was a MIHOP event. At most, he allows it might have been planned as a small LIHOP raid that became much worse than intended. He cites reasons for his beliefs but does not address the overall strategy of the Western cabal, which includes Israel, to achieve world domination. That strategy is manifest in the Ukraine War, abetted illegal immigration into Western countries, deliberately inflationary policies, the plandemic, and more. Ron also misconstrues signs of Israeli preplanning for the 10/7 raid as signs they were incompetent rather than premeditating. Incompetence is the always used excuse for cabal misdeeds. It keeps critics at bay for years until no one cares anymore.
Another point worth making is Ron, as many others have, claims WW1 began in a haze of incompetence and in that resembles the Middle East today. Propagandized history says no one wanted WW1 but it happened anyway, was ‘inevitable’. This is not true. WW1 happened because a British cabal wanted the war and spent over a decade bringing it about. In that sense, yes, it does resemble today’s inflammatory Middle East which will likely ‘inevitably’ start WW3, which supposedly ‘nobody wants’. WW2 also started with ‘incompetence’ in Pearl Harbor. Likewise, the ‘incompetence’ of misidentifying nonexistent WMD in Iraq. The list goes on. All wars are bankers wars, elite wars. ABN
Another week has now passed since the Middle East and the entire world were suddenly upended by the huge raid into Israel by the Hamas militants of Gaza. But the new developments over the last seven days have merely continued and confirmed the situation I’d already described last Monday.
According to all news sources, some 1,400 Israeli soldiers and civilians died in the attack, most of them within the first 24 hours, probably making it the deadliest day in Israel’s entire history, amounting to more fatalities than the total for all of Israel’s wars during nearly the last fifty years combined.
Back in 2011, the Israeli government had freed over 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians in exchange for a single captured soldier. So a key goal of this Hamas attack had been gaining the freedom of the many thousands of captive Palestinians by seizing some Israelis as bargaining chips, and the effort succeeded beyond all expectations, with more than 200 Israeli soldiers and civilians taken back to Gaza as prisoners.
Israel had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advanced technology to guard its Gaza border, but Hamas disabled those systems using inexpensive small drones and highly innovative tactics, thereby inflicting a hugely humiliating defeat upon the Jewish State.
Mossad was widely regarded as one of the world’s best intelligence services and the Israeli military had the same reputation for its prowess in combat. But despite a year of careful planning and preparation, Hamas seems to have achieved total tactical surprise while the local Israeli garrison bases were easily overrun, with none of their sentries on duty and alert. As a result, the IDF suffered up to 600 dead in a matter of hours at the hands of lightly-armed militants, probably the worst one-day combat losses in any of Israel’s many wars. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians have now been evacuated both from the area around Gaza and from the northern parts of the country threatened by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and given the scale of the recent disaster, it’s unclear how soon most of them would be willing to return to their former homes.
A 17th-century Spanish nun is said to have appeared to members of the Jumano tribe, who lived in present-day Texas. The Lady in Blue was said to have the power of bilocation.
One of the most important figures in Texas’ religious history never set foot in Texas at all. She never in her life traveled beyond her tiny village in Spain, yet she stirred religious fervor from the Concho River to the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
Our story begins in 1602 when Maria was born in the pueblito de Ágreda. She was a lovely child born to Catholic parents of noble rank. Barely beyond her toddler years, Maria showed an unusual devotion to a life of prayer and piety.
When she was ten, she already wanted to join a convent. When she was 12, her parents finally blessed her wish to join the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Tarazona. Before that could be arranged, though, Maria’s mother had a vision in which God instructed her to convert their mansion into a convent. She and her daughter would both become nuns. Her father would join a local monastery, following in the footsteps of his sons who were already friars. In four years, this all came to pass.
At 18, Maria took her vows and became Maria de Jesus – Mary of Jesus de Ágreda. The habit of her order was a dark cobalt blue. Now a nun, she spent more time than ever alone in prayer. Maria’s religious devotions intensified. Her sisters worried about her frequent fasting, frail health, and life of extreme deprivation. Yet for her it was a glorious time: she said God had given her a divine gift. It was the gift of bilocation. She could be in two places at once. Through meditation she could appear to God’s children in faraway lands and teach them about Jesus. She said she first appeared to the Jumano tribes of present day Texas in the 1620s. She did this for about ten years, from the time she was 18, to 29. And according to legend, the Jumano Indians of the time confirmed that the Woman in Blue, as they called her, had come among them.
The first proof is offered in the story of 50 Jumano Indians appearing on their own at the San Antonio de la Isleta Mission near present-day Albuquerque, asking the Franciscan priests to teach them about Jesus. When asked how they knew of him, the men said that the Lady in Blue had come to them and taught them the gospel. She had instructed them to go west to find holy men who could teach them more about the faith and baptize them. They, as the legend goes, pointed to a painting of a nun in the mission and said, “She is like her, but younger.”
I have complained about the faults of the Abrahamic religions as they are manifesting in the Middle East today, but many aspects of all of them are worthy and this story of Mary of Jesus de Ágreda is a good example. Buddhism has many stories like this as well. This shows, to my eye, that there is a ‘ground’ for all or most religions that is more fundamental than their doctrinaire teachings, than unquestioning loyalty to clergy or rigid credos. I am a Buddhist because it has a rich and very practical philosophy which also wisely and explicitly teaches that even the Dharma must not be clung to. Even the Dharma can prevent enlightenment if our attachment to it is unwholesome. Long before I became a Buddhist, I had profound spiritual experiences that did not in my mind fit into any tradition I knew. This made me realize, even when I was very young, that religious traditions do not and cannot describe or include everything. They are like cliff notes on the spiritual reality of living in the human realm. Some of those notes are beautiful and worthy, some are not so good. This story of Mary of Jesus de Ágreda is one of the beautiful and inspiring ones. ABN
The conflict is tribal, involving three Abrahamic religions, each of which claims exclusive knowledge of God’s will.
Human tribes + God’s will + conflicting human interpretations of God’s will based on ‘infallible’ scriptures = an agonizing moral conflict that cannot be resolved within the boundaries that delineate it. Reason has no place here save to figure out how to destroy the other tribe(s). All words are fighting words. All statements are inflammatory.
In Buddhism, these are glaring examples of the First & Second Noble Truths. These two truths describe the core mundane reality of the Human Realm. The Third & Fourth Noble Truths describe what we can do about it.
The strong Buddhist answer is the best thing you can do is become a monk; remove yourself from the insoluble moral agony of human greed, pride, anger, ignorance, and doubt (in a higher reality).
The less strong Buddhist answer is mostly remove yourself from the tribal fray but make an effort to raise public awareness of the depth of the predicament; share the Dharma. That’s what I am doing on this site. In that spirit I present the video below. It has been taken off Instagram after receiving some 12 million views. It does provide valid information but if the information inflames you, one way or the other, it will only contribute to the problem. I present it in the hope that more understanding leads to better understanding and eventually moral clarity, at least for people enlightened enough to see beyond the fray. ABN
General Robert Abrams said it’s unlikely Israel will be able to accomplish their purported goal of eliminating Hamas while also protecting Palestinian civilians.
Retired US General Robert Adams sounded a note of pessimism early Sunday when asked by US media for his thoughts on Israel’s ongoing military action in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“I think it’s going to be what I would consider nearly impossible, to destroy Hamas, to eliminate their capability to do harm to Israel and Israeli people, while simultaneously protecting what some people have estimated as to be a million Palestinians who are in harm’s way and they can’t get out of harm’s way,”said Adams in an interview on US television.
Adams noted the difficulty of Israel’s objective given the complex urban terrain of Gaza.
“This is going to be a very difficult task for the Israeli Defense Forces, that the defense that Hamas will put up in that very dense urban terrain, unlike anything that we’ve seen in recent years, is going to require some very siege fighting, and simultaneously trying to ensure that the Israelis do not target unwittingly the locations of the hostages,” said Adams.
Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.
In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.
The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system.
The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.
The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership – with China in the wings – is laying an elaborate, Sun Tzu-tinged trap for the Hegemon in West Asia.
Apart from Israel, there is no entity on the planet capable of switching the focus, in a flash, away from the west’s spectacular debacle in Ukraine.
The warmongers in charge of US foreign policy, not exactly Bismarckian stalwarts, believe that if Project Ukraine is unattainable, Project Final Solution in Palestine could instead be a – ethnic cleansing – cakewalk.
A more plausible scenario, though is that Iran-Russia – and the new “axis of evil” Russia-China-Iran – have all it takes to drag the Hegemon into a second quagmire. It’s all about using the enemy’s own, discombobulated flip-flapping to unbalance him and disorient him to oblivion.
The White House’s wishful thinking that the Forever Wars in Ukraine and Israel are inscribed in the same lofty “democracy” drive and essential to US national interests, has already backfired – even among American public opinion.
That does not prevent cries and whispers along the Beltway revealing Israel-allied US neocons increasing the tempo to provoke Iran – via a proverbial false flag that would lead to an American attack. That Armageddon scenario neatly fits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical psychopathy.
Vassals would be forced to meekly comply. NATO heads of state have made a beeline to visit Israel to demonstrate their unconditional support for Tel Aviv – including Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Rishi Sunak, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, the senile lodger at the White House, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
This bit of news seems to have popped up suddenly and with little explanation. The federal government quietly issued a policy change yesterday halting the export of most civilian firearms, ammunition, and related accessories to much of the world. They also suspended the issuance of new firearms export licenses. There are some exceptions to the ban, but several of the world’s biggest importers of American firearms will be affected. The order was issued by the Commerce Department (?) and the reason given was rather vague, citing national security concerns and the need to ensure firearms aren’t “diverted” to hostile actors.
This is going to have an immediate impact on American firearms manufacturers including Smith & Wesson and Sig Sauer.
American Buddhist Net 