I said on the day of the Qatari strike that the attack will be great for Palestine. Since then we’ve seen an aggressive systematic overturn on Israel’s interests.
This is a great article. Everyone should read it.
I’ve copy pasted here as its behind a paywall;
Two weeks before he went to the US to discuss a Donald Trump-backed plan to end the war in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of his far-right followers in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and made a vow. “There will be no Palestinian state,” he said. “This place is ours.” Now, sitting in a hotel room in New York with his closest advisers and US interlocutors, he was looking at a draft document for a peace plan that ended with the exact opposite: a “credible pathway”, however vague, to a future Palestinian state. “The sting was in the tail,” said a person briefed on the meeting, which took place in late September. “It felt like a final betrayal.”
It wasn’t the only sting. Trump’s draft document was the result of a frantic round of lobbying by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other influential Arab and Muslim countries, that also tapped into the president’s anger over Israel’s September 9 strike targeting Hamas’s political negotiators in Doha. The diplomatic push was also aided by the renewed influence of Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner. Their goal, said people involved in the process, was to deliver for the US president twin political and personal ambitions. Trump wanted to secure the release of the 48 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, end the war in Gaza and also keep alive his dream of brokering a grand rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The timing was not arbitrary, said two Israeli officials involved in the talks. Trump made clear that he wanted the war to end by the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the conflict. The Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump covets, will also be announced this month.
“From very early on, Trump understood that the hostages are the keys that open all doors in the Middle East,” said a former Israeli diplomat who liaised with Washington on behalf of the captives’ families.
Trump had met with released hostages, knew some by name, and followed their recovery from months in captivity — a personal connection far surpassing that of Netanyahu. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, texts regularly with the families waiting for their loved ones. But to get all the hostages out at once, and set his grand plan for the Middle East in motion, Trump needed Netanyahu to make concessions and a postwar plan. This was necessary not just to convince Hamas — for whom the hostages are the only real source of leverage — but also to appease Washington’s Gulf allies, who Netanyahu had alienated with Israel’s belligerence across the Middle East.
Among the most influential was Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office and has been central to two years of mediation efforts, said people involved in the negotiations. Israel’s attack on Doha, a US ally, just as Hamas was studying a ceasefire proposal from Witkoff, infuriated Trump. Indeed, when Netanyahu finally made it to the White House on September 29 — days after Trump had already presented his peace plan to Arab leaders — the president handed him a phone receiver and listened in as Netanyahu humbly apologised to Qatar’s prime minister. The strike on Qatar “actually opened the door for all of this,” said a former US official who maintains contact with leaders in the Middle East. The strike was humiliating for Trump, but “it allowed him to say, ‘you guys fucked up, and I’m bailing you out here, and I’m done,’” the official said, satirically characterising Netanyahu’s subsequent Oval Office apology to Qatar as “a hostage video”.
While Netanyahu and his team tried watering down some elements of what became Trump’s 20-point peace plan — especially the reference to a Palestinian state — a Qatari technical team sat not far away in the White House, said a person familiar with the events.
“It was impossible to change more than a few words here and there,” said a second person who read drafts of the plan. For instance, Netanyahu and his negotiators had sought one major concession — an opportunity to return to fighting if Israel decided Hamas had broken some clause of the agreement. The team was told, in no uncertain terms, “to stop looking for loopholes”. “Trump himself had guaranteed [to the Arabs] that Israel would not start the war again,” the person said. This pledge was verified by a second person familiar with conversations between the White House and Arab officials. And so nestled between the dry legalese of the peace plan were proposals that would be anathema to the far-right and messianic parties that prop up Netanyahu’s coalition, and who have vowed to expel Palestinians from Gaza and resettle it with Jews. Now, the document ruled out forced displacement and said Gazans would be free to leave the besieged enclave, and to return when they wanted. Hamas fighters could be granted amnesty if they gave up their weapons and agreed to “peaceful coexistence”, instead of being hunted to death. Not only would Israel not be allowed to occupy or annex Gaza, it could not build settlements there. The UN, reviled by Netanyahu, would be allowed back to feed Palestinians starved by Israel’s blockade. Still, there was enough in the document for Netanyahu to save face. Hamas would be barred from Palestinian governance. Its fighters would be disarmed and the strip demilitarised.
A committee of Palestinian technocrats and an international supervisory body chaired by Trump would run Gaza temporarily, not the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank. An international force would provide security. But most important, said two Israeli officials, was the language Trump used when announcing it — if Hamas rejected the deal, he said, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas”. Standing next to him, Netanyahu looked subdued. He had grappled with and outmanoeuvred three American presidents — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Now he faced intense pressure from the president he had confidently declared to be “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”. Though Trump has long unnerved US allies with his transactional approach to politics and mercurial decision-making, Netanyahu had seen the US leader and his fervently pro-Israel political base as reliable sources of support. But earlier this year Trump surprised him with the announcement that the US had been holding indirect talks with Iran, then embarrassed him by reminding him that Israel was propped up by billions of dollars in US aid. “The rule of thumb is Donald Trump’s interests come first,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US. Before Trump, Netanyahu expanded settlements over Obama’s objections, and slow-rolled peace talks under Clinton. Referring to demands from Biden on the conduct of the Gaza war, Oren added: “And with president Biden who famously said don’t, don’t, don’t — and Israel did.” “But with Donald Trump, when he says don’t, then you don’t,” said Oren. “And now that’s the rule [even for] Israel.” He pointed out the expletive-laden public scolding the president administered when Israel bombed eastern Iran after Trump declared a ceasefire that ended a 12-day war between the regional enemies in June.
Days after his White House visit, where Netanyahu stood alongside Trump and said he supported the plan, the mood turned sour for the Israeli prime minister again. Back home, he had sold the Trump proposals as a victory for Israel — a “take it or leave it” option for Hamas, with US blessing for Israel to annihilate the militant group as the cost of rejection.
But on Friday, when Hamas cherry-picked the part of the deal that appealed the most to Trump — the release within 72 hours of all the remaining captives, alive and dead — while sidestepping the more contentious elements, Netanyahu found himself cornered. “Suddenly, there was a fundamental change in the situation. Earlier, Hamas had three choices — it could surrender, it could abjure terror, or it could die,” said Oren. “Now, it has a fourth choice — to negotiate. And while they negotiate, Israel has a red light.” Shortly after Hamas’s statement, Trump ordered Israel to “immediately” cease military operations in Gaza while talks continued. In a phone call with Trump, first reported by Axios and confirmed by an Israeli official, Netanyahu tried to convince Trump that Hamas’s qualified acceptance was a delaying tactic. Trump snapped back: “Why are you so fucking negative?” Axios reported. Days later, Trump publicly hammered the point home, telling an Israeli reporter that it did not take much to convince Netanyahu to accept the situation. “He was fine with it. He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice,” Trump told Israel’s Channel 12 news. “With me, you got to be fine.”
If this account is true, Israel does not control Trump. Great read. ABN
Much of the work done in human semiotics involves analyses of semiotic codes.
Semiotics and semiotic codes are often treated like language or languages for which a grammar can be found.
One obvious problem with this sort of approach is semiotics indicates a set that is much broader than language. Stated another way, language is a subset of semiotics.
Human semiotics also include music, imagery, gesture, facial expression, emotion, and anything else that can communicate either within one mind or between two or more minds.
It is very helpful to analyze semiotic codes and it is very helpful to try to figure out how cultures, groups, and individuals use them. We can compare the semiotics of heroism in Chinese culture to that of French culture. Or the semiotics of gift-giving in American culture to that of Mexican culture. We can analyze movies, literature, science, and even engineering based on semiotic codes we have abstracted out of them.
We can do something similar for human psychology.
Analyses of this type are, in my view, general in that they involve schema or paradigms or grammars that say general things about how semiotic systems work or how individuals (or semiotic signs themselves) fit into those systems.
This is all good and general analyses of this sort can be indispensable aids to understanding.
General semiotic analyses are limited, however, in their application to human psychology because such analyses cannot effectively grasp the semiotic codes of the individual. Indeed general analyses are liable to conceal individual codes and interpretations more than usefully reveal them.
This is so because all individuals are always complex repositories of many general semiotic codes as well as many individual ones. And these codes are always changing, responding, being conditioned by new circumstances and many kinds of feedback.
Individuals as repositories of many codes, both external and internal, are complex and always changing and there is no general analysis that will ever fully capture that complexity.
For somewhat similar reasons, no individual acting alone can possibly perform a self-analysis that captures the full complexity of the many and always-changing semiotic codes that exist within them.
Self-analysis is far too subject to selection bias, memory, and even delusion to be considered accurate or objective. The individual is also far too complex for the individual to grasp alone. How can an individual possibly stand outside itself and see itself as it is? Where would the extra brain-space come from?
How can a system of complex semiotic codes use yet another code to successfully analyze itself?
Clearly, no individual human semiotic system can ever fully know itself.
To recap, 1) there is no general semiotic analysis that will ever capture the complexity of individual psychology, and 2) no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of the semiotic codes that exist within them.
Concerning point two, we could just as well say that no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of their own psychology.
We are thus prevented from finding a complex analysis of human psychology through a general analysis of semiotics and also through an individual’s self-analysis when acting alone.
This suggests, however, that two individuals acting together might be able to glimpse, if not grasp, how their complex semiotic codes are actually functioning when they interact with each other. If two individuals working together can honestly observe and discuss moments of dynamic real-time semiotic interaction between them, they should be able to begin to understand how their immensely complex and always-changing psycho-semiotic codes are actually functioning.
An approach of this type ought to work better for psychological understanding of the individuals involved than any mix of general semiotic analyses applied to them. Indeed, prefabricated, general semiotic analyses will tend to conceal the actual functioning of the idiosyncratic semiotics and semiotic codes used by those individuals.
The FIMLmethod does not apply a general semiotic analysis to human psychology. Rather it uses a method or technique to allow two individuals working together to see and understand how their semiotics and semiotic codes are actually functioning. ABN
I put this video up last night after only watching parts of it. Later on, I watched the whole thing. It is very good. Candace analyzes a morass of ambiguity very well and makes a clear case that Kirk’s murder demands continued investigation. ABN
If we consider humans to be complex signaling systems or networks, then it is readily apparent that each human network signals within itself and also is connected by signals to other networks.
the only significant interpersonal signaling data we can really know with significant certainty are data noticed, remembered, and agreed upon by two (or more in some cases) people engaged in significant interpersonal communication (signaling).
the fundamental impossibility of determining what anything means well enough to “translate” it into another context, a next sentence, into another person’s mind, or even “translating” your own speech from the past into the context of your mind today.
When we analyze a person based on vague ideas like “personality,” “psychology,” or “cognition,” we are principally assigning ambiguous referents to amorphous categories. We have more words but not much more understanding.
Cognition is a huge grab-bag of a word that means almost anything, as do the terms psychology and personality.
If we replace these terms with the concept of signaling networks, we gain specificity. For example, rather than analyzing the “cognitive-behavior” of a person we can more easily and profitably analyze their signaling.
The advantage of examining signaling rather than “cognitive-behavior” is signals are quite specific. They can usually be defined pretty well, they can be contextualized, and their communicative intent can be determined with reasonable specificity.
To be most effective, signaling analysis works best if we abandon the idea that we can accurately analyze the signals of someone else, especially if we do not analyze our own signals at the same time.
Moreover, a signaling analysis will work best if we do it with:
someone that we care about and that cares about us
someone with whom we can be completely honest and who will be completely honest with us
someone who is willing to spend the time to do the analyzing
Sad to say, it can be difficult to find two people who fit together in those ways, but that is how it is. Much of this problem is due to social expectations, which presently greatly reduce opportunities for clear, honest communication. And much of this is due to how we normally conceive of a person, as a bundle of vague things that cannot be pinned down.
The ideal signaling analysis will be done between close friends with the above qualifications. A signaling analysis will not work well, if at at all, if it is done between a professional and a patient. A professional psychologist would do the best for their patient by teaching them how to do signaling analysis with a friend. If they don’t have a friend, maybe one can be found; if not, a different approach should be used.
But you don’t have to have “problems” to do a signaling analysis. Everyone will benefit from it.
Signaling analysis works because partners learn to work with good data that has been generated between them during real-life situations. Having this data allows partners to do micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis on it. And these different levels help them see the specifics of a particular signal exchange, the immediate context of the exchange, and the larger social or historical context from which the exchange has derived some or much of its meaning.
For example, if clear data on a tone of voice has been agreed upon, both partners can then explain the micro antecedents and context of that data, the meso context of those antecedents, and if necessary the macro context that gave rise to either or both of those. The same outline applies to all micro data, be it tone, gesture, word choice, body language, reference, etc.
With practice, a new way of understanding communication will arise in partners’ minds. Rather than having a vague “cognition” about some poorly-defined “emotion” or “personality trait,” partners will find that they can benefit much more by simply analyzing what actually happened based upon data they both agree on.
It is very important for partners to do many analyses of specific micro-data, a single word or phrase, a single tone of voice, a single gesture, etc.. The reason for this is we can’t accurately remember much more than that. When we try to do more, we are pushed immediately out of specific micro data into vague meso or macro generalities that constitute nothing more than general categories with general references to other general categories. Rather than analyzing something that has actually occurred, we instead argue about general emotions, vague traits, unsubstantiated assumptions about “personalities,” and so on. ABN
We know the answers to the “when” and the “where.” Blue eyes became common during the last ice age within a region encompassing Germany, Scandinavia, the East Baltic, and probably areas farther east.
At that time, Scandinavia and the Alps were under ice. Northern Europe was habitable only on the plains stretching from northern Germany eastwards. Before 12,000 years ago, these plains were steppe-tundra with wandering herds of reindeer and nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers. Actually, they were just hunters. There were few opportunities for gathering fruits, nuts, tubers, or edible greens. Food was almost entirely “meat on the hoof” (Hoffecker, 2002, pp. 8, 178, 193-194, 237).
But why would such an environment favor blue eyes? Davide offers four possible reasons:
Lower UV exposure requiring less melanin protection
Sexual selection for distinctive traits
Genetic drift in smaller northern populations
Need for lighter skin to maintain vitamin D synthesis where sunlight is weaker
We need the term meta-Q which means “general meta cognitive ability,” or the ability to see the meta levels of several arguments at once including nuance and branch arguments.
IQ generally connotes being good at taking a test of reasoning, language, and some sort of abstract thinking.
People with high IQs probably also have high meta-Q. The advantage of adding this term is it distinguishes how arguments are presented and considered, how they are analyzed.
For example, mainstream medicine has usurped the meta-Q of virtually all covid reasoning. Fauci at the top either determined or became the spokesperson for what “the science” of covid is and no other view has been allowed. Literally hundreds of millions of people have been forced to agree with the irrational dictates of an irrationally narrow covid meta-Q. Big Tech aided and abetted this mockery of reason by censoring and deplatforming anyone who brought complexity and nuance into the prison yard.
The covid example is roughly the same with other issues of the day, such as election fraud, the January 6 “insurrection,” Critical Race Theory, equality of outcome, and so on. The country is divided because the meta-Q of public discourse is so low there can be no mixing of ideas, no synthesis, no rapprochement.
Magnates of meta-Q usurpation are most of the famous public “thinkers” in USA: Michael Shermer, Cass Sunstein, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Bill Maher, Fauci, Lakshmi Singh, famous actors, etc. These people are supported by editorials, talking-heads, politicians, terrible academics (most of them), and so on.
In private conversations, discussions always go badly when there are too many voices with low meta-Q training or ability in the room. Arguments become simplified and nuance is rarely acknowledged. Meta-Q is the ability to “see over” a problem, to see beyond the words, to what an argument is, how it was formed, what it will result in, how it moves through time, and what alternatives there are.
I am pretty sure most people could be trained to increase their meta-Q considerably and surely to at least know when it is called for and who is doing it well. ABN
One way to understand the Buddhist term karma is to replace it with the word drama.
‘This is my karma’ becomes this is my drama, or better, this is the role I am playing in my drama.
It’s my role in my drama and thus I can play my part the way I want.
The best way to do that is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path, but it’s up to you.
Seeing your karma as a drama you are acting in removes the very deeply mistaken misinterpretation that karma is a form of punishment or reward.
Drama also implies group drama, other actors, and in one way or another some sort of playwright, which might be understood as the grand scheme of things or you yourself.
Buddhism is a mind-opening practice, so we are free to interpret it in a way we understand and can use creatively and productively.
Modern physics suggests a strong possibility that a fundamental quality or force in the cosmos is consciousness itself.
In that sense we are participants in the consciousness and unfolding dramatic evolution of the universe.
If you want to put God in there, go ahead, no problem.
The Buddha left God and many other lines of thought out of his descriptions of human existence to keep people from clinging to words or relying on a supreme being without doing anything for themselves.
There are many ways we can understand our lives, but a central theme in Buddhism is we progress through our own efforts and life is sort of drama, which resolves in whatever way it does due to our own thoughts, views, and behaviors. ABN
Mortality is an indisputable outcome and thus a reliable statistical marker of the danger of the covid vaxxes.
But where there is mortality there is sure to be many times more instances of morbidity.
Factor this morbidity into the rise in colon cancers, strokes, other cancers, and more.
Whether they were designed as bioweapons or not, the covid mRNA vaxxes have worked like bioweapons, including probable insertion into the human genome of deleterious genetic traits. ABN
This angle appears to show the back of Kirk’s shirt rising before the front of his shirt.
This supports the hypothesis that he was shot (probably in the ear) from his right and slightly behind.
This observation is supported by other videos which show the wire from his earpiece flying away from his head’s right side, while the thick cable around his neck and attached to that wire is suddenly pulled up and around the back of his neck.
Since we do not see his earpiece fly away from his head in any video but only its wiring, we can presume with some certainty that Kirk was struck directly in his earpiece, after which the projectile went through his head and exited from his neck’s lower left.
If Kirk was struck by a projectile which targeted his earpiece, and thus went directly into his ear, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the projectile was programmed to target a signal emitted by his earpiece, thus assuring perfect accuracy.
There are numerous videos and photos of super-fast mini-drones present at the rally while Kirk was speaking.
These drones are reported to have reached estimated speeds of 150mph, which would indicate they were military-grade and probably operated by a government or a very wealthy private organization.
A drone like that would likely have capabilities beyond just flying fast.
These capabilities might include the ability to shoot small projectiles with great accuracy after homing in on a signal; in this case a signal from Kirk’s earpiece.
It’s also possible the projectile itself was a super-fast mini-missile which was capable of homing in on a signal produced by Kirk’s earpiece.
If both of these conditions are true, perfect accuracy would be assured.
The tiny projectile/ missile would enter Kirk’s head through a direct hit on his earpiece.
This would conceal the entry wound from video evidence. So far, we have no video evidence of an entry wound.
If Kirk was hit by a mini-missile, that projectile could have been programmed to self-destruct, thus explaining no evidence so far of any bullet having been found.
We are now left hoping there will be an honest autopsy.
Given the extremely weak and sloppy case case against Robinson and the slews of counter evidence to it, plus the long history of cases like this yielding dubious, at best, autopsies, it is all too likely we will never know who or what murdered Charlie Kirk. ABN
For those having trouble following along with all of the controversy within “public health” as practiced in USA, vaccines, and medical practice.
When you distill it all, it comes down to the rights of the individual versus the rights of the collective.
Modern “Public health” is all about maximizing the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and acts to advance the rights and interests of the collective. Traditional medical practice is focused on the rights and interests of the individual patient.
From this, you can appreciate why socialists and leftists are all in on the rights of “Public Health” to impose mandates, and those that support personal liberty are aligned with the medical rights of the individual and the importance of informed consent.
“Public health” in USA believes that the rights of the collective are more important than the rights of the individual.
The work of Karl Marx and colleagues supports the collective as pre-eminent. The US Constitution and associated founding documents disagree and emphasize the rights of the individual.
Collectivism vs individual rights. That is really what this is all about.
When I first encountered that theory, I didn’t care to even look at the arguments. I suspected people posting such theories of being cognitive-infiltrators or trolls. But then, the ballistic issues kept point me to that possibility, until I stumbled upon this 19-minute “breakdown” video by Ben Werhman, which I invite everyone to watch.
I am not sure this theory is correct, but I believe it is plausible and deserves consideration. However, I consider the trail of the freemasons, mentioned in this video, as a red herring (unless we’re talking of B’nai B’rith). In my view, the theory of Kirk’s fake death does not contradict the theory that Israel decided to eliminate Kirk for the reasons that have so widely circulated that even Netanyahu has felt the need to dismiss them. The theory of Kirk’s fake death simply means that Kirk was given the chance to be disappeared alive, instead of dead. That Israel masterminded the event is all the more likely that Kirk’s security was reportedly Israeli, as Kirk himself seems to imply in this conversation with Bill Maher: “If you want security, the Israeli know what’s their doing.” He is probably referring to the Zionist-owned Shaffer Security Group, who ended their contract with TPUSA in 2022, but reportedly reappeared for Kirk’s final event. A security team is supposed to secure the roofs, I remind you.
Ben Werhman’s theory is that Kirk’s gun wound and death was faked with a blood squib equipped with a small remote control explosive, exactly as they always do it in Hollywood. I will recap his arguments, and then I will see how this theory dovetails with another interesting theory concerning Erika Kirk.
A major factor supporting this hypothesis and video is we never see much blood on the ground, on other people, or in the scene of Kirk being carried to the SUV, a very unusual thing to do in a case like this.
Maybe by this point Kirk had already bled out, but where’s the blood in any of the earlier scenes?
I am posting this essay and video as speculative but significant information.
Guyénot provides some interesting conjecture on Erika Kirk in the article linked above.
None of this would be necessary if we had reason to believe the FBI. All of this is necessary since we have a very long history of reasons to not believe the FBI. ABN
UPDATE: I once assisted the FBI in a case that made national news.
The investigation went on for a number of weeks and I spent more than a few hours helping the FBI agent who asked many questions.
I am mentioning this because that agent was very good.
I knew many details of the case and she absorbed those details and other information I had with professional calm and clarity.
The end result was the FBI did not prosecute, which was the correct conclusion for them to have reached.
I helped with the case because I knew the parties involved were all innocent.
It’s good to remember there are many good people in our government. ABN
Though stated as factual, Peters’ analysis is speculative. And yet it’s somewhat convincing.
I have posted on Kirk’s mic and the probability it was the actual weapon, but Peters has added the suspicious brown shirt guy and the man who jumps over the table as plausible participants.
Filing this under ‘speculation’ but like all reasonable speculation, it is worth keeping in mind.
It is clear as of today that not nearly enough evidence of Robinson’s guilt has been presented to the public to make a strong case.
Indeed, the evidence presented so far looks like the kind of bogus narrative we find every single time something like this happens.Mind-control works best when the false narrative is presented immediately.
Moreover, Candace Owens has stated she has information that the FBI is pressing Utah authorities to close the case now because further inquiry will only spoil their Robinson-did-it story. ABN
UPDATE: No hand-off apparent in frame-by-frame video:
American Buddhist Net 