Great Chinese Empire: Terracotta Army

(The Curious Mind)

Cinco de Mayo: I'm a Mexican Buddhist

If you are, I am, too!

What does it mean to be a "Mexican Buddhist"? Born and raised in Los Angeles, which is still in many ways Mexico just like it originally was, I went to visit my brother in Orange County. We had recently returned from skiing at Mammoth, where I would meditate in the snow for fun outside the sliding glass door. I didn't realize his young daughter would watch me. So as I'm talking to him in his very modern kitchen, she yells, "Tio! Tio, look!"

Alyssa's a Mexican Buddhist, too

I stick my head into the living room, where she is wearing a Peruvian cap with tassels seated in full lotus with perfect poise focused on her breath. "I've been practicing!" I didn't know what I was looking at. I thought I was the Mexican Buddhist (Chicano/a, Latin, Hispanic, whatever). Oh, to have had a phone camera in hand at that moment! In lieu of that, we've tried to reenact the moment with a mannequin.

Frida Kahlo crossed the US border from Mexico

Happy Mexican Independence Day (El Grito de Dolores, "The Cry of Dolores [Hidalgo]," whose name literally means "pains"), which is NOT today. That's on Sept. 16th every year.

It's largely celebrated only in South Mexico, mostly in the state where an important act of colonial resistance took place. Here in Middle Mexico (Los Angeles, SoCal, extending from San Diego up to about Fresno), we celebrate the 4th of July after the 5th of May (lit., Cinco de Mayo) in much the same way. But they're not the same, and no one cares.

The Avian (Eagle) Bird People?

In the ongoing fight to resist European colonial occupation and exploitation, it's important to remember a "free and sovereign state" called Puebla in the United States of Mexico (Mexico's official name, Estados Unidos Mexicanos), is celebrating today. Is it the arrival of Buddhism? No, most Mexicans have no idea that la Dharma arrived in California, the Southwest, and Mexico in ancient times long before Christianity, Catholicism, or Columbus' aftermath the Conquistadors.

• An Inglorious Columbus: or Evidence that Hwui Shen and a Party of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan discovered America in the 5h Century, A.D. (by Edward Payson Vining, 1885) Internet Archive
• How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (by Rick Fields)

What is "Mexico"?

Ask a Mexican! (Prof. Arellano)

"Mexico" [a, b] is officially called the United Mexican States [c] and is a country in NORTH America, not south, not even central. But to distinguish it from its two other parts (the USA and Canada), it sometimes gets referred to as Mesoamerica.

It borders the USA to the north, Guatemala and Belize to the southeast, while having maritime boundaries with the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Caribbean Sea to the southeast, and the Gulf of Mexico (which would seem to be part of the Atlantic Ocean) to the east.

Racism/colorism in Mexico?

Where did Mexico's racist "caste (casta) system" come from? Spain 

What do Mexicans look like?

Mexico covers 761,610 square miles (1,972,550 km2) [12] and is now the thirteenth-largest country in the world by land area, having had a giant portion of its land occupied and stolen by the USA.

With a population exceeding 130 million, Mexico is the tenth-most populous country in the world (possibly the largest country if its annexed land and population were restored) and is home to the largest number of native Spanish speakers [1].

Mestiza/mescla (blend/mixture) Karolina Vidales Valdovinos: Miss Mexico

But Spanish was imposed on Mexicans on pain of death by Conquerors (Conquistadores), colonizers, plunderers from Spain, Southwest Europe.

Gringos welcome: Come swim in clear sinkholes, clean beaches

Mexico's original language, if it had only one, would be Nahuatl (an Uto-Aztecan language of the Mexica people, who called their country "Mexico").

An Inglorious Columbus, 1885

Its religion would likely be Buddhism (due to the influence of early Buddhist missionaries from Afghanistan and China because the West Coast from BC to Mexico is the mysterious land Chinese Buddhist explorers found, wrote about, and named fUSAng), Indigenous shamanism (animism, polytheism), or Native American spirituality were it not for colonial imposition of imperial Roman Catholicism, which rode in on the back of the Virgin Mary and her local appearance as La Virgen de Guadalupe). The Buddhism that thrives there today is a recent arrival, likely unaware of earlier missionary work.

• Buddhism in the West (east of East Asia)

AI, what is Cinco de Mayo? - Let me explain, Gringo.

The Mexica speak Nahuatl

Mexico City is the capital and largest city, which ranks among the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. (Los Angeles, a Mexican pueblo and city for most of its history, is similarly large -- a megalopolis on par with its Asian twin Bangkok in Buddhist Thailand).

Mexico is also the northwesternmost country in Latin America.

The human presence in Mexico dates back to at least 8,000 BC. Mesoamerica, a great cradle of civilization, was home to numerous advanced societies, including the:

Aztec Mexica goddess: Queen Cali

• Olmecs,
• Maya,
• Zapotecs,
• Teotihuacan civilization,
• Purépecha.

Spanish colonization overthrew and enslaved the dominant Aztec Empire (from Aztlan, possibly Atlantis or Great Tartary), establishing the Southwestern European colony of "New Spain" (full of soldiers and priests from the Iberian Peninsula) with its capital at Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).

Mexico became a major center of the transatlantic economy, fueled by the massive mining of silver that changed the world economy and the forced labor of Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans [descendants of Afro-Caribbeans, Olmec-Africans, Black skinned indigenous peoples of the Americas and/or Polynesia?]

Who's the current imperial power around here?

The 1810–1821 Mexican War of Independence ended colonial Spanish rule and led to the creation of the First Mexican Empire, which quickly collapsed into the short-lived First Mexican Republic. In 1848, the new USA (an extension of British Empire) stole nearly half the territory of Mexico during what the U.S. calls the "Mexican–American War." More

• Frida Kahlo | MoMA

Mexicans are world's most diverse (blended) people, all colors: brown, red, black, white, yellow...

• When Americans “celebrate” Cinco de Mayo #pelirroja #cincodemayo #latina #ifykyk #shorts - YouTube; Crystal Quintero, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Xochitl (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit Mexico

Save the trees! - Earth Liberation Front (video)

OscopeLabs; Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

This is the official trailer from Oscilloscope Laboratories of If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

On December 7th, 2005, U.S. federal agents conducted a nationwide sweep of "radical environmentalists" involved with the Earth Liberation Front — an organization the FBI has called America's "number one domestic terrorism threat."

How trees talk to each other (Suzanne Simard)

If a Tree Falls is a remarkable story about the group's rise and fall, told through the transformation and radicalization of one of its members, Daniel McGowan.

Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a chronicle of McGowan facing life in prison for his environmental activism with a dramatic investigation of the events that led to his involvement with the Earth Liberation Front or ELF.

FULL MOVIE: If a Tree Falls

Using never-before-seen archival footage and intimate interviews — with cell members and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them — If a Tree Falls asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way the FBI defines "terrorism" as against citizens but not the corporations who profit from the real terror. More: oscilloscope.net

The Buddhist Attitude Towards Nature

(AccesstoInsight.org) A person shakes the branch of a wood-apple tree and all the fruit falls, ripe as well as unripe. That person would collect only what is wanted and walk away leaving the rest to rot. Such a wasteful attitude is deplored in Buddhism as not only anti-social but criminal. The excessive exploitation of nature...

• VIDEO: "Kedi" the love of cats in Turkey (KEDI)
• ART: "Naked Woman on a Table" by John Currin

Better Presidential Debates (comedy)

Wisdom Quarterly; (NPR, Oct. 6, 2012); DrShrapn3l (therumble2012.com)   

  

What if nobody won? (Getty/ChipSomodevilla)

While failed-comedian Bill O'Reilly (FOX News) and faux-newser Jon Stewart (Comedy Central) duked it out, there was another much more serious alternative presidential debate presented by NPR (National Public Radio). It was between third-party candidates Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian).
 

The NPR third-party candidate debate

Green Jill Stein (jillstein.org)

What's it like to be a third-party candidate running for president? Ralph Nader can tell us: "You're excluded from the debates," he says. "You spend an exhausting amount of time, until Labor Day, trying to get over the ballot access barriers. Your petitioners are harassed in the streets; you're subjected to baseless lawsuits by one party or another."
  
Nader has run for president three times -- four if you count the time he ran unofficially. In 2000, he managed to win almost 3 percent of the national vote.

• LISTEN: Third-Party Debate (11:31)

Libertarian Gary Johnson

To this day, getting a third-party candidate into a presidential debate is practically impossible.
  
[The one-party system we have, halved in two, has made sure of that.] The Commission on Presidential Debates says that to be included, you have to poll 15 percent with voters. That's why George Farah, founder of Open Debates, a group that wants the system reformed, thinks the commission is the main problem.

"This commission exists for the principle purpose of protecting and strengthening the two parties," Farah says. "Every four years they allow the major party candidates to negotiate agreements that dictate many of the terms of the debates -- including the exclusion of popular third-party voices."
  
So given the two major party candidates had 90 minutes and at least 50 million viewers for their debate last Wednesday, [NPR] decided to invite two of the third-party candidates to a debate of our own.

Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party's nominee. Jill Stein is the Green Party's nominee. They joined moderator -- and host of weekends on All Things Considered -- Guy Raz for a debate focusing on domestic issues: the economy, health care, and the role of government. More

Is the CIA or is China hacking the Web?

Performers take the stage May 2, 2011 near image of Mao Tse-tung at Beijing's Red Classic restaurant nostalgic for China's revolutionary past (Ng Han Guan/AP).

(CNET) The Chinese military wants to beef up its cyber-defense efforts as it anticipates greater threats originating from the U.S.

"The U.S. military is hastening to seize the commanding military heights on the Internet, and another Internet war is being pushed to a stormy peak," the Chinese military wrote in its official newspaper, Liberation Army Daily.

"Their actions remind us that to protect the nation's Internet security, we must accelerate Internet defense development and accelerate steps to make a strong Internet army."

Though Liberation Army Daily isn't an official mouthpiece for the Chinese government, Reuters, which first reported on the story, points out that it typically reflects the official opinion of China's ruling party. More

Is it the CIA?

Wisdom Quarterly

The best evidence pointing a finger at the CIA is twofold. It has easy access (through the NSA, Google, Facebook, misconstruing the Patriot Act, as well as subversive and clandestine means such as co-opting arrested hackers), and what it stands to gain is enormous. It would gain a blanket cover story, with plausible deniability for itself as the source.

In this way it can accuse China, or any other convenient cyber "terrorist" group it wants to target for "retaliation," all the while explaining how American citizens lost our privacy. CIA Agent Phillip Agee explained how it's done in general. In particular, My Lai and Ben Tre* revealed CIA involvement prompting the US military during the U.S. war on Vietnam:

"We had to destroy [privacy] in order to save it."

The CIA has followed the same tactics in the Americas (Agee himself being involved in them) and is following them today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen. Why not one more front, the Web itself?

And the blame is put on an "anonymous" hacker group to show that, far from being the perpetrator, the CIA is the victim of malicious hacks humiliating it. Remedy? Orwellian clampdown? All out cyber-war?

Oh no, CIA hacked; this means war!
(WPN) The hacker group LulzSec, famous for their gaming community hacks, is moving on to bigger targets. While the group has claimed responsibility for hacks and data dumps against Sony, Bethesda, and Nintendo in the past, they recently went after the U.S. Senate and have now taken down the CIA’s website. More

• *One of the most famous quotes of the Vietnam War was from the AP writing about the provincial capital Bến Tre in 1968: "'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties..."

Himalayan conflict centers on Tibet

Randeep Ramesh (guardian.co.uk, 9/17/09)

A resurgent dispute over an Indian state that China claims as its own is threatening to explode into a bloodier fight.

There is perhaps no country more feared and less understood in India than China. In recent weeks New Delhi newspapers and television have been awash with stories about the People's Liberation Army crossing the Himalayas to daub rocks with Chinese characters, making daredevil helicopter raids to drop (stale) tinned food on hapless farmers, and trading gunfire with Indian soldiers.

India's Kashmir state government, apparently, said its territory was being taken "inch by inch" through such incursions. Ominously, authorities last week in Kolkata [Calcutta] impounded a plane carrying arms from the Middle East to China. While the foreign ministries in both countries play down the reports, there are concerns that left unchecked, things could spiral out of control. More>>

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