(RT) "The Truth Seeker" with James Bushell looks at the world's worst genocide, the "American Holocaust," hypocritically celebrated in the USA as "Thanksgiving"
Our American mis-education system is a cynical joke bent on distorting and covering up the truth at every turn. But as the Buddha taught that three things cannot remain hidden: the sun, the moon, and the TRUTH.
Sadly, our mainstream media is a kind of "propaganda arm" for the U.S. government with its many tentacles and alphabet-agencies (e.g., NSA, NSC, CIA, FBI, ICE, DARPA, DHS, IRS...).
So we have to go outside of the country, to a Russian-sponsored news organization, to catch a glimpse of the truth our country keeps from us.
Who discovered America? Afghan and Chinese Buddhist missionaries
While Jewish-Italian Catholic-convert Columbus did NOT discover America, he did invade and enslave a fully populated continent. Buddhists arrived earlier (E. P. Vining/archive.org).
What could Native Americans have done to ward off murderous Christian enslavers, rapists, murderers, and disease-spreading Europeans coming to exploit another new land?
.
US/Israel's genocide today:
Video backs claims of US-backed Israeli military ("defense forces") criminal abuses
.
"Criticism is NOT antisemitism."
Israeli "police" stand guard after they rammed a Palestinian demonstrator during clashes outside Ramallah. Recent video has shown Israeli troops shooting a Palestinian lying in the street at close range, pepper-spraying medics, chasing and ramming a Palestinian with their jeep, and threatening refugee camp residents with tear gas “until you die” unless they stop throwing stones. The flurry of such footage comes at a time when growing numbers of Palestinians for the first time have the tools to document such incidents; half of Palestinian households have at least one smart phone, or 10-fold what it was five years ago, according to official statistics (AP).
Humans stand against war crimes.
Genocide? Genocide is such a horrible word? Can we call it something else instead? Ethnic cleansing? Settling the wild west? Doing the God of Love's will?
RAMALLAH, West Bank [formerly Palestine] - Recent videos show Israeli troops shooting a wounded Palestinian at close range, pepper-spraying Palestinian medics, ramming a Palestinian with a jeep, and threatening refugee camp residents with tear gas "until you die" unless they stop throwing stones.
The CIA teaches Israel tricks of war.
Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups contend the images, many captured by amateur smartphone users, buttress long-standing allegations of excessive force -- particularly amid a wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks in which top Israeli politicians and security commanders have encouraged forces to shoot to kill suspected assailants.
Police state agents of the Israeli [War] Forces (IDF) commit abuses, cover their tracks (AP).
"There is a very clear message sent by those politicians and military commanders that this is how law enforcement should behave," said Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli group B'Tselem, which documents rights abuses.
Israel's army and police defended the actions shown in the videos, with the exception of an officer who was suspended over the tear gas threat. "Our activities in all of the cases have been responses to Palestinian aggression," said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman. Israel itself has released several videos showing its forces shooting stabbers.
We are all drafted into the army, become militants, become complicit in war crimes (AP).
Video footage is increasingly central in the competition over international opinion -- a contest Palestinians say they often lost in the past when it came down to their word against that of the Israeli military or Jewish settlers. More
Here, you st*pid savages, you must be hungry! Let us teach you how to survive (lol) before we ourselves starve to death from not following our own advice. More of us are coming.
This is the harvest season -- a time of feasting and celebrating Mother Earth and her bounty. There's Halloween, Samhain, the solstice, the Day of the Dead, and the meal to end all meals, bird-friendly Thanksgiving!
As we barrel through the bounty, wouldn't it feel nice that no one got killed? No one got hurt? No blood was shed at all? There's a delicious way to do it. If you don't know how, come share and learn:
(Bite Size Vegan) What's the true story surrounding the origin of Thanksgiving?
Don't be a jack...donkey. Go vegan (WQ).
Let’s look behind the wholesome image at the actual historical basis of our all-American holiday and the way we currently celebrate it. It is built on the genocide of a people we celebrate with an annual genocide of animals. Learn what really happens to turkeys raised and killed for Thanksgiving and the people violated and killed during the first ever Thanksgiving.
We like to work up an appetite with a hike before eating. The dogs love it! (WQ)
A peaceful, cruelty-free home is a happy home promoting peace for the holidays (WQ).
This event is promoted far and wide and usually has hundreds of attendees, most of them without a MeetUp RSVP.
Invite your friends. Non-vegans are welcome and encouraged. For each member of your party, please bring a ready to serve vegan dish to share that will serve at least 8-10 people.
For example, if there are 2 people in your party, please bring 16-20 servings. "Vegan" means no meat, birds, fish, eggs, dairy (butter, milk, whey), or honey. It's cruelty-free, and that means no animal products at all.
Organic, chemical-free, GMO-free foods are encouraged. Cooked and raw vegan food are welcome. There will be a space designated for raw foods. Also, be conscious to place your dish in that area only if every ingredient in it is 100% raw. (Pasteurized foods, commercially canned or boxed food, and most jarred products are not raw).
Please bring the ingredient list to help people with allergies and sensitivities decide what to eat. Sorry, public park rules say no alcohol, not even vegan alcohol. To prevent paper, waste, and plastic pollution, please bring your own recyclable plates, bowls, cups, eating and serving utensils.
WHEN?
A vegan spread is delicious with traditional flavors (WQ)
We start gathering at 11:00 AM, have a beautiful opening circle at noon, then begin our shared feast right after that!
WHERE?
LOCATION: Enter Racho Park at the north entrance on Motor Avenue, the first entrance south of Pico Blvd. When you enter the park, there is a free parking area on the left. Drive past this parking area and follow the road to the next parking area, which is a few hundred feet down. Walk to the picnic tables across the grass, behind the baseball field. Posted "VEG" signs will point the way. There is another picnic area at the far end, close to the parking lot, which is not our picnic area).
“Heaven is Beautiful is a profound, true story offering amazing proof that there is more. This book and its illuminating truth pushed my restart button! Best page-turning read of the year!”
—Jennifer Skiff, author of God Stories: Inspiring Encounters with the Divine and The Divinity of Dogs
“Heaven is hot right now -- not in temperature, but in public interest. Everyone who longs to get a glimpse of the afterlife [and life means rebirth after rebirth called samsara] will be grateful for this gripping first-person account by Peter Panagore, who dies on a cold mountainside after a heart-pounding ice climb in the Canadian wilderness....”
—Henry G. Brinton
When Peter Panagore died on the side of a mountain, his life was forever changed. In those minutes on the "Other Side," he experienced hell, forgiveness, and unconditional love of something less like God (Brahma) than GOD (Brahman). He joined Coast to Coast Host Dave Schrader (dave@darknessradio.coml) to discuss how his NDE changed his life and resulted in an intense spiritual journey that has continued for decades.
The first hour guest, Steve Johnson, set out on a quest to prove his precognition. He shares his proof of futuristic visions and what he sees in the coming years.
Most Americans mistakenly think Buddhism is atheistic. It is not. (It is nontheistic, which "common sense" says is the same thing, but which investigation shows is quite something else). There are many heavens (sagga) just as there are many "gods"(brahmasanddevas, potent divinities and deities, with a wider more akin to the pantheon of ancient Greece).
Christianity is polytheistic, as is (or was) Judaism. Their switch to monotheism did not suddenly negate the many gods of the Bible, although that's what we are told, just as the concept of the Trinity (triune-godhead) does not negate the unity of the three. Careful reading of both the Christian and earlier Judaic biblical texts (as the Book is actually a collection of many books) shows that God is plural, the Gods, this group and thatgroup from space. Of course, people have spent centuries trying to explain this away.
"We are all GOD," Christ is said to have said, and he's not the only one to have said so. We are all divine at the very least in potential. The mystical experience often concerns a direct perception of this unity of ALL things, and that all-ness can be talked about, to the extent it can be put into words, as an experience of "God" or our own divinity.
But here we would say it is better to use the word GOD (Brahman in Brahmanism) so as not to confuse any personal being with the staggering immensity of the ALL or as the comedic science fiction writer Douglas Adams put it, "Life, the Universe, and Everything." Popular Christian conceptions are wrong -- as are most popular conceptions of any religion. Islam is wrong. Judaism is very wrong. Buddhism is wrong.
I AM thy God, your Father, so shut up.
But wait, how can Buddhism be wrong? It is not that the Buddha was wrong but that the message that gets miscommunicated to us, misquoted to us, is misinterpreted by us, misunderstood by us. The Buddha was speaking to a people of a time and place, with far different assumptions about daily reality than we hold and, by the way, our understanding is wrong just as theirs probably was.
Goddess loves you, so speak.
(This being the case, it is not that Jesus of Nazareth was wrong or that the Christ Consciousness is wrong, or that Mohammed or Moses, or any seer is wrong about what s/he perceives. But what they saw and tried to teach are now much mangled, and that mangling began with the first generation of students and apostles). The Buddha, unlike other great teachers, did not teach people what to believe. He taught people how to see, and seeing is believing in a sense. But what need is there for "believing" for one who truly sees?
Many Buddhist temples are designed like heavenly halls in space in better worlds (flickr.com).
This book by Peter Baldwin Panagore is excellent because what his near death experience taught him was not to believe in God. That may confuse the heck out of readers, or seem to contradict what he is saying, or be our misreading. But listen to his interview and he explains it quite well: the direct mystical experience is not about believing social or spiritual constructs. They all fall short.
How we going to get ourselves into heaven, Dick? - The hell with heaven; we're going to other places, Georgey Boy, and Kerry's coming with us, Hillary too. (Tom Tomorrow/This Modern World).
Read mystical texts, and until you have the experience, the thinking-mind will necessarily misunderstand. After experiencing these things, we can begin to see how assumptions trap us, language traps us, and our very thoughts themselves trap us! Then it is possible to hold the self-evidently contradictory thoughts as there is a God/there is no God.
Read How To Know God, an excellent translation of The Yoga Aphorisms [Sutras] of Patanjali(or read Swedenborg, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie...). And one need not think we are selling out. We don't believe in God, or if we believe in it, it is surely not the popular conception of God our society holds or our religions teach us.
The sacred feminine: God is a Girl.
That's what nontheism means: Whether there's a God or no God, heavens or no heavens, whether you believe or do not believe, it doesn't matter as regards enlightenment. Believe if you like. Don't believe if you like. Karma is still karma. These "Gods" are wrapped up in it, too. All beings are reborn, all die, all come back, all fall away, and all are at every moment along the way falling away. Then why did we just say there is no God?
We said so because the conception of what "God" means in other religions is wrong. Saying there is no God is not the same as saying, There is nothing. There is something, but it's not what you think. [What do you think? You think what's there has three characteristics it does not have: permanence, the potential to satisfy, and self when it is really and ultimately (not conventionally but only ultimately-speaking) impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal.]
The "Gods" constantly visit earth, build it up, have their own agenda.
And the same goes for "heaven." No heaven, no matter how exalted, is permanent. Now heaven, no matter how beautiful and pleasurable, is able to satisfy. No heaven, no matter how real it seems, is personal.
It may last a long, looonnng time. Nevertheless, what seems imperishable is perishable. For example, compared to this body, a rock lasts forever. But a rock doesn't last forever. It wastes away after a very long time. The same goes for rebirth in heaven: compared to this life, it's an eternity. But we've all been there in those worlds, yet here we are. Everyone will eventually get there again, yet here (and worse) we'll be again.
Why? Samsara is like that. Karma is like that. We will experience the results of our actions. (We will experience what we have put others through, even unintentionally, as Panagore confirms). We are responsible, ultimately, for ourselves and others for themselves, and we are all connected and inter-dependent. But though we may help many, we still have to help ourselves. Though many help us, we still have to help ourselves. Though we help others, they still have to help themselves.
Good and bad are by ourselves done.
Good and bad are by ourselves left undone.
No one saves another.
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the Path.
Buddhas only point the way.
Q: GOD (Brahman), God (Maha Brahma), and gods (brahmas and devas) are all real -- and anatta is real, so in an ultimate sense, how can it be said that any "being" or "thing" is real?
A: This is the same as asking, How can physicists possibly believe (or know with complete certainty) that matter is mostly empty space? They can. It is.
Out of the way, God coming through.
Conventionally, matter is dense. Ultimately, it is more than 99% empty space. Both are true. It is not even a paradox except to a person trapped by assumptions, language, and/or thinking. Religions are stupid and bad; that's not to say that they're not useful and hinting at something that's true and good. Until we directly experience it, it's just words. It's just beliefs. It's just dogmas and doctrines that can be used to mislead us.
Ask not what to believe. Ask instead, How can I know? How can I get there? How can I see for myself? That's what the Buddha taught, only people kept asking what they'd see when they saw reality and the Buddha had to give some sort of answer using words, ideas, and analogies, always warning of the danger that not seeing for ourselves holds, always encouraging us to eventually put the words and thoughts away and experience reality directly.
(This is accomplished by cultivation of serenity and insight, meditation to calm and gladden the heart/mind and systematic insight-practice (vipassana) tracing something called Dependent Origination, the direct seeing of how this has all come to be. When we see it, the mind/heart lets go, and the Truth sets us free. Until then, heaven or heavens (various levels) are real, and they are beautiful, and it is better to be here than there only because it is easier to gain permanent freedom from here. But most would rather just go back there, a place many of us like to think of as our "real home." It is not our real home, but compared to this place it is. It's a whole lot better than this place. You'll see.
Catholicism is a great religion. Or not.
Or get regressed to past lives or projected to future ones if you must know right away. But meditate, too, or you will not know that what you "know" is true or not. Panagore -- who met and communicated with GOD as God (that immensity in a form he could understand it) repeatedly states that he (Panagore) practices mindfulness meditation and hatha yoga, which we at Wisdom Quarterly recommend to all.
David Talbot, founder of the online magazine Salon.com, offers an eye-opening look into the life of [mass murderer and spy] Allen Dulles, the first civilian director of the CIA, in a new biography, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. Talbot joins us to explore how Dulles’ policies resonate today in foreign policy, civil liberties and intelligence gathering.
An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful -- and secretive -- colossus in Washington, D.C.
America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA.
Drawing on revelatory new materials -- including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials -- Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures.
Talbot is the founder of Salon and author of the New York Times bestseller about the assassinated Kennedys, Brothers.
Dulles’s
decade as the director of the CIA, which he used to further his public
and private agendas, were dark times in American politics.
Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” [murderer] Dulles saw himself as above the law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy corporate elite -- who were his personal friends and professional clients -- colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Italian Mafiosi in the process.
(Black Op Radio) Host Len Osanic interviews David Talbot with Jim DiEugenio in Oct. 2015. (“Watching the Hawks”) Tyrel Ventura, Tabetha Wallace, and Sean Stone discuss how prisoners of the CIA's secret prison “black sites” are
suing the psychologists who provided cover and legitimacy to Pres. Bush’s
torture program. David
Talbot talks about his new book, The Devil’s
Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret
Government. Paula Slier joins live from Tel Aviv for the latest
Israeli violence in Palestine. Also what's new in
bikini science? A new bathing suit that cleans
water as you swim. The 68th anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s
breaking the speed of sound barrier for the first time ever in a jet
plane. More
The CIA under Dulles began targeting and assassinating foreign leaders, overthrowing democratically-elected governments and, Talbot charges, employing those same illegal tactics to further his goals at home: He offers shocking new evidence about the US government's assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy.
As an exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping history. It explains the rise of the national security state and America's hypocrisy. More
Dulles's decade as the director of the CIA began a dark period in American
politics. The megalomaniac spymaster was above the nation's laws and
elected leaders. He manipulated American presidents in the
pursuit of his own interests and those of the wealthy elitists he
counted as his friends and clients -- colluding with Nazi war criminals and
the Mafia.
Talbot charges that the CIA utilizes the same
ruthless tactics in America as it employs abroad --
assassinating foreign leaders and overthrowing legitimate governments -- to further his goals at home in the USA.
Do Black Lives Matter? This movement has been the source of both inspiration and controversy since its inception in 2013. Prof. Melina Abdullah, chair of Pan-African Studies at Cal State University, Los Angeles, one of the 30 activists who organized Black Lives Matter, talks about movement’s goals and the challenges it faces.
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