The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Scavenging on the water-rich planet even after the loss of much of its atmosphere (NASA)
It's not that cute; have you seen my routine?
A Mars rock that bears a [strik]ing resemblance to a
rodent is scuttling across the Internet with gusto, even inspiring some
fans to set up a Twitter account in its name.
UFO buffs spotted the purported [Rocky the Squirrel or dismissively named] "Mars rat" in a panoramic photo snapped in September 2012 by NASA's Curiosity rover. Zooming in on a portion of the image reveals what appears to be a rodent crouching between two rocks, its nose to the ground.
"It's a cute rodent on Mars. Note its lighter-color upper and lower
eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach,"
Scott Waring wrote at UFO Sightings Daily back in December.
"Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors."
In an update to that post, Waring raised the possibility that NASA flew the rat/squirrel to Mars secretly, as part of an experiment [to terraform] testing out the Red Planet's ability to support life as we know it.
"Why would they not tell us about it?" Waring wrote. "Because the
squirrel would be expected to die eventually and that would get PETA
[People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] to fight against them in a
court of law." More
Interacting with ETs
(ADGUKNEWS, 4-26-13) Australian TV airs interview with nuclear physicist Charles Hall, who has worked with extraterrestrials at U.S. military bases.
It was in the heat of the Cold War during the 1950s that Washington first tried its hand at making the deserts of Helmand province bloom.
American lawmakers began to fund a massive "aid" program in the Afghan province, attempting to build dams, canals, and roads in a project they thought would be reminiscent of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
In the decades that followed, the project largely collapsed, although some Afghans struggled to carry the torch.
Now, as American and British soldiers pull out of Helmand, author David Rohde reconsiders the legacy of the project known to some as “Little America.”
Is cheating more common than we are admitting? Is it becoming more prevalent in our society because of technology and social media?
Psychiatrist and marriage expert Dr. Scott Haltzman calculates that about 40 percent of marriages have suffered from infidelity. Can a marriage can survive an infidelity?
Although this is a rough number, Haltzman’s new book, The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity examines why so many people have had affairs.
Haltzman believes the formula for infidelity is a combination of need, opportunity, and the inability to control impulses. However, one's personality type, certain medical conditions, and having a high profile can contribute to an increase in the potential for committing a devastating extramarital affair.
How can a marriage survive after someone cheats and breaks the trust, betrays another, and shows little empathy for the harm that has been done? When should a couple try to work it out, and when should they call it quits? Can trust ever be regained?
Dr. Scott Haltzman, M.D., psychiatrist and marriage expert, author of The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity and The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways to Win Your Wife's Heart Forever (Jossey-Bass, 2007)
From the author of -Isms and -Ologies and Cults, Conspiracies, and
Secret Societies comes a deeply researched and fascinating new book on hate in America.
It covers the history of
the role organized hatred has played in American politics. The New
Hate takes readers on a surprising, often shocking, sometimes bizarrely
amusing tour through the swamps of nativism, racism, and paranoia. They have long thrived on the fringes of the American scene, particularly on the populist right.
Arthur Goldwag shows parallels between hysteria over "the Illuminati" that wracked the new
American republic during the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the
America of the 1950s.
(H.Koppdelaney/flickr.com)
Goldwag discusses the similarities between the anti-New Deal
forces of the 1930s and today's Tea Party movement. He traces Henry
Ford’s anti-Semitism and the John Birch Society’s “Insiders” back to the
notorious and fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he relates white
supremacist nightmares about racial pollution to 19th-century
fears of papal plots.
(InfoWars.com, 5-29-13) Patriot Alex Jones live from Texas
Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc Aztec dance
group perform on Broadway in downtown L.A. earlier this month (Don
Bartletti/latimes.com) MORE PHOTOS
This "Mayan calendar" is an Aztec creation
Dancing to oppose police brutality or support the civil rights of gays is all part
of the routine for the hardest-working group in Southern California's
left-leaning protest circuit.
The Aztecs march in the canyons of the great city.Their tall feather headdresses jut skyward. They beat drums, stomp, and chant. They dance in twirls and high steps, moving forward.
One of them presses to his lips a large pink conch, representing the wind god Ehecatl.
Before them at this demonstration between the high-rises of downtown Los Angeles come other tribes of the counterculture: anarchists, [peace-activists,] socialists, communists, anti-imperialists, Marxists. They don't dance.
With them it's all bullhorns, mohawks, Imperial Stormtrooper outfits, Che Guevara shirts, [fake "Anonymous" movement/alleged Occupy Wall Street symbol] Guy Fawkes masks, and banners that flap in the wind -- such as "Smash Imperialist Wars" and "One World Government [=] New World Order." One man breaks off from the group like a herald to peddle a $1 copy of "Revolution." The people ignore him.
No one ignores the Aztecs. Crowds press close, pulling out iPhones and cameras. The Aztecs have an entourage. They use their arms to keep the crowd at a safe distance, like security behind the line of a red carpet.
Dancing at the end of the world -- Dec. 21, 2012 -- Mayan celebration for the plumed serpent (naga) Kukulkan at Chichen Itza (ABC.net.au)
At one point during their performance, an intoxicated woman with bleached blond hair stumbles up to the Aztecs' leader, Judith Garcia, and does a precarious, noodle-limbed dance. As the woman's tight blouse begins to roll down, revealing a tattoo... Just another day on the job for the hardest-working members of the leftist protest circuit. More
Time-travel
to 1999, where a bohemian group lives in a utopia of countercultural
protest. Despite its ambition, the story fails to cohere. The house at the center of Justin Taylor's The Gospel of Anarchy has
the universals of bohemian communities: shared food, leftist politics,
dropouts, some guy peeing in the yard. Yet it is also very specific -- to
a place, Gainesville, Florida, and a time, 1999 -- to the degree that it
has its own peculiar name...More
Against the Stream welcomes Buddhist author Tara Brach for a special evening benefitting Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society.
Join as Brach investigates a place of "true refuge."
In the face of feeling alone and afraid, each of us longs for connection and peace. This talk explores our habitual ways of seeking FALSE refuge. Moreover, it points out that there are archetypal gateways revealing TRUE refuge -- our own awakened heart.
This is a sliding scale event, and all proceeds benefit Against the Stream, its programs, and the scholarship fund. By paying at the highest level one can afford, everyone benefits. Any amount one can contribute above the scale's lower end becomes a tax-deductible donation.
Tara Brach, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, lecturer, and popular teacher of Buddhist mindfulness (vipassana) meditation. She is the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. She teaches meditation at centers throughout the USA. She has offered speeches and workshops for mental health practitioners at numerous professional conferences. These addresses along with recorded talks and videos address the value of meditation in relieving emotional suffering and bringing about a spiritual awakening. Dr. Brach is the author of Radical Acceptance (Bantam, 2003) and True Refuge (Bantam, 2013). Visit her at TaraBrach.com.
Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Dr. Margaret C. Harrell and Nancy Berglass, "Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide," (Policy Briefs, CNAS.org)
Fifty-yard stare. V.A. won't provide a diagnosis. "What's the use?" wonders Pfc. Simpson.
Suicide among service members and veterans challenges the health of America’s all "volunteer" force.
While any loss of military personnel weakens the U.S. armed forces, the rapid upswing in suicides among service members and veterans during the wars [o]n Iraq and Afghanistan [and Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iran, China, and the homeland] threatens to inflict more lasting harm.
US military suicide rate hits one per day (2012) Suicide in the US military has sharply increased this year, hitting a rate of almost one death per day... As of June 3rd, 2012 active-duty suicides reached 154, compared with 130 in the same period last year, the Pentagon confirmed... The number far exceeds US combat deaths for the same period.
He killed himself to kill us, so I'll go kill myself. Makes sense. Or does it?
If military service becomes associated with suicide, will it be possible to recruit bright and promising young men and women at current rates?
Will parents and teachers encourage young people to join the military when veterans from their own communities have died [by] suicide?
Can the all-volunteer force be viable if veterans come to be seen as broken individuals? And how might climbing rates of suicide affect how Americans view active-duty service members and veterans -- and indeed, how service members and veterans see themselves?
Feeling stressed? Why not join the police and beat, rape, and punish Americans? (CP)
This policy brief has four objectives. First, it examines the phenomenon of suicide within the U.S. military community, including both the frequency of suicide and the extent to which suicide is related to military service.
It outlines steps taken by the Department of Defense (DOD), the armed services and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to reduce suicide in the armed forces and among veterans. It then identifies obstacles to reducing suicides further and makes recommendations to address each of those obstacles.
I can't take this... I don't want to kill. Weakling! Shape up; you're not shipping out! (scoop.it)
From 2005 to 2010, service members took their own lives at a rate of approximately one every 36 hours. While suicides in the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard have been relatively stable and lower than those of the ground forces, U.S. Army suicides have climbed steadily since 2004.
The Army reported a record-high number of suicides in July 2011 with the deaths of 33 active and reserve component service members reported as suicides. Suicides in the Marine Corps increased steadily from 2006 to 2009, dipping slightly in 2010. It is impossible, given the paucity of current data, to determine the suicide rate among veterans with any accuracy. However, the VA estimates that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes.
Moreover, although only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, former service members represent 20 percent of suicides in the United States.More
2013: The suicide rate among active military and veterans of war crimes within the ranks of American imperial forces is increasing. Why?War is a lie.
For decades, stereotypes
about gender and sex were bolstered by surveys in which men reported
far more sexual partners than women.
But a 2003 paper in the Journal of Sex Research found that if study participants thought they were hooked up to a lie detector, men and women would report the same number of sexual partners on average.
Lying about sex may be similar, but guilt rates differ greatly (livescience.com)
The results suggested women were the ones lying when they thought they
could get away with it, likely being coy about how many people they'd
had sex with to avoid being seen as promiscuous.
Apparently, not much has changed in the past decade. Even as many
stereotypes fade, both men and women still feel pressure to meet gender expectations when it comes to sex, a new study shows.
Most surveys about sex find impossibly that men have had far more partners than women... About 5 percent -- both men and women -- said they lied.
Nearly 300 college students participated in the research, completing a
questionnaire that asked how often they engaged in 124 different
behaviors.
A previous study determined which of those habits were
thought of as stereotypically masculine -- for example, wearing dirty
clothes and telling dirty jokes -- and which were believed to be more
common among women, including writing poetry and fibbing about body
weight. More
Ajanta Caves, India: 2,000-year-old caves used sophisticated and unexplained technology possibly provided by Sakka and/or other akasha devas.
The jungle from Borobudur
These amazing stone structures are carved directly into the mountainside cliff. But they are much more than art pieces or symbols. Were these stupas (bell-shaped chambers) representative of, or actually-functioning, Die Glockes (time-and-space-traveling-bells, technology later seen in the hands of German scientists developing sophisticated extraterrestrial technology from the akasha-deva space world)? These extravagant monuments were much more than monastic complexes. Note the similarity of stone structures in far away Borobudur, Java, Indonesia and secret Nazi military projects claiming an extraordinary new form of travel, scientific developments which were subsequently confiscated and hidden from the world by Western powers for the benefit of the military-industrial complex.
Time-travel stupa "bells" (Die Glockes) seen as the dawn sunlight breaks through the clouds at Borobudur Buddhist temple, Java, Indonesia (TrevThompson/flickr.com)
This five-CD pack contains five historical truths:
THE TRUE HISTORY OF MARIJUANA
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY [9/11]
CANCER: THE FORBIDDEN CURES
UFOs AND THE MILITARY ELITE
THE SECOND DALLAS: WHO KILLED RFK?
(“From Pearl Harbor to 9/11: History Repeats Itself”)
Not only will these revelations reshape one's understanding of the world, copies of these DVDs can be copied and freely distributed to all -- with the full permission and blessing of the Italian director. Let the truth ring out and be heard far and wide!
Sometimes the truth is as close to us as the ground we are standing on. We fail to see it. Then it hits us in the face and it becomes hard not to see.
He is one of the foremost “truthers,” and the website currently covers the most important issues at
stake in the new millennium: from Big Pharma abuses to our declining world economy, from criminal spraying (“chemtrails”) to alternative energies.
After a career
as a
successful fashion photographer,
Mazzucco
wrote and directed several
feature films in the United States and Europe. But after
9/11 he chose to turn all of his efforts to producing digital format documentaries, releasing them on DVD and online.
Mazzucco’s “Global
Deceit” (Inganno Globale,2005) documentary exposes major flaws in
the official 9/11 story. It was broadcast on Italian TV (on Berlusconi’s
Canale 5) in 2006, launching a
full-fledged national debate, which makes Italy the only country
to date to have tackled the 9/11 controversy in the mainstream media.
Sometimes the truth hurts but it is always better to know than to remain ignorant
Mazzucco has also
participated in
several television debates, presenting his largely Italian audience with the
most up-to-date findings of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
His second documentary, “The New American Century”
(2007),
covers the political and historical aspects of an alleged
“inside job,” in particular the history of the American Neo Cons. (Hear
excerpts from a Pacifica Radio, KPFK Los
Angeles, interview recorded 9/23/09):
It was presented at the 2008 Sao Paulo Film Festival in Brazil and other
European film festivals. Supported by world famous filmmakers such as
Costa-Gavras, Wim Wenders, and Ken Loach, it premiered
in the US at the 2009 Oakland 9/11 Film Festival.
Mazzucco also produced a
documentary on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination (“The Second Dallas”),
which was broadcast on Italian TV in 2008, and a documentary on UFO's
(2009), focusing not on saucers and extraterrestrials themselves but on the undeniable military cover up that began in the 1950s.
Mazzucco released “Cancer: the Forbidden
Cures” (2010) a documentary that reveals a long history of
cover-ups on many apparently effective cures against cancer.
His most recent
documentary is “The True History of Marijuana”
(2011), which exposes the world-wide conspiracy, led by the
petrochemical
industry, that has outlawed one of the most useful plants known to
mankind.
Mazzucco is currently working on a new documentary on 9/11 called “Best Evidence - 10 years of public
investigation on 9/11,” which will summarize the results
obtained in the last 10 years by the worldwide 9/11 Truth Movemente.
Mazzucco has also written a
book on 9/11
and
one on the John and Robert F. Kennedy
assassinations.
Hemp. Ganja, Cannabis, illegal, Bob Marley, adolescence. That is the image of pot in the West. But many people involved in Buddhist and Hindu Nepal’s natural fibers industry know, this word has a much better image. It is the basis of a thriving textile industry, which is playing a significant role in boosting Nepal’s economy.
In a nation with few natural, export-quality resources and many unemployed people (as part of the design of any industrialized society), particularly in villages where no practical source of outside income exists, hemp and other natural fibers are becoming big.
Longer fibers make stronger strands of yarn
But the use of hemp for textiles is far from new. Humans have been cultivating hemp longer than any other textile fiber.
Its recorded textile use dates back to 8000 BCE when its long fibers were woven into fabric, eventually providing 80% of the world’s textiles. By 2,700 BCE hemp as a fabric and a medicinal herb were incorporated into a majority of the cultures in what we now call the Middle East, Asia Minor, India, China, Japan, and Africa.
Within the next thousand years, hemp grew to be the world’s largest agricultural crop. It was the basis of many important industries -- fiber for textiles and ropes, lamp oil, paper, medicine, and food for humans and domesticated animals.
All of this should come as no surprise considering the fact that hemp is the longest and strongest plant fiber, twice as strong as cotton. Because it is extremely abrasion and rot resistant, it became the primary source for canvas, boat sails, rope, as well as clothing, military uniforms, shoes, and baggage until inferior and dangerous man-made petrochemical fabrics (e.g., polyester) were sold to the world as a replacement. It fell out of popularity in the west as man-made materials... More
Nepal is a magical Buddhist land of snow peaks, virgin forests, and spiritual seekers. While it may not be the land of the Buddha's birth as advertised, it is now very Buddhist.
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