Beauty queen quits her 'Miss USA' throne

Noelia Voigt, crowned Miss USA 2023 in 2023, has decided to step down (© Jason Bean/RGJ).

Who me? I beat everybody else on this stage?

Miss USA Noelia Voigt, 24, has announced she is relinquishing her Miss USA crown and throne to preserve her mental health.

The beauty pageant winner, who was awarded the prestigious title Sept. 29, 2023, in Reno Tahoe, announced her decision to step down today (May 6, 2024) on Instagram, which is encoded with message "I am silenced." (See below).

Beauty Queen Ariana Viera dead at 26

“My journey as Miss USA has been incredibly meaningful, representing Utah with pride, and later the USA at Miss Universe (held in November),”

Voigt said in the lengthy statement posted to her account. “Sadly, I have made the very tough decision to resign from the title of Miss USA 2023.” USA TODAY has reached out to the pageant for comment.

"I AM SILENCED" (Noelia Voight on IG)

“Never could I have imagined the journey that my childhood dream would take me on,” Voigt, 24, continued.

“Constant and consistent hard work and dedication all lead me to where I am today, and I hope that the last seven years of competing in pageantry and sharing my journey with you all is something that inspires you to never give up on your dreams, whatever they may be.

• Miss USA Noelia Voigt makes 'tough decision' to step down. Read her full statement
• Erin Jensen, USA TODAY, May 6, 2024; Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Unseen World of Plant Intelligence (NPR)

Plant and fungi kingdoms are conscious and communicate? Yes! Once one said to me, "Go outside and sit in the dirt." I was inside a Buddhist meditation next to the garden that I could see through big windows. I didn't understand why it was so insistent. Then I realized that it sits.

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The Light Eaters: How Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers New Understanding of Life on Earth

Author Zoë Schlanger releases an amazing book of botanical research tomorrow, May 7, 2024. Plants are aware and intelligent.  They have a secret life! We can hardly wrap our minds around the idea, but science reveals what many from the Buddha to St. Francis of Assisi to female scientists always intuited. This book is a #1 best seller in Ecology from pre-orders. The author appeared on NPR on May 6.

• “A masterpiece of science writing.”
  
  –Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
• “Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.”
  
  –Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
• “Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!”
  
  –Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction
• “A brilliant must-read. This book shook and changed me.”
  
  –David George Haskell, author of Sounds Wild and Broken, The Songs of Trees, and The Forest Unseen

This forest is enchanted. I'm not alone here.

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us.

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival.

In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies [like a space alien chameleon squid under the sea] to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence.

Journeys with Plant Spirits (Emma Farrell)

Plants/shrooms are alive on another frequency

In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.

What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it?

Zoë Schlanger (Heather Sten/Harper Collins)

Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

• AUDIO: Zoë Schlanger makes the case for plant intelligence in 'The Light Eaters' (NPR)
• Waging war on sex workers: The journalist and former sex worker on what feminists get wrong about prostitution – Zoe Schlanger interviews one (guernicamag.com)

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously?

More importantly, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities?

Go vegan: plant "meat"

Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for — if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants — and our own place — in the natural world.

Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West (Chumash Cecilia Garcia, USC Prof. James Adams)

Plants know. Isn't this exactly what we've always been trying to tell the White Man?

• Zoë Schlanger (NPR), May 6, 2024; text (amazon.com); Dhr. Seven, Kelly Ani (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Israel's WAR on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Outrage as pro-Palestine activists stage protest outside Auschwitz (msn.com)

Sure, Prime Minister Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is an SOB but he's our SOB (CIA)

We are not the Gestapo. I am not Hitler. This is Israel, the most moral genocide in the world.

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Adolf was on meth. What's Bibi's excuse?

Israel's war crimes keep mounting. Never mind that it's Holocaust Remembrance Day. War criminal and Zionist Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu seems to have chosen today to launch a killing offensive, invading the safe city of Rafah, where Palestinians were driven, herded, starved, and now told to move again or be firebombed and/or shot to death by invading IDF troops struggling to ethnically cleanse the area of all non-Jews.

• Another war crime: Israel uses food as weapon: “They are starving,” says doctor back from Gaza; World Food Programme warns north in “full-blown FAMINE”
• “This militaristic approach has been a failure”: Meet Hala Rharrit, first U.S. diplomat to quit over Gaza

Adolf had Eve, Bibi has a corrupt co-conspirator

To advance its genocide, it has bombed schools, shut down all hospitals, lied to the media, murdered journalists, aid workers, and innocents, including executed under the Hannibal Doctrine on the first day of its counter aggression and ever since. Today's atrocity is the shutting down of any opposing view or perspective by making illegal the Qatari news agency Al Jazeera.

Secret weapons and public relations propaganda

Why AJ+? It is the only outlet in Israel that has correspondents embedded in Gaza. And the one thing a propaganda war and aerial bombardment in furtherance of a genocide cannot stand is the truth getting out. AJ had to be stopped to shore up the narrative the Mossad, IDF, Knesset, and PR firms working for the "State" of Israel want to promote after any given atrocity.

• “Incandescent” with rage: Matt Duss on voter anger over Genocide Joe Biden's support for Netanyahu and Israel's genocide

شرش | Shoresh | שר”ש (@shoresh_us) • Anti-Zionist Jews in Israel and US

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“Criminal act”: Israel bans Al Jazeera, the largest int’l news organization in Gaza, ahead of Israel's invasion of Rafah

(May 6, '24) GUEST: Managing Editor of Al Jazeera Mohamed Moawad (LINKS), Democracy Now!

Where are we on the Jewish question, men? - Yes.

As Israel's death toll in Gaza soars to more than 34,700 dead and more than 70,000 maimed, and countless more injured and traumatized, Zionist Jewish Israeli authorities have taken Al Jazeera off the air in Israel -- sending stormtroopers to destroy their offices and steal their equipment, ensuring their destruction and ability to report anything they see -- and ordered civilian Palestinians in eastern Rafah to be ethnically cleansed, forcibly relocated, and evacuated ahead of Israel's impending offensive in the region.

I am the dictator! The CIA installed me, not you!

“The Israeli government is trying to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and trying to intimidate Al Jazeera…[to] delegitimize the whole coverage,” says Al Jazeera’s Managing Editor Moawad, explaining this is “a strategy” to “try to make sure that the story doesn’t reach the world.”

Attack! Kill as many as you can. We'll be there

Over the past eight months, Al Jazeera has been one of the only international outlets with reporters on the ground inside Gaza during the extermination, where all its journalists have been targeted and at least three of its employees have been killed during Israel’s monthslong assault.

Israel has been threatening to ban Al Jazeera for “incitement” via “a series of intimidations” for months, culminating in “a criminal act,” says Moawad. He calls on the international community, including the U.S. government, to condemn Israel’s suppression of a free press. VIDEO: “Criminal act”: Israel bans Al Jazeera ahead of its invasion of Rafah | Democracy Now!

• Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)
• NOT IN OUR NAME (ifnotnowmovement.org)
• IDF veterans for peace (breakingthesilence.org.il)
• ‎شرش | Shoresh | שר”ש‎ (@shoresh_us) • Anti-Zionist Jews
• Code Pink: Women for Peace
• American Veterans for Peace
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Amnesty International
• Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!, May 6, 2024; Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Shauna Schwartz (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY

Super computer predicts human extinction

VIDEO: New US dinosaur that lived just before mass extinction revealed

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Steve Quayle says God told him so.

Run! Wait, HOW? WHERE are we going to run to? We don't have spaceships (vimanas) to jettison ourselves off this world and go somewhere else.

Except maybe. "Science" claims to have just found a new planet that's better than Earth, more habitable, bigger, nicer, more water. So take that, Earth. We don't need your stinking dirt and life sustaining H20 after all.

But if we did all have our very own Jetsons' space-cars, WHY should we run? Here's WHY: A supercomputer simulation just predicted when humans will go extinct. Wait a minute, WHEN? WHEN does the all-knowing Supercomputer say we will go extinct, and does that mean only Earthlings or does that include all the humanoids in our solar system and beyond? (Yes, they're out there, but that's a different subject altogether).

A supercomputer simulation just predicted when humans will go extinct

One day, the world will end, or so they say. When that happens, the Sun will essentially explode outward, destroying many of the planets around it as it "dies" to us and reaches another cycle of its life in another form.

But, before that happens, scientists say we can likely expect humanity's end to arrive. Climate change is, of course, an ongoing concern that many scientists and capitalists are trying to solve.

• [Hey, why don't we start a pollution credit market and let the magic of the marketplace solve it for us? Let's give corporations the right to pollute, and they'll sell those right-to-pollute credits until they become so expensive, they won't sell them, and all pollution will end as they go out of business? No, of course not. They'll just pollute with impunity and throw money at the problem. Our lungs could filter their bad air for them, and we won't get any pay off for our shortened lives.]

What we send up must come down to splat on us.

And they've come up with some really cool and impressive ideas -- including sending bubbles into space to help block solar radiation [or toxic heavy metal chemtrails into the atmosphere to rain down on us and block light in the meantime].

However, no solution has actually been put into play just yet [except for the chemtrails, massive forest fires, and volcano eruptions]. As a result, climate change continues to progress onward, threatening the melting of the ice caps, which would send hundreds of thousands of miles of shoreline under the ocean.

And according to a new simulation, humanity's end could come in as little as 250 million years if climate change continues the way it has. [Wow, think about it, we only have a quarter billion years as a species then it's lights out. Oh, great God of the sky, save us miserable slaves from thine wrath and those darn capitalists and their paid scientists who pollute our world!]

A study was published in Nature Geoscience detailing these findings, and it offers a unique insight into the future that could await humanity and hundreds of other species of mammals.

• Scientist claims he has evidence we live in a simulation
• Original post: A supercomputer simulation just predicted when humans will go extinct, which first appeared first on BGR.com. MSN
• MIT scientists think they've discovered how to fully reverse climate change [Just throw money at the problem?]
• 25 facts we learned in school that are no longer "true": Dinosaurs are no longer extinct, dinosaurs weren't all lizards but feathered serpents or birds, George Washington didn't have wooden teeth but he did buy slave teeth for a black mouth,
• How long have humans been in North America? New Mexico footprints are rewriting history
• 10 ancient cities once thought to be mythical that have actually been discovered
• 20 fascinating facts about ancient civilizations that will amaze you

• Joshua Hawkins, BGR via MSN.com, 5/5/24; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Hamas for ceasefire, but Israel attacks Rafah

Thanks, Joe Biden, for all the covert weapons and all the overt weapons sent through Congress.

Palestine's Hamas accepts Israeli ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar | CNN

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Thanks for the bombs. Why are you crying?

KFI (iheart.com) and CNN (CIA front) are reporting that Hamas has accepted a ceasefire and agreement to release hostages of its genocidal oppressors Israel in a deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar on the eve of a genocidal Israeli campaign to enter Rafah with a massive, although not all-out, force.

• Reports are coming in that in spite of the ceasefire Hamas agreed to, Israel decided to attack Rafah anyway. Rafah is where hundreds of thousands, possibly a million, Palestinian refugees were forced to relocate in continued Israeli crimes against humanity, war atrocities, war crimes, and the world's most well documented genocide.
• THIS JUST IN: Israel says it will continue [genocidal] operations in Gaza despite Hamas' acceptance of ceasefire proposal (MSN) - Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Monday (May 6, 2024) that Israel will continue its [ethnic cleansing, genocide, and international war crimes] operations in Gaza for now (AP, The Associated Press).

Do Israeli Jews hate US Christians?

Israel aims to terrorize elderly civilians, women, and children, while humiliating men and daring them to oppose in any way. Defiance is taken as resistance, males of a certain age are automatically (or during the post-mortem) labelled "terrorists" or "Hamas fighters" who need to be crushed with U.S. bombs, jet planes, and a steady supply of secret weapons.

The Biden administration did not wait for Congress to vote for billions more dollars to give to Bibi Netanyahu. It was already sending in weapons with one hands while claiming it was signaling for peace with the other. Eastern Rafah is still being threatened by Israel evacuated for a ground invasion because Israel has not yet responded to Hamas' acceptance of ceasefire terms.

• ☮️Hamas accepts Gaza ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar | CNN

There has been no official word from Israel, but unofficially is has rejected the offer it negotiated because it is not to its liking, and Israel is eager to continue the next phase of its genocide, which is to level Rafah and kill or harm another 100,000 Palestinians, injuring more than a million.

• Israel and Hamas trade blame amid little sign of breakthrough in ceasefire and hostage talks | CNN
• UCLA creating new office of campus safety after protest debacle: may begin to follow its own protocols rather than relying on paramilitary police violence and excessive force

Israel destroys aid workers, journalists, Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, the University of California and other campuses across the country are continuing protests and encampments, and police are being sent in to clear them at gunpoint. Yesterday, USC's camp was cleared and dismantled after Camp UCLA was brought down.

USC vs. UCLA vs. LAPD and DPS

Today UC San Diego is being oppressed and shut down with extreme prejudice, even as the Board of Regents conducts an internal review of how it behaved toward other student, FAILING to follow its own protocol. It has now hired a career police chief to lead its handling of peaceful demonstrations.

• Pushback: Pro-Israel and genocide Columbia University cancels main commencement ceremony after pro-Palestinian student protests

Details are still up in the air and not yet being reported by the major corporate media. Stay posted for updates. This just in: Hamas accepts Gaza ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar (CNN via MSN.com) AT 12:30 PM (Pacific), KFI is reporting that Israel has started to bombard eastern Rafah, in spite of claims by the White House that Genocide Joe called war criminal Bibi and told him that the U.S. would prefer he not do that.

• Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)
• American Veterans for Peace
• NOT IN OUR NAME (ifnotnowmovement.org)
• Code Pink: Women for Peace
• Jewish IDF Veterans for peace: breakingthesilence.org.il
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Amnesty International
• Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Shauna Schwartz, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Mindfulness: Is West ruining Buddhism?

Is the West ruining Buddhism?

(Corey Campbell) Buddhism is increasingly popular in the West, but are we burying its moral foundations in favor of a more individualistic and mass-marketed version of spirituality?

Further reading:

• Why Buddhism is True
• Why I am not a Buddhist
• Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
• Corey Campbell, Dec. 2, 2022; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Survivors of Parkland shooting die by suicide

Is suicide murder? - Yes, it is. - Who is the guilty party? - The killer or the bully? - The killer.

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Where are David Hogg and Emma González?

Ashley White reporting for theartistree.com via MSN (5/6/24):

Two survivors of the Parkland school shooting have committed suicide within the past week [but not according to Wikipedia, which states they killed themselves on March 17 of 2019 and a week later, respectively], leading to speculations about the enduring pain and trauma stemming from [staged or real school] gun violence [and their possible complicity and attempted activism with groomed media darlings Emma González and David Hogg, who have hogged the spotlight as tools or youth advocates for gun control].

• Are false flag school operations real or just conspiracy theories?

Nabbing the patsy, Nicholas Cruz taken down

Sydney Aiello, a recent graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, took her own life last weekend, while another survivor, a current student, Calvin Desir, has also died by suicide.

These deaths occurred over a year after the shooting that claimed the lives of 14 students and three teachers, sparking a nationwide debate on gun violence. Sydney Aiello, who was close friends with one of the shooting victims, Meadow Pollack, struggled with “survivor’s guilt” even after graduating from Stoneman Douglas. Her parents revealed that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), underscoring the lasting impact of such traumatic events on survivors. The Pollack family expressed their heartbreak over Aiello’s death, attributing it in part to the ripple effect of the shooting.

• (Wiki) Survivors of the shooting, teachers and students alike, are said to have struggled with survivor's guilt and other symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) [68, 75, 76]. On March 17, 2019, thirteen months after the shooting, 19-year-old Sydney Aiello, who survived and whose friend Meadow Pollack had been killed during the shooting, killed herself by suicide after struggling to attend college.
• She claimed she was terrified of being in a classroom and also had been treated for survivor's guilt and PTSD [77, 78]. Less than a week later, 16-year-old Calvin Desir, who had also survived the shooting, also murdered himself in an apparent suicide [79], compounding the tragedy.
• Ashley White (theartistree.com via MSN, 5/6/24); Jeff Rense (rense.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Buddhists

I love Mehheeko - Rosarito, Cabo, Taco Bell, tequila. I also speak a little Mexican. - Wow, BJ!

Let's go to Puebla, Mexico, to see 5 de Mayo celebration highlights

(Where the Jones) Where the Jones? We're the Jones family, and this channel is about where the Jones family is on planet earth. The goal is to travel and visit as many places as possible while at the same time showing the audience a genuine experience full of data. Let's go to the only place in Mexico that celebrates Cinco de Mayo: PUEBLA. My camera was a foot in the air for two hours! To see everything we travel with, check out the Jones Amazon shop for camera equipment to trekking gear to upset stomach remedy while traveling.

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Go indigenous: Eat guacamole and greens

We're Mexican Buddhists with battered brains, searching for a future, world is our aim. Gimme gimme your hand, gimme gimme your mind, gimme gimme this, gimme gimme that... (Germs, "Lexicon Devil").

There's Buddhism in Mexico? Yes, Buddhism arrived in Mexico (Fusang), including California (Alta and Baja) which was part of Mexico, long before there was a United States of America, according to American historians Edward P. Vining (1885) and Rick Fields (1992).

Now let's get it straight. It's not Chinko dee May-yo but rather Sin-Koh deh My-Oh (Cinco de Mayo or \ˈsiŋko ðe ˈmaʝo\), Spanish for the "Fifth of May."

Spanish is NOT the language of Mexico. This is the imperial language of Spanish oppressors. The UMS (United Mexican States) has various indigenous languages, the most popular being Nahuatl ([naw-wah\).

I'm a German-Mexican "Blend" (Frida Kahlo)

Cinco de Mayo is an annual celebration held on the fifth day of May to celebrate Mexico's victory over the Second French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 [1,2], led by General Ignacio Zaragoza. 

So May 5th is NOT like July 4th, the USA's Fourth of July, because it is not an Independence Day for Mexico. That falls on September 16th, El Grito de Dolores.

One day we three will be the Amero Union (AU)

Gen. Zaragoza died months after the battle from an illness, and a larger French force ultimately defeated the Mexican army at the Second Battle of Puebla and occupied Mexico City.

However, following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the United States began lending money and guns to the Mexican Liberals, pushing France and Mexican Conservatives to the edge of defeat.

This virgin Margarita is a nice girl, not too salty.

At the opening of the French chambers in January 1866, French madman Napoleon III announced that he would withdraw French troops from Mexico.

In reply to a French request for American neutrality, the American Secretary of State William H. Seward replied that French withdrawal from Mexico should be unconditional.

Empire vs. Empire: US vs. France vs. Spain

This observance is MORE popular in the United States than in Mexico [3, 4], almost certainly because Americans think it is their southern neighbor's independence day and just can't imagine that it is not.

Cinco de Mayo has become a celebration of Mexican-American (Xicano) culture [5, 6, 7]. Celebrations began in Columbia, California, where they have been observed annually since 1862 [8].

It's not "Mexico" (Land of the Mexica tribe). Its real name is the "United Mexican States."

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Mexico is beautiful and amazingly old, home of
the largest pyramid in the world called Cholula.

The day gained nationwide popularity beyond those of Mexican-American heritage in the 1980s due to advertising campaigns by alcohol purveyors (beer, wine, and tequila companies). Today, Cinco de Mayo generates beer sales on par with the Super Bowl [9].

Brief history of Cinco de Mayo: Mexico to Chicano pride in California

Are you Mexican OR American? - Both, B*tch.

In Mexico, the commemoration of the battle continues to be mostly ceremonial, such as through military parades or battle reenactments but not everywhere in Mexico.

The City of Puebla marks the event with various festivals and reenactments of the battle.

Cinco de Mayo inspires patriotism or at least pride in our Mexican heritage and is therefore sometimes still mistaken for Mexican Independence Day — the most important national holiday in Mexico — which is celebrated on September 16.

History of Buddhism in America

Independence Day commemorates the Cry (Grito) of Dolores in 1810, which initiated the Mexican War of Independence from imperial Spain [1, 10].

Cinco de Mayo has been referenced and featured in entertainment media and has become an increasingly global celebration of Mexican culture, cuisine, and heritage. Everyone loves it, few more than the gringos in El Norte (North America). More: Cinco de Mayo

• PRX (PRI's The World, theworld.org for more info, March 10, 2009); The Jones Family, 2019; George Stephanopoulos, "Cinco de Mayo: A Brief History" (ABC News, 2016); Crystal Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit