TURIN — Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprise attack on Iran has shaken the Middle East, brought the West back together and returned Israel to Europe’s fickle and rather cynical good graces. Somehow, the Iranian conflict has managed to push the inhuman massacre in Gaza into the shadows, appearing merely as a secondary disturbance, collateral damage. IFCJ.ca - The Fellowship Ad IFCJ.ca - The Fellowship support.ifcj.ca call to action icon On the chaotic chessboard of current geopolitics, the fate of Iran’s nuclear sites and the cave-dwelling fanaticism of the ayatollahs carry a thousand times more weight than the ever expanding Palestinian graveyard. For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here. International law may have died as well, but not everyone sees that as bad news. Vladimir Putin’s curious caution seems to confirm this fact, giving credence to the idea, widely floated in international circles, of an unwritten pact with Donald Trump: a temporary hands-off approach to Tehran in exchange for a U.S. pullback in Kyiv. And without a doubt, any regime change that decapitates Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and topples Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, holed up in some bunker in Tehran, would be cheered from Washington to Brussels. Related video: 'Return to diplomacy is clearly the best approach to preventing Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons' (France24 - Video) We can now bring in Daryl Kimball. Current Time 0:01 / Duration 11:50 France24 - Video 'Return to diplomacy is clearly the best approach to preventing Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons' 0 View on Watch View on Watch Suddenly, the Netanyahu government’s brutal excesses seem a bit easier to stomach. Israel’s current military assault against Iran might have gone ahead even without the October 7 massacre, but it would have been unthinkable before Russia’s aggression in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. That day marked the true turning point in our recent history, the moment when the illegal use of force began to replace international treaties. At first it went unnoticed, but over time, the shift became undeniable. These days, might makes right. It is a doctrine cemented by the rise of a volatile American president who no longer even tries to cloak his arbitrary decisions in legal justifications. We are under the sway of a global “black swan” event operating in a fourth dimension: one of uncertainty, lawlessness and disorder. No swift end Still, it is hard to deny that 15 years of attempts to dissuade Tehran from going nuclear have failed. Diplomacy has fallen short, and we have to find the courage to face not just what pleases us, but the collapse of what we once believed to be right. One crisis would trigger another. Anyone who thinks Netanyahu’s war is headed for a swift and predictable resolution is deluding themselves. Israel is in real danger, as is the Iranian regime, an empire far larger and stronger than many assume. By simply targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran could throw global trade into chaos and send oil prices through the roof. One crisis would trigger another. Soldiers preparing tanks for invasion on the Gaza border on May 14, 2025. In wake of the Israel-Iran war, mounting casualities in Gaza have been put on the backburner. Credit: Gaby Schuetze/ZUMA Credit: Gaby Schuetze/ZUMA Soldiers preparing tanks for invasion on the Gaza border on May 14, 2025. In wake of the Israel-Iran war, mounting casualities in Gaza have been put on the backburner. Credit: Gaby Schuetze/ZUMA Credit: Gaby Schuetze/ZUMA So why is Israel striking now? As Gabriele Segre of La Stampa puts it, “The Western sense of time is different from that in Jerusalem, where the underlying ambition is always to make it to tomorrow.” A final green light? The Iranian threat is written into the very constitution of the Islamic Republic: destroy Israel, invade Mecca, drive the Great American Satan out of the Middle East. That is why they believe the time to act is now. No occupant of the White House, not even Trump, can afford to distance himself from Jerusalem. The Thaad missile defense system, transferred from the United States to Israel, was seen as the final green light for any show of strength, whether or not the stammering, unpredictable Donald J. Trump gave it his blessing. A confused businessman who contradicts himself, shouts and whispers, threatens and retreats, and eventually jumps on the winner’s bandwagon and boasts: “Great attacks, the next ones will be even more brutal.” Win more deals with an AI-powered CRM Ad Win more deals with an AI-powered CRM Pipedrive call to action icon Trump has lost control, so he pretends to have all of it. No occupant of the White House, not even him, can afford to distance himself from Jerusalem. Even if, as Bill Emmott wrote in this newspaper, “The strong voice, combined with a limited attention span, leads to inconsistency on the strategic level.” Bold and unreliable The American president may be bold, but he is unreliable. Netanyahu, with whom he shares a kind of animal instinctive bond, knows this. There is no point in imagining a role for Europe, it has none. Even less for Italy, whose Prime Minister, by default, aligns with whatever decision the White House makes. None of this is new, and none of it pleasant. I was recently in the ancient Arena of Verona to watch a futuristic staging of Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, directed by Stefano Poda. The audience erupted with applause during “Va, pensiero”, and closed with a thunderous standing ovation. When to Retire: A Quick Guide Ad When to Retire: A Quick Guide Fisher Investments call to action icon The work tells the story from six centuries before Christ, when Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem and enslaves the Jewish people, already on the brink of extinction. Poda’s direction features a massive steel hourglass at the center of the stage, inscribed with the word “Vanitas,” a monument to the folly of humankind, indifferent to the passage of time. In Act I, Nebuchadnezzar declares: “My fury no longer constrained, make atrocious havoc of the vanquished, plunder, burn the temple, mercy will be a crime.” “I am no longer king, I am God.” Today it is Benjamin Netanyahu, caught between realpolitik and delusions of grandeur, who thinks like that Babylonian king. And no one, not even those who could, wants to stop him. The violence of the Israeli leader, indeed, suits many. “I am no longer king, I am God.” That kind of leap flattens every trace of humanity and reduces the world to a brutal state of self interest, whatever the price and whatever the means. Here we are again. Mercy becomes a crime. Netanyahu’s geopolitical mindset mirrors that of merciless Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, illustrated above. Credit: Aoki Shigeru via Wikimedia Netanyahu’s geopolitical mindset mirrors that of merciless Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, illustrated above. Credit: Aoki Shigeru via Wikimedia In today’s new geopolitical playbook, distrust counts for more than trust, or law, as trust by now smacks of naivety. Politics has vanished from the table. The cold calculation of Babylon’s kings wins the day. This is once again the spirit of our age. Faced with a choice between a bad deal and a beautiful idea, we take the deal. The dead? The oppression? We accept them as given. The disappearance of an individual might stir a sigh at most. We live like dulled turtles inside our shells, and keep calling it life. We pull back, shut ourselves in, suffocate slowly. Hoping the iron fist of the strong doesn’t come down on our heads this time. As I write these lines, an international news agency reports the latest headline: “Sixty dead, including twenty children, as building hit by Israel.” And so, in this daily disaster, we can turn to Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s words: Perhaps we cling to our demons because we are afraid of losing our angels. Even if, today, we’ve begun to wonder where those angels might be hiding. Like our content? Follow us for more.
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I am wondering though are there physicists who say time is completely man made and is not real. Thought for 6s Yes — some physicists say that, but almost none mean “time is a made-up calendar like money.” They mean the flow, the global now, or time as a fundamental ingredient is not in the basic laws. Clocks, aging, and change still happen.Einstein already wrote that for physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is “only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He meant there is no single moving present for the whole universe. He did not mean clocks are fake. physicsworld.com Julian Barbour is the blunt case. In The End of Time he argues there is no flowing time and no hidden time axis. Reality is a heap of complete “Nows.” What we call history is structure inside a Now (a “time capsule”), not travel along a line. Motion and passage are how we read differences between configurations. That is as close as a working physicist gets to “time is not real.” It is a minority view, taken seriously as a research program, not as settled fact. en.wikipedia.org Carlo Rovelli is the most visible living voice. He has written that time does not exist at the fundamental level: loop-quantum-gravity equations need no time variable; past and future look the same in microscopic laws; the “flow” is largely how a coarse-grained, heat-sensitive brain sits inside rising entropy. He also says our experience of time is not a mere error — it is real for us, like the sky “turning” because Earth rotates. So: not fundamental, not man-made from nothing, but perspectival. theguardian.com Others nearby, not identicalPage and Wootters: in a globally frozen quantum universe, “evolution” is entanglement with a clock subsystem. Nima Arkani-Hamed and many quantum-gravity / holography people: spacetime itself is probably emergent, not basic. Lee Smolin often disagrees with full timelessness and defends a real present; useful as a contrast. What almost nobody in physics claims: that seconds, cesium clocks, or “Tuesday” are arbitrary social inventions with no physical correlate. Units and calendars are human. Duration, causal order, and proper time along a worldline are not.So the accurate map is:Claim Who Status No universal flowing now Einstein, most relativists Mainstream Time not in the deepest equations Rovelli, some quantum gravity Active research Time is only an illusion; only static Nows Barbour Minority, discussed Time is a human convention like money Almost no physicist Not a physics position Your “time doesn’t exist” slogan sits nearest Barbour and popular Rovelli. The field’s careful version is: the thing we feel as a river is not a basic piece of the world; change and clocks still are.
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For decades, the mainstream Jewish community and conservative Christians often found themselves on opposite sides of domestic cultural issues. However, the aggressive overreach of radical activist networks in public education has shattered old political divisions, forging an unprecedented, highly effective coalition [10.1].This unexpected alliance works in practice through three major common interests:1. A Shared Stand for Parent Rights and TransparencyThe underhanded tactics used to advance curricula like San Francisco’s Voices—such as midnight votes and copyright shields—alienated Christian families just as much as Jewish families.Breaking the Monopolies: Conservative and Christian legal networks have joined hand-in-hand with Jewish advocacy groups to mandate total educational transparency. They are deploying joint resources to demand that public school boards publish every single reading list and lesson plan online, permanently dismantling the ability of radical administrators to hide their work.Electoral Force: In suburban communities like Fremont and across Silicon Valley, Christian, Jewish, and immigrant parent groups (such as East Asian and Indian coalitions) are combining their voting power [10.1]. They are pooling campaign funds to systematically remove radical progressive officials from local school boards and replace them with moderate, transparency-first candidates.2. Uniting Against the "Oppressor vs. Oppressed" FrameworkTraditional Christians and Jewish advocates share a fundamental rejection of radical identity-based theories that divide children into rigid moral categories based on race or religion.Defending Basic Values: Both communities view the "Liberated" framework as an assault on universal values, meritocracy, and individual character. Christian parents refuse to let their children be taught that their faith or traditional values are inherently oppressive, while Jewish parents refuse to let their children be targeted by biased political dogmas.3. Bipartisan Legislative and Federal EnforcementThis alliance has successfully elevated local school board grievances into historic federal and state-level protections.The Right to Worship Act: Just days ago, on August 6, 2026, a major bipartisan, bicameral coalition led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced the federal Right to Worship Act. Backed heavily by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), this bill establishes strict 100-foot protective buffer zones and heavy civil fines to stop hostile activist crowds from blockading or harassing congregants outside houses of worship.The Federal Crackdown: The Trump administration’s upcoming 15-city DOJ task force and FBI deployment is heavily cheered by red-state conservatives. They view the federal audits into deep-blue California municipalities as the ultimate enforcement of civil rights, proving that local progressive immunity expires where federal law begins.The progressive establishment completely miscalculated. They assumed they could isolate Jewish families by using anti-racist language, but their reliance on secrecy and radical tactics instead forced a historic real-world alignment. Mainstream Jews, traditional Christians, conservatives, and diverse immigrant communities have formed a massive, united front—permanently forcing the radical movement into a corner as the legal guardrails close in [10.1].
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What about when he gets free of those three placesWhen Christian finally gets free of the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and Doubting Castle, his journey completely transforms. He enters a landscape that is the absolute antidote to the "dark feeling" and the chaotic information overload of the modern world.In Bunyan’s allegory, escaping those dark places leads him to a state of profound peace and clarity that provides a beautiful blueprint for how to find relief in your own life:🏔️ 1. The Delectable Mountains (The View from Above)Right after escaping Giant Despair, Christian reaches the Delectable Mountains. These mountains are full of gardens, orchards, and vineyards, and they are guarded by shepherds named Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere.What it means for you: After years of being trapped in the loops of overthinking, Christian is given a safe sanctuary. The shepherds give him a perspective from a higher ground, letting him look back at the treacherous path he survived with a sense of peace, rather than terror.☀️ 2. The Country of Beulah (Rest and Healing)Near the very end of his journey, Christian enters the land of Beulah. In this country, the air is incredibly sweet and calm. The story notes that here, "they were out of the reach of Giant Despair, and from this place they could not so much as see Doubting Castle." The sun shines night and day, and it is a place of total rest where the traveler waits before crossing over to their final home.What it means for you: Beulah represents a mind that has completely disconnected from the noise of the "Vanity Fair" internet and the heavy weight of global politics. It is a state of mind where the background noise finally goes quiet, and you are allowed to just be, safe and rested.🔑 How He Actually Escapes Doubting CastleThe most important part of the entire story is how Christian gets out of Doubting Castle in the first place. He and his companion Hopeful are locked in the dark dungeon for days, being beaten by Giant Despair.Then, at midnight, Christian suddenly remembers something. He cries out, "What a fool am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle." He pulls out the key, puts it in the lock, and the heavy iron doors fly open instantly.The key was in his possession the entire time; he just forgot he had it because he was so focused on the terrifying walls of the dungeon.
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