Reflections from news and commentary of the day
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Saturday, April 18, 2026
Colorado River projected to deliver one-fifth of normal water to Lake Powell after ‘astonishing’ March heatwave: The record-hot March conditions that led to a rapid melt-off of the snowpack in Colorado were echoed across the seven-state #ColoradoRiver Basin — The #Aspen Times #COriver #aridification – Coyote Gulch
Friday, April 17, 2026
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Fr. Bob's Reflection for the Second Sunday of Easter - Guest Post
In 1957, a Swedish film titled “The Seventh Seal” was released. In one memorable scene, Death appears in human form to a weary knight. What follows is a conversation about God.
The knight asks, “Why does God hide Himself? He never reveals Himself. Why doesn’t He stretch out His arm and touch us?”
Death simply responds, “He does not reach out. He just remains silent.”
The knight continues, “That’s right. He doesn’t do anything. Sometimes I wonder if He’s really out there.”
If we are honest, many of us can relate to that exchange. At some point in our lives, we have all thought like Thomas in today’s Gospel. We have wondered if God is really there; if we are alone, searching for some sign, some touch, some word of reassurance that He has not abandoned us.
That raises an important question: Is there a way to become more certain in what we believe? Can anything strengthen our faith?
The answer is yes. Faith, much like a muscle, grows stronger when it is exercised. When a muscle isn’t used, it weakens; over time it can even shrink. Faith works in a similar way. If we neglect it, it can wither. And, for all practical purposes, it can fade from our lives.
So, one practical way to strengthen faith is simply to live it.
There’s a story about a man vacationing alone in a cabin in the California mountains. He found himself lonely, restless and deeply unsettled. Something in his life felt off, and he began to believe that God had abandoned him.
In desperation, he prayed. He promised God he would do whatever was asked of him – if only he could regain some peace of mind. In that quiet moment, he sensed a simple response: “Start living the Gospel. Start living the teachings of Jesus, even if you don’t fully understand them.”
He made that decision. He began trying to live according to Christ’s teachings. It wasn’t easy. He stumbled at times and fell back into old habits. But that commitment slowly changed him. It brought clarity, peace and direction.
Later, in an article titled “The Living Word,” he summed up the experience this way: “I learned to hear the word – and to act on it.”
My friends, faith is a lot like life itself. It has peaks and valleys; its highs and lows. Even the most faithful among us have moments of doubt, just as Thomas did in today’s Gospel. Faith can flicker like a candle flame in a strong breeze.
But we should also remember this: faith is like the sun. It may be hidden behind clouds or seem to set for a time, but it never disappears. It is always there.
When our faith feels distant or hidden, we do not need to panic or lose heart. Instead, those moments can become opportunities – chances to show God our trust, even when certainty feels out of reach.
And when faith feels especially fragile, we can take comfort in the words of Peter:
“It may be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove your faith is genuine. Even gold, which can be destroyed, is tested by fire. And so, your faith, which is more precious than gold, must also be tested, so that it may endure. Then you will receive praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Monday, April 13, 2026
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Friday, April 10, 2026
Thursday, April 9, 2026
The Empire of Cannibals -
https://savageminds.substack.com/p/the-empire-of-cannibals?publication_id=65949&post_id=193726985&isFreemail=true&r=1y80w&triedRedirect=true
[Salon] Trump and Netanyahu face a reckoning - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Trump and Netanyahu face a reckoning
Summary: the ceasefire that Donald Trump accepted has stopped the war and with the president signalling he does not want a resumption Tehran has secured a significant victory over its greatest enemies.
Is this the emperor has no clothes moment for Donald Trump? The two week ceasefire he announced at the 11th hour, literally the 11th hour saw him “staring into the abyss in the Trumpiest way possible, as if he were a reality-show producer teasing the season finale” as The Economist’s Greg Carlstrom put it.
The New York Times in an exclusive piece took readers into the Situation Room on 11 February when Benjamin Netanyahu sold Trump the ultimate bad deal convincing him that a quick win was possible and that regime change was a few easy steps away from being achieved:
Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.
He also baldly claim that the Iranian people would rush into the streets to overthrow the regime abetted by Mossad’s intervention to encourage rioting and revolution (see our newsletter of 19 January.)
In the days that followed the Times says that various people questioned the narrative Netanyahu had stitched together. The head of the CIA John Ratcliffe told the president that the notion of achieving regime change was “farcical.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a tad earthier. He told Trump it was “bullshit.”
And yet no one, other than the vice president JD Vance, argued in a forceful way that the war was utter folly. Vance noted that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz with huge consequences for, amongst other impacts, the price of petrol at the pump. He warned the war would alienate his supporters which it did (as Jon Hoffman argued in our podcast of 1 April pointing to a growing split between MAGA always Trumpers and America Firsters angry that the president had broken his promise not to engage in foreign wars.)
Trump brushed aside those concerns because as he told Tucker Carlson who had also intervened at a late stage “everything will be OK because it always is.” The president’s instincts were what mattered and those around him accepted against all the evidence and all the odds that he must be right when in fact he could not have been more wrong.
The president claimed a win even as in an extraordinary volte-face he embraced the Iranian counter-proposal to his 15 point surrender document:
We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.
Iran has declared a "historic and crushing defeat" of the US and Israel after 40 days of war, forcing Washington to accept a 10-point Iranian proposal that includes a permanent ceasefire, the lifting of all sanctions, and the withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
The defence and security analyst and our podcast contributor Andreas Krieg (you can find his latest AD podcast here) used social media to describe the ceasefire deal as:
the worst strategic defeat for the US since Vietnam and possibly the worst strategic defeat for Israel ever. IF the ceasefire term are translated into an agreement, Iran will be able to rebuild capabilities within a year.
Benjamin Netanyahu had no choice but to confirm that Israel would join the ceasefire while attempting to save face by declaring the war against Lebanon will continue. As Haaretz noted the prime minister in doing so had not achieved two of his key aims when he and Trump launched the war:
The first is Iran's nuclear program, with the fate of its enriched uranium still unclear. There is also, for now, no Iranian commitment to abandon its ballistic missile program, which Netanyahu has defined as an "existential threat" and which has been a primary focus of Israeli air force operations over the past month.
Netanyahu’s chief opposition rival Yair Lapid who had backed the war when it was launched was quick to go for the jugular:
There has never been such a diplomatic disaster in our history. Israel was not even at the table when decisions were made on core issues of our national security…. Netanyahu failed diplomatically, failed strategically and did not meet a single goal he himself set.
Iran’s National Security Council issued a statement that concluded “Iran has achieved a massive victory and forced criminal America to accept its 10-point plan.” While the degree of the victory will be debated it is without doubt a win for the Iranian regime. Not only has it survived by playing leverage of the Strait of Hormuz with great skill it has won a huge propaganda success by forcing the world’s most powerful military to come to the negotiating table on its terms.
The war has also forced a reckoning on the Gulf states. Another of our podcast contributors Chatham House’s Sanam Vakil in a social media posting argues:
the Gulf will be more vulnerable than ever before and therefore in need of U.S. help. But Gulf populations have begun to question the United States’ reliability and the value of hosting American bases. To better protect themselves, Gulf leaders must therefore now try to wrest some autonomy from the United States by strengthening cooperation, foremost among themselves.
(Sanam Vakil’s latest AD podcast Iran and regime survival is here.)
For Trump a career both in business and politics that has long defied gravity has crashed to earth with a thud that is echoing around the world and most emphatically in America. The loyalists he has surrounded himself with in his second term have seen the would be emperor without any clothes. That will shake them. But beyond the confines of the White House his attempt to sell to a majority of Americans that the ceasefire was a win is not likely to succeed with political implications for the president and the party he had claimed to make his own.
Netanyahu too will face a reckoning. His brutal and genocidal war in Gaza, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the destruction of Lebanon and the ruthless bombing campaign he and the Americans inflicted on Iran have turned Israel into a global pariah state. Most crucially his self-serving policies have squandered support for Israel in the country that matters most: the United States.
Benjamin Netanyahu had boasted that the war would change the Middle East forever. It has but not in the way he thought it would.
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