Discover the dark legend of Nuño Alvear, a Templar knight from Toledo. Learn about his cursed fate, his haunting encounter with Death, and the eerie legacy that endures in San Servando Castle.

Critical thinking is not taught or even valued much anymore in our society…. But I’m trying to bring it back. Because it’s a very important mental firewall to protect against propaganda and brainwashing. You know, the exact stuff forced on us by the “Mainstream” Media…. So that’s what I want to tackle right now. I want to ask you a very simple question that might suddenly blow your mind a bit…and it’s simply this: you’ve seen countless videos of rockets and missiles being fired back and forth between Israel and Iran/Hamas, right? For the past year, we’ve seen HUNDREDS if not thousands of those videos posted online. Like this: Hezbollah rocket hits Acre factory directly, one Zionist reported dead.#Hezbollah #Israel pic.twitter.com/fpIGlnPh6g — ייחודיفريدunique (@uniqueofm3) October 19, 2024 And this: Hezbolah Rockets being launched towards Israel pic.twitter.com/8pXw0AmJmv — S p r i n t e r (@SprinterFamily) October 6, 2024 And this: It is estimated that around 400 rockets were fired at targets in Israel. Most reporters from the scene say that Israel’s air defense system was not as effective as before. pic.twitter.com/3J5zv5DYoa — S p r i n t e r (@SprinterFamily) May 10, 2023 And this: This is a Hezbollah rocket slamming into an Israeli home today. As a reminder: IF YOU ARE SILENT WHEN ISRAEL IS RUTHLESSLY ATTACKED, STAY SILENT WHEN ISRAEL FIGHTS BACK. pic.twitter.com/eKieMSUa0K — Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) September 22, 2024 And those are just from the last week! But now here’s where I’ll blow many of your minds…. Ukraine has allegedly been fighting Russia for the last FOUR YEARS and yet have you seen any video of any rockets or missiles or wreckage? I can’t think of one single video, can you? Let’s dig in a little deeper…. The Best Question I’ve Heard About Ukraine: “Where’s All The Video?” The Best Question I've Heard About Ukraine: "Where's All The Video?" It's funny how sometimes the most obvious things are right under our noses and we don't see them. This is one of those instances. I've criticized so many different aspects of the Ukraine "war" and the funding of that "war" by America, but one thing I didn't really stop to realize is the most basic question..... If this war is SO big and has been going on for SO long, where is all the video footage? Think about it....Israel and Iran have been engaged in their own "war" since October 7th and we have hundreds of videos of rockets, drones and airplanes striking all over the place. We have videos of buildings being blown up. We have video of on the ground skirmishes. But now think about Ukraine. Have you EVER seen any actual war footage? After what, 4 years now? And so many billions "donated" that I lost count..... If this war is so big, where is all the video of the battles? I can't recall seeing even ONE, can you? In today's day and age, there are video cameras EVERYWHERE.  Worldwide. If something happens, you'll get 10 different camera angles of it uploaded to Twitter within 5 minutes. But a 3-year Ukraine/Russia war? I just spent 20 minutes searching Twitter and I found almost nothing. Try it for yourself. Credit to this lady for blowing my mind today with that question: She asked a damn good question. Where is the footage for the Ukrainian war? Are you aware that at the start of the whole Ukraine distraction, Israeli TV ran fake video showing a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars trying to pass it off as real war footage? pic.twitter.com/QnUP1Mahh4 — Consciousness Rising (@conciousness777) April 20, 2024 You know what videos we DO get, thought? First category of videos we get are the FAKE videos. Remember this one? Remember how even the USA Today had to admit this was not footage of a Ukrainian mig shooting down a Russian fighter jet: The claim: A video shows the Ukrainian Air Force shooting down a Russian jet As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, a video claiming to show the Ukrainian Air Force shooting down a Russian jet has emerged on social media. "Just crazy footage of a Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 shooting down an enemy Su-35 fighter jet. Glory to Ukraine," reads the caption of a Feb. 25 Facebook post. The post includes a vertical video that shows jets passing over a building. A projectile appears to strike an object in the sky, which catches on fire and produces smoke. The video was viewed 14,000 times in a little over a week. However, the clip does not show Ukrainian fighters shooting down a Russian jet. The video comes from a video game. Independent fact-checking organizations have debunked claims that the clip shows the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "On this video, we are not ready to say that it is 100% truthful," Volunteer Info, the Facebook page that shared the clip, told USA TODAY in a direct message. Clip comes from video game As reported by Reuters, the video comes from a game called "Digital Combat Simulator World," which is described on its website as "a free-to-play digital battlefield game." Swiss company Eagle Dynamics created the game. Company spokesperson Matthias Techmanski confirmed to Reuters that the footage was from "Digital Combat Simulator World." Then we get videos like this of people in Ukraine having a great time partying in a Nightclub: Watch! Hey ! It’s Sunday Night!Has Ukraine Fooled You too???War Torn Ukraine this Evening! Citizens are Very Careful to Hide and Bunker Down Amidst an Apocalyptic Devastating War in Kyiv and other Cities of Ukraine… As Zelensky Secures a Major Portion of the $95.3 Billion… pic.twitter.com/Rkp7AcG1Rp — ~777DEAN777~ (@77HERCULES77) April 21, 2024 Does that look like a war-torn country to you? Another one here: https://twitter.com/psyops_war/status/1781877109872316600 My favorite are the beach and poll videos.... Do these Ukrainians look scared for their lives? Thoughts and prayers SEND MORE BILLIONS! https://t.co/L4IRWgniIA — DailyNoah.com (@DailyNoahNews) August 7, 2023 Dance party! We must send more billions to keep the party going! We need to send them moreBillions immediately! https://t.co/HqcvC7AYgH — DailyNoah.com (@DailyNoahNews) April 19, 2024 ChatGPT has several excuses for why we just don't have any of that pesky war footage even after 3 years: Control and Restrictions: Both Russia and Ukraine have imposed controls on the flow of information for reasons of national security, operational secrecy, and to manage the narrative surrounding the conflict. These controls include restrictions on journalists and limits on what can be published or broadcasted. Media Access: Access to conflict zones can be extremely dangerous, and in many cases, journalists and media personnel are restricted from entering these areas. This limits the direct reporting and recording of events as they happen. Propaganda and Misinformation: There's a high risk of propaganda and misinformation from all sides of the conflict. Videos and other forms of media are often used as tools in psychological warfare, to sway public opinion or to mislead enemy forces. Both sides might therefore be cautious about what footage is released. Infrastructure and Communication Disruptions: War can lead to significant disruptions in infrastructure, including internet and telecommunications. This can hinder the ability to capture and upload videos. Personal Safety and Privacy: People in conflict zones might be reluctant to film or share footage due to fears for their personal safety or in order to protect the identity and privacy of those involved in the conflict. Saturation and Sensitivity: Audiences globally might also be shielded from continuous graphic content by media outlets to avoid desensitizing viewers or causing distress, adhering to ethical considerations about the impact of showing graphic war footage. If you look on YouTube, you'll find SOME videos.... But dig in and you find they're highly produced and very short clips, unclear of what you are even seeing. They usually involve one stray soldier doing something random.  Hardly a video of any kind of battlefield I've ever seen. Oh, and we also got this: Dancing Ukraine Fighters Make a Mockery Of The “Ukraine War”? Do you remember that? That was a real mockery. Just like those dancing COVID nurses (remember that cringe video?) we got dancing Ukraine soldiers. What a freaking joke! I exposed a lot more here: The One Thing About Ukraine Money NO ONE Is Talking About… And I wrote this back in 2022: What Is REALLY Happening In Russia/UKRAINE [MSM Not Telling You The Truth] I've waited until now to make any comments about what I believe is happening in Russia/Ukraine. I wanted to wait and watch and see how things developed before commenting. But over the past week I've been flooded with questions from family, friends and readers asking what I believe is really happening right now in the Russia/Ukraine story. So here we go... Let's start with this: I haven't been to either country.  I haven't seen anything first-hand. So I'm going to be telling you what makes sense to me and what I've learned (and what I hope we've all learned) after doing this since 2015. Let's start with this: I don't trust the official MSM narrative. Can we all agree to start there? I think if you start there, you've got about 75% of it figured out. For weeks, all I heard was the MSM saying Putin is going to invade, Putin is going to start a war. Yet I heard nothing from Putin himself. It was a war declared over and over and over by the Media.  As if they wanted the war.  As if someone NEEDED the war, to either advance their agenda or to distract from other things...or perhaps all of the above. So that's where I start and immediately I assume that whatever I'm being told by the MSM Propaganda Machine is probably close to 180 degrees from the actual truth. Then I move to a second but closely related question: what side is Joe Biden on? Joe Biden is hand-in-hand with the MSM, declaring Putin the enemy of the world. Again, my guard is up. I'm not going to stand here and tell you Vlad Putin is a great guy.  But I don't have to jump that far to say I don't trust the side of Joe Biden and the MSM. It's possible that NEITHER side are the "good guys", don't forget that. So with those two puzzle pieces figured out, I'm about 85% clear on what I believe is happening: namely, that the MSM and Biden Regime are colluding to thrust America and the world into a new world war and this is not in anyone's best interest except for the globalist banksters. How we doing so far? Pretty accurate? Ok, so now how about Russia and Ukraine...who are the "good guys"? Again, I don't know. The real world is often not as black and white and much more grey. I'm not here to condone anything Russia or the Ukraine is doing. I think we all have a common enemy, but it's not either of those countries, it's the globalist banker elites. The bad guys are this creep, Anal Schwab: SAVED From The YouTube Purge: Klaus Schwab Admits It All On Video And these creeps, Gates of Hell and Soros: BREAKING: George Soros and Bill Gates Just Bought a COVID Testing Company for $41 Million Want to find the "bad guys"? THOSE are the bad guys. The rest is a distraction. And no, I don't mean the fighting and deaths are not real, I suspect they are very much real. But a senseless distraction designed to enrich the global elite while distracting from other things such as, oh I don't know, how about this: Remember when these four all had kids working and making millions off energy companies in the Ukraine? Seriously...what are the odds? Either all of these families just have very odd and statistically unlikely ties to a random country off the shore of Russia, or perhaps.....just perhaps....Ukraine was being used for money laundering? Are we still allowed to ask those questions? Are we still allowed to do investigative journalism? What are the odds folks? Here's a related question:  what are the odds that the whole recorded phone call that lead to Trump's (failed) impeachment was with....do you remember?....that's right, the President of Ukraine! 195 countries in the world and you mean to tell me it all keeps pointing back to Ukraine? What are the odds? Folks, I don't know exactly what all of this means, but I do know this: I don't trust the MSM and Biden narratives one bit and then you start seeing all of this stuff? And don't forget, Zelensky is a professional actor turned President. In what world does that happen? In other words, I think this lady put it very well: Very well said. I agree with almost everything she says. How about you? And then we have this from Wendy Rogers, who I agree with completely here too: No, I'm not sticking up for Russia, but I do know one thing... Banning people from social media, from bank accounts, from society is almost NEVER the right side of history. Banning and deplatforming is something I am against almost across the board. Yet another red flag to add to the mix. And what about the BioLabs in the Ukraine that are reportedly being taken out? We covered that here: https://wltreport.com/2022/02/24/are-russian-airstrikes-targeting-u-s-bio-weapons-labs-in-ukraine/ And I've waited until this point in the article to get into this, but now we get into the fake photos, fake videos and fake narratives. Starting with this (fake cardboard toy guns): It's gotten so bad it's being mocked mercilessly online, literally being compared to the classic N64 video game from the 1990s: The Globalist decided to plug this in. Square fake guns, Russian bad guys, media saving the world… All we’re missing is 007. Oh wait, there is a Russian pilot called the ghost of Kyiv. Continue on ? pic.twitter.com/Fh0YB91wlY — Zeno Calhoun (@zenoc_oshits) February 26, 2022 And you know that tearjerker scene being shared all week long about the soldier leaving for battle? Yeah, another lie. They're not even trying anymore... That footage is from a 2017 documentary: You awake yet? Need more? Ok, here's more fakery: And then we get to the "Ghost of Kyiv". Have you heard this story yet? The Ukrainian fighter pilot who went Maverick on TopGun and took down 12 MiGs singlehandedly? Here's the story they're pushing: People call him the Ghost of Kyiv. And rightly so — this UAF ace dominates the skies over our capital and country, and has already become a nightmare for invading Russian aircrafts. pic.twitter.com/lngfaMN01I — Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 27, 2022 Great story if true. The only problem? Almost all the footage surrounding it is confirmed fake. Fake photo: #Ukraine - The Ghost of Kyiv is fake, The photo's are from an old Ukrainian airforce calendar from 2020. And most of the footage is just regular russian MIG's doing recon work. All downed russian jets are from surviving manpad's and short range anti-aircraft missiles #ghostofkyiv pic.twitter.com/Dz0VKs2pxI — Jmantime (@jmantime) February 26, 2022 Fake video (from a video game): https://twitter.com/albus219/status/1497575361940447233 The pilot and the story could still be real, but at what point do we just call BS on the whole entire thing? Why do we cling to wanting a story like this to be true, when almost no other part of the story so far has been confirmed as reliable? Why do we say things like this? Idc if it's fake or not, I love the Ghost of Kyiv story https://t.co/i0QdFHXiKa pic.twitter.com/j2Bd4zpHop — ??????⁶? (@Goldek16) February 25, 2022 In other words, "I don't care if I'm being lied to, this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside." We're at a powerful point in history my friends. A point where a critical mass of people have woken up and no longer believe the propaganda they so easily pushed on us for decades. It's no longer working. Keep questioning. Keep challenging. Keep thinking for yourself! If we have learned ANYTHING since 2015, I hope it's that we need to think for ourselves! Don't just gobble up everything the MSM tells you as truth, because it usually isn't. For 4+ years, we saw the MSM twist and turn every detail against Donald Trump until it no longer resembled anything close to the truth. We saw them blatantly lie to us over and over and over. I hope we've all learned they are almost certainly lying to us right now. So what IS the truth? What do I think about Russia/Ukraine? I don't know all the details of the true story here, but I know what ISN'T true and I know I'm not buying what the MSM and Joe Biden are trying to sell me. How about you?

By Joan Swirsky No, it’s not “the economy, stupid,” in spite of the schizophrenic stock market since our remarkably resilient capitalistic economy ran head into the socialist-cum-communist Biden-Harris regime, with its $1.8-trillion deficit. And no, it’s not domestic policy, where we have had the luxury of being on the receiving end of: High taxes. High […] The post Voter Fraud––The ONLY Issue That Matters in 2024. appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The American-Parisian partnership is as old as our republic. In 1776, we sent across Benjamin Franklin as the founding father of our friendship. A half century later, Paris sent us Alexis de Tocqueville, who became a keen observer of American life. This was on my mind in spring when I boarded Air France in Denver. I was traveling with a group of American pastors to visit church planters in Paris. Witnessing gospel ministry in different cultures always gives me new insight into my own place and problems. So in the spirit of Franklin and Tocqueville, I hoped observing life “over there” would enhance my ministry “over here.” And it did. My time with church planters in Paris helped me see how the noise of ministry in America can command too much of my attention. Similar and Different Paris’s cultural climate is similar in many ways to my American one—with a notable difference. By seeing both the likeness and the difference, I gained clarity for my ministry at home. One similarity is that modernity has eroded the West’s cultural heritage rooted in Christianity. Society no longer shares assumptions about what’s true and good. Both countries retain their skinny national creeds: “liberty and justice for all,” “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” But deeper questions abound: What is freedom? Does it have limits or should it be ever-expanding? What’s the basis of our brotherhood? There’s no consensus worldview to referee these debates. As a result, any sense of shared identity is thinning out in both societies. This summer, Hollywood gave us the dystopian Civil War, where a menacing man in red sunglasses pointed a gun and asked, “What kind of American are you?” A few months later, Paris gave us the Olympic opening ceremony, which waded into a long-running argument about what constitutes “French” culture. Any sense of shared identity is thinning out in both societies. This cultural fracturing affects pastoral ministry. We can no longer assume everyone who lives in our city or walks through the doors of our church shares the same worldview. Discipleship has to start further back, with basic building blocks: Who is God? What is a human? What is freedom? Why are we not free? How will justice be done on earth? Yet despite this similarity, there’s a notable difference—one that’s easy to sense but hard to pin down. You expect to hear certain explanations: Paris is more secular, more unchurched, more progressive. These all ring true but don’t quite capture how pastoral ministry is different there. It’s less noisy. Ministry in a Less Noisy Environment By “less noisy,” I mean something like the difference between an SEC football game vs. an SEC football game during COVID-19. On a normal fall Saturday, a Southeastern Conference stadium is a spectacle that almost consumes the game itself. Tailgate parties, colorful characters and costumes, bands, cheerleaders, and mascots all make for a noisy pageant. But for one season during the pandemic, crowds were limited to a small fraction of capacity. The games went on but most of the spectacle went away. Pastoral ministry in Paris is like pandemic football. The game is essentially the same—to make disciples of Jesus in a modern culture that no longer shares the Christian worldview. But the surrounding spectacle isn’t as spectacular, and the crowd noise is lowered. What’s the crowd noise in this analogy? It’s American evangelicalism, broadly rendered. For good historical reasons, America has a much bigger “evangelicalism”—our constellation of conferences, celebrities, publishers, pundits, denominations, networks and all the commentary and debate they gin up. Tocqueville described the American proclivity for “voluntary association.” Historian Nathan Hatch called it “the democratization of American Christianity.” It’s an unavoidable fact of life, but it also creates a cauldron of noise that surrounds pastoral ministry, the “stadium” in which the normal pastor plays out his ministry. In Paris, I glimpsed what the game would look like with the crowd noise turned down. It looks like my friend Philip moving his family into an apartment by the Sorbonne to plant a church among university students. He spends most of his time meeting students and neighbors, talking about their faith, discipling young leaders, and teaching the Bible to the uninitiated. It looks like Paul, a pastor at Sèvres 72, one of the most established evangelical churches in the city, positioning his church to plant other churches like Philip’s. It looks like Jason, an American who has made Paris home, pastoring a church full of young adults from across the Paris region. After a decade of worshiping and cultivating a network of small groups, his church has grown to the point of needing a permanent building. For good historical reasons, America has a much bigger constellation of conferences, celebrities, publishers, pundits, denominations, and networks. Pastoral ministry in Paris looks basic and normal. How refreshing! I came home planning to be more “Parisian” in my ministry focus. This means not assuming that tending to intramural evangelical debates is the same as doing pastoral ministry. While these debates are interesting and important, they’re more like a precondition to pastoral ministry, not ministry itself. Ministry is prayer, evangelism, gospel preaching, leadership development, pastoral counseling, and community formation. I want to set my goals, make my plans, and fill out my calendar with more of these activities. This is the real action, down on the field. In Paris, there wasn’t much else to see.

This new variant could overtake KP 3.1.1 to become the dominant strain in the US.

We are preoccupied with a great variety of problems. Some of us are concerned about climate change. Others detail the continuing fallout from COVID. Still another group looks with alarm upon the aggression of Russia and the growing appetite for power that appears to accompany China’s ascent. Many view the burst of innovation surrounding artificial intelligence as a major threat. But there is another, much less heralded crisis going largely unaddressed that has the potential to affect virtually everyone physically, mentally, and spiritually. That crisis has to do with the vast growth of an aging population accompanied by diminishing numbers of young people. It has been known for some time that our entitlement programs that provide for the old are on an unsustainable path. Social Security, for example, began with a veritable army of young workers available to support the benefits awarded to each senior citizen. Over time, that margin has eroded drastically. While there were once more than 40 workers per beneficiary, the ratio is now closer to 2-1. The same problem applies to Medicare. Western nations are facing this problem as a group. This much is well understood. What is less well understood is how to solve the problem as we continue to have fewer children but more old people who live longer. Any attempted reform appears to be a political nonstarter. And in the relatively near future, these programs are likely to become unsustainable. But that problem is only the tip of the iceberg for modern societies such as America. We have been economically mobile. Families are spread out in sometimes distant locations across the generations. Elderly parents grow increasingly infirm without any immediate family in the area. Family ties are often strained because of divorces and other domestic disruptions. The once-large network of siblings who could divide up tasks of caring for parents has contracted substantially. We need to develop more robust family, church, and community ties. Our families must grow closer together rather than more attenuated and spread out. In addition, the two-income family has replaced the old single-provider model (virtually out of economic necessity) in which women stayed at home and tended to provide care for both younger and older generations. Finally, and crucially, the old are living so long that their children who must care for them are often elderly themselves and can be easily overwhelmed by the task. This last point threatens to be a straw that breaks the camel’s back as people who are already becoming less capable and less flexible are asked to make incredibly difficult decisions about their parents. Those decisions can be even more challenging when finances are not sufficient to support several years of expensive care in assisted living or nursing homes. Under our current system, many families will exhaust the assets of their elderly parents and then have no choice other than to go through a process of pauperization as they transition to a Medicaid facility unless they are able to handle the caregiving themselves. There is little doubt that many people will find themselves beyond their resources and their own expectations and preparation as they encounter this problem. The first two areas have to do with stewardship of resources. We all need to consider how to prepare ourselves and our families financially as best we can. That may require significantly less focus on accumulating goods and travel experiences and more on saving to provide for our future needs and for those we love. In addition, American public policy will have to take greater account of the perilous dynamic of a large aging population supported by a smaller population of younger people. Most important, however, is that we will have to become stronger spiritually and more connected as we try to face the crisis. We need to develop more robust family, church, and community ties. Our families must grow closer together rather than more attenuated and spread out. How many of us can remember growing up surrounding by large numbers of relatives at family gatherings on birthdays and holidays? How many likewise have seen the decline of such events? How many have expectations of their church body (if they have a church at all) that are more oriented toward a consumer or entertainment experience than toward serious spiritual formation and filial relationships? The challenge of aging parents and grandparents who reach the point of not being able to care for themselves is more pressing than it has ever been. Earlier generations were better situated and better prepared to deal with realities of aging than we are. We need to start weaving the spiritual and social fabric back together, so that we can be responsible and loving toward our mothers and fathers.