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May 27, 2008
Veracity Series #21: Blogging Through TEOTWAWKI
Hello everysoul!
Here is what I had time to compile for you amidst my work in the garden - going well! - and for lots of other seasonal things... And this is just a tiny sample of all that came in my emails... But here is first what I wrote to someone today which, I feel is worth including here...
"There is much certainty in my mind that Obama is set to become the next US president as McCain has nearly zero chance of ever getting elected. Most US citizens are also so fed up with the Republicans that it is also a near certainty that Democrats will have a sizeable majority both in the Congress and Senate. Our real focus from now on should be, in my humble opinion, to foster such a heightened sense of urgency in everyone's mind that the deep POSITIVE changes advocated by Obama will actually be implemented and that people won't relapse into a shallow sense of security in the belief that merely electing Obama and Democrats will be enough to resolved their and the world's problem. There needs to be a wartime mobilization of everyone's effort and creative genius to seen us all through the excruciating challenges we have created for ourselves, and people should be keenly aware that corporate mafias of all kinds will be only too happy to continue their usual shenanigans to get their greedy way and that no amount of greenwashing will suffice to convince anyone that they are truly working for the collective good and not just for their own filthy bottom line as usual.
So our efforts should be about continuing individual mobilization towards serving the greater good of all, changing oneself from being self-centered to being hearth-centered and globally minded, and courageously tackling the numerous issues, locally and globally, requiring our urgent attention. No more complacency. No more self-serving empty promises. Real action. Real and sustained commitment. Each one rising up to be a real-time hero for a New Earth and a new Global Awareness In Action - or GAIA for short."
And on that I wish you all to find the will - and time! - to do your part for a better, greener world ;-)
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
P.S. As you will see below in 12 Stepping Our Way to Armageddon below, "TEOTWAWKI" means "The End Of The World As We Know It"...
Your feedback is as always welcomed and may be included in a coming compilation - unless you prefer it is not. Circulating this compilation (or any part of it) and personally inviting your correspondents to subscribe to this list would also help enlarge the circle of people who have access to this material. Please include the following note and the URL address for the archived copy below along with your forwards, so others may have the opportunity to explore the original copy, if they so choose.
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THE QUOTES
"What has happened and continues to happen in Lhasa is extremely sad and scary. Never before have I heard monks talking about methods of torture used in local prisons and different gun types that were used by military during this year's demonstrations in Lhasa. And never before have I seen Tibetan people so desperate and angry that they do things they know they will die for or be put in prison for a long time."
- Taken from an anonymous letter from Lhasa (see the whole letter below)
"Now that John Edwards has climbed off the fence and endorsed Barack Obama, all of a sudden we can see a new "dream ticket" that has been obvious all along: Obama-Edwards. While Hillary was quick to point out after her West Virginia victory that no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning that state, a more pertinent truth is that no Democrat has won the White House in the last century without a Southerner on the ticket. (...) For the past eight years, the average American has suffered under a regime that can best be called "The Raw Deal." Beneath the fear-driven drumbeats of war, war, war and the ominous suggestion that relieving Americans of their liberties has made us safer (after all, if the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, and our government takes those freedoms away, the terrorists will have no reason to hate us, right?) has been a looting of America that makes the robber barons of the post Civil War era look like petty crooks. Banana Republicans and their corporate Democrat enablers have turned our once independent country into a banana republic, as the American middle class now tops the Endangered Species List."
- Steve Bhaerman -- Taken from "The REAL Dream Ticket: Obama-Edwards and the Newer Deal"
"Attention is being given around the globe to the United States presidential candidates. Despite the rigged primary elections to favor Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s supporters waffling because he himself waffles, soon it will be glaringly apparent that Barack Obama’s greater popularity among voters will be sustained. Thus free will choices of the majority have been made and now, without influencing those choices one whit, we can reveal that in the energy field of potential, Obama’s momentum always was unstoppable, and we can tell you that this highly evolved soul with many lifetimes as a wise and just leader came from a spiritually and intellectually advanced civilization specifically to rise to his current prominence. At soul level he knows this is his mission, but consciously he is aware only of his innate leadership abilities and genuine intent to serve his nation as he so states; in time he will become consciously aware of his origin and purpose for embodying in this lifetime."
- Taken from Matthew's May 21, 2008 message (Topics covered: Higher meaning of Myanmar and China disasters; negativity reduction; examples of duality; global economy, sharing; third density karma; sources of light; Obama in US presidency, ending of “secret government”; don’t fear dire predictions, claims; life missions will unfold; care necessary in telepathic communications; “homework” assignments)
"Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Taken from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pierre_teilhard_de_chardi.html
Please note that the quote from Teilhard de Chardin included in the Meditation Focus #186: Harnessing the Power of Belief was actually from a channelled message.
CONTENTS
1. Civilization’s Last Chance
2. Evade Human Extinction Now!
3. 12 Stepping Our Way to Armageddon
4. All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
5. U.S. Sergeant Refuses to Go to Iraq: "This Occupation is Unconstitutional and Illegal"
6. Letter from Lhasa
7. Simple Steps Toward Change
8. Shortage fears push oil futures near $140
9. Oil: A global crisis
10. Beware the US military's experiments with climatic warfare, says Michel Chossudovsky
11. Top Ten Reasons to Go Vegetarian During World Vegetarian Week
12. U.S. using food crisis to boost bio-engineered crops
13. Nanoparticles scrutinized for health effects
14. It's a whiz-bang experiment, with a downside that could really suck
15. Will Scientists Create "Manimals"? Human-Animal Embryos Get Approval
16. On balls!
WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION
The 11th hour movie
http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/
See what Daniel Stafford says on this exceptional movie in Evade Human Extinction Now! (item #2 below)...
Festival Mondial de la Terre 2008 - Une EXCELLENTE initiative! Du 16 au 22 juin prochain
http://www.festivaldelaterre.org/
7 jours pour dire à la Terre que vous l' aimez... Pendant une semaine, dans 30 villes et villages de France, vous pourrez assister et participer à : des conférences, des expositions, des actions de nettoyage, des villages associatifs, des concerts, etc... afin de célébrer mais aussi de faire prendre conscience que la Terre, notre bien le plus précieux, doit être mieux protégé... Simultanément 22 pays participent à cette célébration. Voir aussi http://www.terralliance.org/ et http://www.villagedelaterre.org et pour le Québec: http://www.festivaldelaterre.ca/
Celebrating Pangea Day
http://www.pangeaday.org/
On May 10, 2008, the whole world shared in Pangea Day, a 4-hour program of great film, music and speakers. Go at http://www.pangeaday.org/filmDetail.php?id=101 to watch highlights for home viewing—including some of the unforgettable live moments and reports from around the globe. Recommended by Carl Landsness (weneedadream@yahoo.com) who wrote: "Rave reports on the recent Pangea Day suggest this may be a very effective vehicle towards global oneness." And I say, it is worth taking an hour to watch this moving video review of what happened that day - an immense ray of hope for humanity!
Magnificent art - Hours of exploration!
http://www.sublimatrix.com/html/links.html
Bird Tribes
http://birdtribes.net/rainbow.htm
An amazing website to explore starting with the dazzling visual that starts when you click on this link above.
The Gaia Hypothesis - Earth as an organism (7min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD1orMHJ8a4
A good introduction to the scientific theory of Gaia - the Earth as a self regulating living system
Picture of a fairy
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page1202.html
The truth is out there: National Archives lifts lid on UFO files (May 14 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/14/spaceexploration.military
X-Files' go public after flood of FOI requests ) Ministerial briefings and witness reports included -- There was the man on a fishing trip who was shown around a flying saucer by aliens in green overalls; another who befriended an extraterrestrial called Algar and wanted to introduce him to the government; and the astonished air traffic controller who watched a UFO land on his airport's runway, then disappear.Inevitably, the Ministry of Defence papers, released to the public for the first time, will be known as Britain's X-Files. Over the next three or four years, 160 files will be handed over to the National Archives. Covering 1978 to 1987, the first group of eight files, one of which is more than 450 pages long, is available via its website today. CLIP
Science blog: Explore the X-files yourself
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/05/explore_the_xfiles.html
Vatican: It's OK to Believe in Aliens
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KSE100&show_article=1
Help STOP Bill C-51 -- ALERT TO ALL CANADIANS!
http://www.stopc51.com/
Bill C-51 Will: Allow Government agents to:-Enter private property without a warrant -Confiscate your property at their discretion -Dispose of your property at their discretion -Seize your bank accounts without a warrant -Charge you for shipping and storage of your property -Store your property Indefinitely without paying you for damages -Levy fines of up to $5,000,000.00 / 2 years in jail per offence. Introduce new legislation that will: -Allow laws to be created in Canada, behind closed doors, with the assistance of foreign governments, industrial and trade organizations -Allow "Crack house style" of enforcement on natural health providers -Allow enforcement to be considered on more than 70% of Canadians who use NHP's -Allow the minister, based on opinion, to shut down research without any scientific reason or evidence of risk or harm -Allow the minister, based on opinion, to allow or disallow market authorizations for Natural Health Products. MAKE SURE ALSO TO READ THE Press Facts AT http://www.stopc51.com/c51/press_facts.asp Bill C-51 Eliminates the Ability of our Elected Officials to Protect Us - Fast Tracks New Drugs to Market; Reduced Safety Measures - Makes Upwards of 70% of Natural Health Products illegal!
The Energy Non-Crisis (75 mn - 24 oct. 2007) STUNNING CLAIMS!
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147
Lindsey Williams talks about his first hand knowledge of Alaskan oil reserves larger than any on earth. And he talks about how the oil companies and U.S. government won't send it through the pipeline for U.S. citizens to use.
The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children - 53 Min. HORRIFYING CONSEQUENCES OF AMERICAN RADIOACTIVE WARFARE - WARNING: HARD TO WATCH! YET THE WORLD WORLD SHOULD SEE THIS!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408
An award winning documentary film produced for German television by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn. The film exposes the use and impact of radioactive weapons during the current war against Iraq. The story is told by citizens of many nations. It opens with comments by two British veterans, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called depleted uranium (DU), weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children. Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a former colleague of Albert Schweitzer, and Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) traveled to Iraq, from Germany and Canada respectively, to assess uranium contamination in Iraq.
Starlings on Otmoor - Remarkable Starling video
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE
An astonishing thing to see - Near Oxford - England. This was filmed at an RSPB reserve called Otmoor. It is the most remarkable thing I have ever seen - and as a video cameraman I have some pretty amazing things.
Crystal skulls 'are modern fakes'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7414637.stm
Two of the best known crystal skulls - artefacts once thought to be the work of ancient American civilisations - are modern fakes, a scientific study shows. (...) The skull held by the Smithsonian was donated to the museum anonymously in 1992, along with a note saying it had been bought in Mexico in 1960.Nothing is known of its history before that date, but like the British object, it was probably manufactured shortly before being purchased.The researchers were not able to determine where the quartz used in the skulls was quarried. But locations with suitably large deposits include Brazil, Madagascar and, possibly, the Alps. Professor Freestone said the work did not prove all crystal skulls were fakes, but it did cast doubt on the authenticity of other examples: "None of them have a good archaeological provenance and most appeared suspiciously in the last decades of the 20th Century. So we have to be skeptical," he explained. The findings are likely to be a disappointment to enthusiasts and collectors; the skulls have become a part of popular culture, appearing in numerous films and novels.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
"US confession: Weapons were not made in Iran after all" (10 May 2008)
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/4886
US confession: Weapons were not made in Iran after all (source: CASMII) - In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all. According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: "A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all." The US , which until two weeks ago had never provided any proof for its allegations, finally handed over its "evidence" of the Iranian origin of these weapons to the Iraqi government. Last week, an Iraqi delegation to Iran presented the US "evidence‰" to Iranian officials. According to Al-Abadi, a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance who was on the delegation, the Iranian officials totally refuted "training, financing and arming" militant groups in Iraq . Consequently the Iraqi government announced that there is no hard evidence against Iran.In another extraordinary event this week, the US spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, for the first time did not blame Iran for the violence in Iraq and in fact did not make any reference to Iran at all in his introductory remarks to the world media on Wednesday when he described the large arsenal of weapons found by Iraqi forces in Karbala. In contrast, the Pentagon in August 2007 admitted that it had lost track of a third of the weapons distributed to the Iraqi security forces in 2004/2005. The 190,000 assault rifles and pistols roam free in Iraqi streets today.In the past year, the US leaders have been relentless in propagating their charges of Iranian meddling and fomenting violence in Iraq and since the release of the key judgments of the US National Intelligence Estimate in December that Iran does not have a nuclear weaponisation programme, these accusations have sharply intensified. The US charges of Iranian interference in Iraq too have now collapsed. Any threat of military strike against Iran is in violation of the UN charter and the IAEA's continued supervision on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities means there is no justification for sanctions. CASMII calls on the US to change course and enter into comprehensive and unconditional negotiations with Iran.For more information or to contact CASMII please visit http://www.campaigniran.org
War Abroad, Poverty at Home (May 23, 2008)
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05232008.html
The US Senate has voted $165 billion to fund Bush’s wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq through next spring.As the US is broke and deep in debt, every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed. American consumers are also broke and deep in debt. Their zero saving rate means every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed from foreigners.The “world’s only superpower” is so broke it can’t even finance its own wars.Each additional dollar that the irresponsible Bush Regime has to solicit from foreigners puts more downward pressure on the dollar’s value. During the eight wasted and extravagant years of the Bush Regime, the once mighty US dollar has lost about 60% of its value against the euro.The dollar has lost even more of its value against gold and oil.Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel. Some of this rise may result from run-away speculation in the futures market. However, the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar. Oil is real, and unlike paper dollars is limited in supply. With US massive trade and budget deficits, the outpouring of dollar obligations mounts, thus driving down the value of the dollar.Each time the dollar price of oil rises, the US trade deficit rises, requiring more foreign financing of US energy use. Bush has managed to drive the US oil import bill up from $106 billion in 2006 to approximately $500 billion 18 months later--every dollar of which has to be financed by foreigners.Without foreign money, the US “superpower” cannot finance its imports or its government’s operation.When the oil price rises, Americans, who are increasingly poor, cannot pay their winter heating bills. Thus, the Senate’s military spending bill contains more heating subsidies for America’s growing legion of poor people.The rising price of energy drives up the price of producing and transporting all goods, but American incomes are not rising except for the extremely rich. The disappearing value of the US dollar, which pushes up oil prices and raises the trade deficit, then pushes up heating subsidies and raises the budget deficit.If oil was the reason Bush invaded Iraq, the plan obviously backfired. Oil not merely doubled or tripled in price but quintupled. CLIP
Why Oil Prices Haven't Crippled The US Economy Yet
http://www.fintrend.com/ftf/articles/Oil_Inflation.asp
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Oil_inflation_chart.htm
Increased U.S. airstrikes in Iraq killing more civilians (May 23, 2008)
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/U.S._airstrike_kills_8_Iraqi_civilians_0523.html
A surge in US airstrikes within densely populated areas of Iraq has led to a dramatic rise in civilian casualties.According to the Washington Post, ever since an attempted crackdown on Shi'ite militias by the Iraqi government in March, which led to increased attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad that killed some Americans, the US military has been firing missiles almost every day into the crowded Shi'ite slum of Sadr City.Residents describe the attacks as indiscriminate and say they have led to many civilian deaths. However, the US Army states that they choose their targets carefully and often refrain from firing for fear of civilian casualties."On Wednesday, eight people, including two children, were killed when a U.S. helicopter opened fire on a group of Iraqis," the Post reports. "The U.S. military said in a statement that it had targeted men linked to a suicide bombing network. 'Unfortunately, two children were killed when the other occupants of the vehicle, in which they were riding, exhibited hostile intent," the statement said."CNN reports further on Iraqi victims of US gunfire, noting that "anger against the Americans is only increasing."
Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers (13 May 2008)
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/air-force-mater.html
The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected." The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative." CLIP
Global Peace Index: Israel hits rock bottom
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3545840,00.html
Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Israel 136th out of 140 countries, alongside Afghanistan, ChadIceland is the world's most peaceful nation while Israel ranked 136th out of 140 nations, according to the "Global Peace Index," compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The study ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world. The United States slipped from 96th last year, but was still ahead of foe Iran which ranked 105th. It, however, lagged Belarus, Cuba, South Korea, Chile, Libya and others which were listed as more peaceful. Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, leading to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, ranked lowest on the index. Afghanistan was also in the bottom five, along with Sudan, Somalia and Israel. CLIP
THE LAST ROUNDUP - Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01-print.php
(...) According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. (...) Let's imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast—say, a suitcase nuke—in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a "parallel government" that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.
(...) In the days after our hypothetical terror attack, events might play out like this: With the population gripped by fear and anger, authorities undertake unprecedented actions in the name of public safety. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security begin actively scrutinizing people who—for a tremendously broad set of reasons—have been flagged in Main Core as potential domestic threats. Some of these individuals might receive a letter or a phone call, others a request to register with local authorities. Still others might hear a knock on the door and find police or armed soldiers outside. In some instances, the authorities might just ask a few questions. Other suspects might be arrested and escorted to federal holding facilities, where they could be detained without counsel until the state of emergency is no longer in effect.
(...) In July 2007 and again last August, Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought access to the "classified annexes" of the Bush administration's Continuity of Government program. DeFazio's interest was prompted by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. DeFazio found this unnerving.But he and other leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, were denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes. To this day, their calls for disclosure have been ignored by the White House. In a press release issued last August, DeFazio went public with his concerns that the NSPD-51 Continuity of Government plans are "extra-constitutional or unconstitutional." Around the same time, he told the Oregonian: "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right." Congress itself has recently widened the path for both extra-constitutional detentions by the White House and the domestic use of military force during a national emergency. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill of Rights. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act, also passed in 2006, included a last-minute rider titled "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," which allowed the deployment of U.S. military units not just to put down domestic insurrections—as permitted under posse comitatus and the Insurrection Act of 1807—but also to deal with a wide range of calamities, including "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or incident."More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control." "We are at the edge of a cliff and we're about to fall off," says constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein.
(...) Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? CLIP
George W Bush Authorized 911 Attacks Says Government Insider (20 MAY 2008)
http://www.daily.pk/world/americas/99-americas/3789-george-w-bush-authorized-911-attacks-says-government-insider.html
(...) This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder. CLIP
Fahrenheit 9/11 Sequel: Michael Moore’s Chance to Tell the Truth
http://www.infowars.com/?p=2123
(...) However, at the risk of coming off as cynical, it should be noted that by the time Moore’s new 9/11 film appears next year, a Democrat will probably be in the White House. Some have speculated that the Democrats will attempt to defuse the growing 9/11 truth movement by conducting yet another investigation, this time affixing blame for the attacks, even producing a LIHOP version for mass consumption. It remains to be seen if the Democrats will venture into such turbulent waters, as the announcement of another investigation will certainly produce demands for independence and impartiality, thus making it difficult for the government to control the outcome. CLIP
Iran busts CIA terror network
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=168823
TEHRAN - The Intelligence Ministry on Saturday released details of the detection and dismantling of a terrorist network affiliated to the United States. In a coordinated operation on May 7, Iranian intelligence agents arrested the terrorist network's members, who were identified in Fars, Khuzestan, Gilan, West Azerbaijan, and Tehran provinces, the Intelligence Ministry announcement said. The group's plans were devised in the U.S., according to the announcement, which added that they had planned to carry out a number of acts such as bombing scientific, educational, and religious centers, shooting people, and making public places in various cities insecure. One of the terrorists was killed in the operation, but the rest are in detention, the Intelligence Ministry said, adding that the group's main objective was to create fear among the people.The United States Central Intelligence Agency comprehensively supported the terrorist group by arming it, training its members, and sponsoring its inhumane activities in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry stated. The terrorists had maps, films, pictures, and sketches of important and sensitive sites in various cities in their possession when they were arrested. They also had a large number of weapons and ammunition and a great deal of highly explosive chemicals and cyanide. The blast at a religious center in Shiraz last month was carried out by this group, and it also had plans to carry out similar attacks on the Tehran International Book Fair, the Russian Consulate in Gilan Province, oil pipelines in southern Iran, and other targets, the communiqué stated. Thirteen people were killed and over 190 others wounded in a bombing carried out on April 12 at the Rahpuyan-e Vessal religious center, which is part of the Seyyed-ul-Shohada Mosque complex, located in a residential area of Shiraz.
China's All-Seeing Eye By Naomi Wolf (May 29, 2008)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export. (...) China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.) The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square. CLIP
Britain Obstructs Global Ban on Use of Cluster Bombs
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052008N.shtml
Kim Sengupta, of The Independent UK: "The British Government is accused of being the chief obstacle to the signing of a treaty to ban cluster bombs, which have maimed and killed thousands of civilians worldwide. Countries that have suffered the impact of the bombs, humanitarian groups and former commanders of British forces have called for the UK to drop its insistence on retaining cluster munitions, a stance, they say, that is likely to scupper hopes of securing an agreement at an international conference starting in Dublin today."
America AWOL on Cluster Bombs
http://www.truthout.org/article/america-awol-cluster-bombs
Lora Lumpe, of Foreign Policy In Focus, writes: "More than 100 governments, including all major NATO allies, met on May 19 to begin two weeks of negotiations in Dublin, Ireland to finalize a global treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The U.S. government will not be there, and is exerting pressure on allies to weaken the treaty. Washington claims that future joint military operations will be undermined if allied governments prohibit the use of these weapons."
Wal-Mart Cuts Way Back -Arkansas Bank Fails (5-10-8)
http://www.rense.com/general81/ark.htm
The collapse of ANB Financial National Association is significant. Population of Bentonville, Arkansas is 19,500 people .... and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Bentonville IS Wal-Mart !For the past four months, Wal-Mart (Bentonville, Arkansas) has been canceling (Tip of the iceberg: http://tinyurl.com/5botap) almost all of their (major) corporate projects into the future. We know the magnitude of Wal-Mart's financial dilemma directly from its internal (attorney) legal "dropped project memos" and "Real Estate Committee reapproval memos."Wal-Mart press releases and media news reports to the public are disingenuous. Over 700,000 Chinese exporters / manufacturers (http://tinyurl.com/26mqx7) are now refusing to accept U.S. dollars as payment for products for retail sales. Wal-Mart's on-shelf stock numbers have been significantly reduced. Merchandise quality is now marginal to bad and in many cases becoming unavailable as prices skyrocket with broad spectrum factors coming together to create an uncomfortable sales environment. Wal-Mart's total overhead is becoming unsustainable we believe. CLIP
The HPV Vaccine: Preventive Care or Human Sacrifice?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/05/10/the-hpv-vaccine-preventive-care-or-human-sacrifice.aspx
Reports of adverse reactions to the new HPV vaccine Gardasil are escalating. One particularly heart-wrenching example is the story of 12-year-old Brittany who lost all feeling in her leg and collapsed two weeks after receiving the Gardasil vaccine.Adding insult to injury, people who are injured by the vaccine cannot even sue Merck, the maker of the Gardasil vaccine, because it is part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. While the FDA claims adverse reactions to Gardasil are rare, a review of the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) data shows that several thousands of adverse reactions have been reported in the United States alone. And hundreds of Australian girls have experienced side effects like paralysis, dizzy spells and seizures, but Australia's Department of Health and Ageing refuses to release any details. CLIP Make sure to also read Mercola's comments at the bottom of that webpage.
Cyclone had makings of perfect storm (May 11, 2008)
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/05/11/0511perfectstorm.html
(...) When the storm made landfall early May 3 at the mouth of the Irrawaddy River, its battering winds pushed a wall of water as high as 12 feet some 25 miles inland, laying waste to villages and killing tens of thousands.Most of the dead were in the delta, where farm families sleeping in flimsy shacks barely above sea level were swept to their deaths. Almost 95 percent of the houses and other buildings in seven townships were destroyed, Myanmar's government says. U.N. officials estimate 1.5 million people were left in severe straits."When you look at the satellite picture of before and after the storm, the effects look eerily similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in how it inundated low-lying areas," said Ken Reeves, director of forecasting forAccuWeather.com. The Irrawaddy delta "is huge and the interaction of water and land lying right at sea level allowed the tidal surge to deliver maximum penetration of sea water over land," Reeves said. "Storms like this do most of their killing through floods, with salt water being even more dangerous than freshwater." The delta had lost most of its mangrove forests along the coast to shrimp farms and rice paddies over the past decade. That removed what scientists say is one of nature's best defenses against violent storms. "If you look at the path of the (cyclone) that hit Myanmar, it hit exactly where it was going to do the most damage, and it's doing the most damage because much of the protective vegetation was cleared," said Jeff McNeely,chief scientist for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. "It's an expensive lesson, but it has been one taught repeatedly," he said."You just wonder why governments don't get on this."Some environmentalists suggested global warming may have played a role.Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that warming oceans could contribute to increasingly severe cyclones with stronger winds and heavier rains." Nargis is a sign of things to come," said Sunita Narain, director of the Indian environmental group Center for Science and Environment. "The victims of these cyclones are climate change victims, and their plight should remind the rich world that it is doing too little to contain its greenhouse gas emissions." CLIP
Burma Cyclone Death Toll Soars Above 43,000
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051608L.shtml
The Associated Press: "Burma's junta warned today that legal action would be taken against people who trade or hoard international aid as the cyclone's death toll soared above 43,000. It was the first acknowledgment by the military government, albeit indirectly, of problems with relief operations in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. The warning came amid reports that foreign aid was being sold openly in markets, and that the military was pilfering and diverting aid for its own use."
Burmese murmurs of anger at junta (23 May 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7416952.stm
The Burma cyclone is unlike any disaster I have covered (...) On the streets and in the villages I was surprised how well informed people were. Almost everyone knew that French and American military ships were off the coast loaded with aid. One man told me how angry he was.He felt help should be taken from anyone who offered it. Ordinary people are very welcoming to outsiders. Even though I was working largely undercover, people were openly critical of the regime. The efforts to massage the reality of this disaster have not succeeded. At the junctions in Rangoon, they are selling DVDs of the tragedy. The pictures are graphic, uncensored. Bloated bodies lying uncollected in the delta. Strangely, the military regime has not tried to stop these images, many of which were taken by ordinary Burmese people. The result is that people know the scale of the disaster and cannot understand why help is not taken from those who offer it. We met students who are threatening strikes and protests if international help is not accepted.Some are veterans of previous protests but others have become "activists" because of the cyclone. The generals who run the country fear any weakening of their control. CLIP
Burma 'to let in all aid workers' (23 May 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7416143.stm
Burma's top leader has agreed to let all foreign aid workers into the country for relief work in cyclone-hit areas, UN head Ban Ki-moon has said. After talks in Burma's remote capital, Nay Pyi Daw, with Gen Than Shwe, Mr Ban said the decision was a breakthrough. But correspondents say Burma has a record of withdrawing promises made to the UN. The terms under which workers and aid will be let in are unclear.About 78,000 people died and 56,000 are missing after the 2 May cyclone. Mr Ban said Burma would now allow the delivery of aid "via civilian ships and small boats". But his wording suggests that the US, British and French warships waiting off the coast with supplies may not be able to dock. Burma's military leaders had previously refused to allow a full-scale relief effort by foreign aid workers. They had said that the relief phase of the aid operation was over and that the government was now focusing on reconstruction.
Border officials may seize iPods under trade deal
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=536951
International regulator could police copyright - OTTAWA - The federal government is secretly negotiating a copyright agreement that could make some information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal.
ATTACK OF THE CELL PHONE ZOMBIES! by William Thomas (13 May 2008) MUST READ! MOST EXCELLENT!!
http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Attack_Of_The_Cell_Phone_Zombie.html
Cell phone zombies are everywhere. And they are winning! For now. Found in hundreds of clinical and military studies to inhibit the ability to concentrate, calculate and coordinate, cell phone transmissions disrupt cellular functioning, as well as the brain's ability to remember and learn. With some 2 billion people currently using cell phones - including 500 million teens and children - epidemiological studies estimate the number of cell phone-induced eye and brain cancer will reach a half-million cases annually by 2010. Don't become a cell phone zombie! -- Walk down virtually any metropolitan street, if you still dare, and you will discern with a jolt of alarm that no one around you is aware of each other's presence or their surroundings as they shuffle past with the shambling gait of automatons. Hearing blocked by blaring or blathering headsets, heads bent over cell phones, iPods, palm pilots, multimedia players, text messagers and other hypnotic gadgetry, these walking dead with their vacant stares are so far departed from the reality around them they don't even know they're gone.Cell phone zombies are proliferating everywhere. Spread by the most virulent contagion on Earth - the lust to own and continuously jack into wireless technology - addictive endorphin jolts sent by cell phones to the brain threaten agonizing withdrawal, even as their invisible emanations attack the frontal lobes, short-circuiting memory, awareness and cognitive thought.Succumbing to the identical marketing strategies marshaled by the same advertising agencies pushing tobacco onto children, hordes of cell phone zombies as young as four-years-old are replacing normal human relationships with the cold calculus of truncated text messages, while disturbing their sonic space and interrupting conversations with friends and spouses to jabber with ghosts who are not even present, even as they spread the blight of their second hand microwaves among the last pockets of cell phone resistance. (...) Still, innocent bystanders and drivers can be at grave risk from deranged zombies talking on their cell phones while operating heavy fast-moving vehicles. In cities that have not yet disarmed cell phone-brandishing drivers, the resulting daily carnage is as gory as any scene out of “Night Of The Living Dead”. Except this mayhem is real. Stunned by an additional $4 billion a year in claims for drivers using cell phones, North American insurers discovered that juggling phones while driving is not causing a 600% increase in accidents. Other drivers busy shaving, applying makeup, tuning radios, taming pets, pouring coffee, eating meals, retrieving dropped cigarettes, talking to passengers or attempting complex sexual gymnastics are even more preoccupied. Cell phones are much worse than merely dangerous driving distractions. Tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy found that using a cellphone turns drivers into zombies, severely impairing their memories and reaction times by disrupting signals to and within their brains. Hands-free mobile phones cause even more crashes because they typically emit 10-times more brainwave interference than handheld units. Phoning from inside a car or truck is a bad call for everyone in the vehicle - especially children - because the surrounding steel structure amplifies cellphone emissions. The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee reports, “using a mobile phone in a vehicle can accelerate radiation levels by up to 10-fold due to resonance effect.” For all drivers dialing out, Swiss researchers have found “changes of brain function induced by pulsed high-frequency electromagnetic fields outlast the exposure period.” University of Toronto investigators report that the heightened probability of cracking up your car persists for up to a half-hour after completing a call.That's comparable to the risk of crashing while driving dead drunk exclaims Dr. Chris Runball, chairman of the B.C. Medical Association's emergency medical services committee. CLIP
Health risks posed by electromagnetic radiation exposure from cellular towers
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/esd_pet_235_e_30191.html
America's Frightening Alzheimer's Epidemic (May 16, 2008)
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85532/
By 2030, one in four adults over 65 will have Alzheimer's. This unforgiving brain damage can cripple patients, families and the economy. (...) One in eight Americans who are 65 years old or older has Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association's 2008 Facts and Figures Report (http://www.alz.org). By 2030, due to the aging of our population, that number will have doubled to one in four. There's no cure, and no certain evidence that the current medications -- Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne and Namenda -- which are said to slow the course of the disease, really work. (...) The costs, financial and emotional, of treating and caring for an Alzheimer's patient are astronomical. Today, the amount of time lost to American businesses by workers being forced to become caregivers of those with Alzheimer's is estimated at 8.4 billion hours a year. The monetary value of this unpaid labor -- often taking place in the caregiver's home -- varies by state, from the lowest, Alaska, at a little above $100,000 a year, to the highest, California, at about $10 billion. CLIP
"MAD COW - The Cover-up"
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/UncoveringTruth2.htm
(...) As so many CJD Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) deaths are masked as Alzheimer and private labs won't let CJD tissue in the door to be examined, it is certain the American public will not be informed of the disease that is in our food, our kitchens and our bodies. CLIP
Many US Alzheimer's Victims Actually Die From Mad Cow/CJD (12-27-03)
http://www.rense.com/general46/many.html
Currently four million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The percentage of cases is on the rise with solid research showing that there are about 360,000 individuals newly diagnosed each year. At Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer's disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study). Surprisingly, the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. In a third (smaller) study published in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience (1995), investigators reported that three out of 12 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were found to have had CJD when autopsied. It should be noted CJD symptoms may be remarkably similar to those of Alzheimer's disease. CLIP
'The US Food Supply Is Safe' - One Of The Biggest Lies Of All (12-27-03)
http://www.rense.com/general46/lies.html
Proof Mad Cow Is The Same As Alzheimer's And CJD (12-27-03)
http://www.rense.com/general46/proofa.html
Mad Cow USA: The Nightmare Begins (Dec 30, 2003)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17466
The warnings have been there for years. Will government regulators, consumers and the meat industry now finally wake up that what worked in Europe must be employed here?
Explained: The threat to humans from BSE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,343393,00.html
(...) In a report in the journal Nature, scientists from Oxford concluded that any sick animal that entered the food chain was liable to infect no more than two individuals, and only 40% of the population was genetically susceptible, leaving the incubation period as the other key factor. If the incubation period was less than 20 years, there could be as few as 63 cases.
Eating For Peace - Mindful Consumption
http://www.rense.com/general43/eating.htm
(...) UNESCO tells us that every day, forty thousand children in the world die because of a lack of nutrition, of food. Every day, forty thousand children. And the amount of grain that we grow in the West is mostly used to feed our cattle. Eighty percent of the corn grown in this country is to feed the cattle to make meat. Ninety-five percent of the oats produced in this country is not for us to eat, but for the animals raised for food. According to this recent report that we received of all the agricultural land in the US, eighty-seven percent is used to raise animals for food. That is forty-five percent of the total land mass in the US. More than half of all the water consumed in the US whole purpose is to raise animals for food. It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4000 gallons of water per day. Raising animals for food causes more water pollution than any other industry in the US because animals raised for food produce one hundred thirty times the excrement of the entire human population. It means 87,000 pounds per second. Much of the waste from factory farms and slaughter houses flows into streams and rivers, contaminating water sources. Each vegetarian can save one acre of trees per year. More than 260 million acres of US forests have been cleared to grow crops to feed animals raised for meat. And another acre of trees disappears every eight seconds. The tropical rain forests are also being destroyed to create grazing land for cattle. In the US, animals raised for food are fed more than eighty percent of the corn we grow and more than ninety-five percent of the oats. We are eating our country, we are eating our earth, we are eating our children. And I have learned that more than half the people in this country overeat. CLIP
The Pentagon Is America's Biggest Polluter (May 12, 2008)
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85186/
The U.S. has a grossly corrupted health protection system. - The nation's biggest polluter isn't a corporation. It's the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste -- more than the top three chemical companies combined.Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon's partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way.For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children's growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development.Perchlorate has been leaking from literally hundreds of defense plants and military installations across the country. The EPA has reported that perchlorate is present in drinking and groundwater supplies in 35 states. Center for Disease Control and independent studies have also overwhelmingly shown that perchlorate is existent in our food supplies, cow's milk, and human breast milk. As a result virtually every American has some level of perchlorate in their body. (...) While Bush has boosted overall Pentagon spending by billions, the administration has simultaneously slashed its environmental remediation program. Moreover, the Bush defense plan has called for "new rounds of base closures" to "shape the military more efficiently." Efficiency is usually a code word for sidestepping environmental rules. These military sites, which total more than 50 million acres, are among the most insidious and dangerous legacies left by the Pentagon. They are strewn with toxic bomb fragments, unexploded munitions, buried hazardous waste, fuel dumps, open pits filled with debris, burn piles and yes, rocket fuel. An internal EPA memo from 1998 warned of the looming problem: "As measured by acres, and probably as measured by number of sites, ranges and buried munitions represent the largest cleanup program in the United States."When a site gets too polluted, the Pentagon has chosen simply to close it down and turn it over to another federal agency. Over the past three decades, the Pentagon has transferred more than 16 million acres, often with little or no remediation. The former bombing areas have been turned into wildlife refuges, city and state parks, golf courses, landfills, airports and shopping malls. Serious contamination of streams, soil and groundwater is a problem at nearly every military training ground. The sites are often saturated with heavy metals and other pollutants as well as unexploded weapons. (...) "All the pieces needed to support strong health protections are in place," said Wiles. "This is a nightmare of epic proportions for the Department of Defense and its contractors, and rather than address it head-on, they have spent 50 years and millions of dollars trying to avoid it."
Travelling on Air (Mar 18, 2008) SUCH A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING!
http://www.positivenews.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1559.shtml
The long awaited air-powered car should be ready to roll off the production lines in Europe and India early next year. Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile company, has done a 20 million Euro deal with French inventor Guy Nègre, to use his patented technology in their own designs. The company recently hit the headlines when they launched the £1,300 Nano, the world’s cheapest car. Unlike the Nano, the new air-powered model is virtually pollution free.After 15 years developing his invention, Guy is at last going into production. His company, Moteur Development Inter-national, is finishing the construction of a small factory near Nice. Here, it will manufacture the OneCat, an inexpensive version of the air-powered car, starting at around 3,500 Euros. It should be on the streets early in 2009 with the grander MiniCat planned for 2010. The OneCat runs on compressed air that drives the pistons and will need to be periodically re-charged to top up the pressure. More sophisticated versions will be able to switch to a fuel engine to make long journeys. The car can go up to about 90 miles an hour and is very light. “It is all very simple,” Guy says. “The lighter the vehicle, the less it consumes, the less it pollutes and the cheaper it is.” To avoid shipping cars aross the world, the idea is to set up mini turnkey factories in regions where they are wanted. There is already interest in several countries. “Everything will be made at the place of sale,” Guy said. “This will be more profit-able and much more ecological.” Contact: http://www.tatamotors.comor MDI: http://www.mdi.lu
Can Fungi Really Eliminate Radiation in San Francisco Area Soils? (May 12th, 2008)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/05/12/18498573.php
Is the new research that reportedly helps stop the spread of Depleted Uranium contaminated soils the real deal? (...) The possible implications for use of this fungi as some sort of environmental cure are truly chilling. We can not possibly ever remediate Uranium contaminated soils that exist all over the country and many other parts of the world - unless unfathomably huge and prohibitively expensive, thorough remediation measures are taken. And while we can not un-do the massive radioactive contamination that has already taken place, we must now do whatever we can to prevent Uranium from being used for any purpose. We must stop Uranium from being used in nuclear power plants, nuclear bombs, and everyday weapons currently used by our military, such as bunker busters, missiles, DU fired out of A-10 aircraft and out of tanks used everyday in military combat now in Asia and Africa. It is also critical we stop using half-baked phrases like "No more nukes" or "Stop the Bomb" and instead replace this with simply, the more-to-the point, constant and unwavering demand to all persons who hold political power at every level of government: "Stop the Radioactive Uranium Poisoning of the US and the rest of our planet." Period.
Solutions for the WORLD FOOD CRISIS (14/05/08)
http://a-fi-sau-a-nu-filiber.blogspot.com/2008/05/solutions-for-world-food-crisis.html
Today we actually have several converging crisis and the news sounds bad but have you noticed how they manage to package everything in the media? Things are worsening on almost every front yet they manage to put a good face on events. Items that would have been crushing news only six months ago today are considered small annoyances. The downside is always minimized - the deception most complete. Manipulation is a fine and powerful art and by its nature serves the dark powers on earth. (...) There is no shortage of solutions to many of the food problems we as individuals and the world collectively face. Imagine, for instance, if every American home and every home around the world with some lawn or other land space planted an organic garden? The dramatic increase of supply would drive down prices and few would have to go hungry. In Canada the government is already calling for a return of the ‘ Victory Gardens ” of the last great war.Larger crop growth is possible using probiotics on both soil and plant. Putting the probiotic into the soil around the roots bio-activates the soil, it increases the biological activity increasing breakdown of mineral nutrients for the plants. Like repopulating the gut probiotics can bring dead soil back to life reversing a century of soil depletion and ruin. Plants double their growth, are stronger, resist disease better, meaning they do not need pesticides to thrive. Wayne Blakely, the originator of Remineralization of America is the genius who knows how to grow probiotics for both humans and plants. Just imagine vastly reducing the use of pesticides while simultaneously doubling or even tripling yields. Spirulina has always been an answer to world hunger as it can be grown even in deserts. The power of this super food makes it an excellent medicine for it replenishes deficient nutrients in the body quickly. It is also protective against radiation exposure among many other things. With a full complement of vitamins and minerals (except for Vit. C), all the amino acids necessary to supply a complete protein source, and more than adequaste amounts of fatty acids (highest source of omega 6 Gamma Linoleic Acid) Spirulina qualifies as one of the most beneficial “superfoods.” Eating less meat helps since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef. This change in diet increases the overall demand for grains. Many vegans have held this truth out for years but talk to any meat eater and tell them to stop and see how far you get. Vegetarianism has many positive benefits, which lose all attractiveness when people go on ego trips about it. Of course we could stop the biofuel revolution, stop taking food out of millions of bellies to feed the tanks of our cars. There are other new agricultural innovations emerging that also offer promise. It is easy to suggest solutions, implementation is another matter. In the case of our current crisis we are unfortunately going to witness how nasty humans really are, how callous and insensitive we are to the true issues facing humanity. We need to change, our civilization needs changing, our systems and concepts and basic assumptions all need to change. Of course most people still are in denial and wonder what all the fuss is about never imagining that in hundreds of millions of new bellies hunger is starting to be felt.
EMF-Omega-News 24. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4945816/
Omega-News Collection 24. May 2008
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/4945819/
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From: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/11/8875/
Civilization’s Last Chance
The Planet Is Nearing a Tipping Point on Climate Change, and It Gets Much Worse, Fast.
By Bill McKibben - Published on Sunday, May 11, 2008 by the Los Angeles Times
Even for Americans — who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.
It’s not just the economy: We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and helps ignite food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem … how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.
There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, NASA’s chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — that “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”
Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
So it’s a tough diagnosis. It’s like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don’t bring it down right away, you’re going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you’re lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It’s like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.
In this case, though, it’s worse than that because we’re not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas — hard. Instead of slowing down, we’re pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year — two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.
And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we’ve managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.
And don’t forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car; and Americans are buying TVs the size of windshields, which suck juice ever faster.
Here’s the thing. Hansen didn’t just say that if we didn’t act, there was trouble coming. He didn’t just say that if we didn’t yet know what was best for us, we’d certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
His phrase was: “if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever-more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto protocol, which was already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta’s tar sands.)
We’re the ones who kicked the warming off; now the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun’s heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.
And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them — to reverse course. Here’s the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto accord (which, for the record, has never been approved by the United States — the only industrial nation that has failed to do so). When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty — a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.
If we did everything right, Hansen says, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out, we might even be on track back to 350 ppm. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.
More likely, though, we’re the coyote — because “doing everything right” means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they’re supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way U.S. automakers made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.
It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.
It’s possible. The United States launched a Marshall Plan once, and could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But at a time when the president has, once more, urged drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it seems unlikely. At a time when the alluring phrase “gas tax holiday” — which would actually encourage more driving and more energy consumption — has danced into our vocabulary, it’s hard to see. And if it’s hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as Americans do.
Still, as long as it’s not impossible, we’ve got a duty to try to push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality. In fact, it’s about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.
After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can’t do this one lightbulb at a time.
We do have one thing going for us — the Web — which at least allows you to imagine something like a grass-roots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that “350 stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.
Hansen’s words were well-chosen: “a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.” People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not.
Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won’t exist, at least not for long, as long as we remain on the wrong side of 350. That’s the limit we face.
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Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author, most recently, of “The Bill McKibben Reader,” is the co-founder of Project 350, devoted to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million. A longer version of this article appears at Tomdispatch.com.
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Related articles:
The War to End All Wars (May 20, 2008)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/20/9082/
The climate change threat needs drastic action. Only a cross-party approach can deliver it -- How do you define a war? There is the disastrous one that Britain is waging in Iraq, involving tanks and guns and the lives of our young men and women. There is the kind the government claims it is waging variously against poverty, terror, and obesity. But the greatest threat to us all, global warming — a threat far greater than any airborne disease or foreign dictator — has yet to be elevated to war status. Day by day, before our eyes, the planet is deteriorating: ice caps are melting, weather systems shifting, and the poorest are finding themselves facing life-threatening water shortages. Our wildlife is suffering, species are being lost before our children even have a chance to witness them in all their beauty. Britain, with 174 other countries, signed up to the Kyoto protocol, but while the government has made great political play of the fact that greenhouse gas emissions have decreased over the past decade, actual CO2 emissions have gone up. The only cuts that have been made have come from small, one-off technical fixes of things like landfill gas methane emissions. Labour might have great plans for cutting climate-changing gases, but most of its policies, from motorway widening to new runways, point in the opposite direction, and are actually worsening the situation. CLIP
Warming Climate Is Changing Life On Global Scale, Says New Study (May 15, 2008)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514131125.htm
A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans' plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities. CLIP
No ocean is untainted by the polluting hand of Man (February 15, 2008)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3369142.ece
Almost half of the oceans have been badly damaged by humanity and no region has been left untouched, the first global map of Man’s impact on marine ecosystems has revealed. The ambitious project to chart the changing ocean environment shows that Man has exacted a much heavier toll on the seas through fishing, pollution and climate change than had been thought. The world map, which was created by dividing the oceans into kilometre squares, shows that 41 per cent have been affected strongly by 17 human activities, a much higher proportion than expected. CLIP
Methane rise points to wetlands (23 May 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408808.stm
Higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane noted last year are probably related to emissions from wetlands, especially around the Arctic. Scientists have found indications that extra amounts of the gas in the Arctic region are of biological origin. Global levels of methane had been roughly stable for almost a decade. Rising levels in the Arctic could mean that some of the methane stored away in permafrost is being released, which would have major climatic implications. The gas is about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, though it survives for a shorter time in the atmosphere before being broken down by natural chemical processes. Indications that methane levels might be rising after almost a decade of stability came last month, when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) released a preliminary analysis of readings taken at monitoring stations worldwide. Noaa suggested that 2007 had seen a global rise of about 0.5%.Some stations around the Arctic showed rises of more than double that amount. (...) An upturn in methane concentrations emissions could have significant implications for the Earth's climatic future. A sustained release from Arctic regions or tropical wetlands could drive a feedback mechanism, whereby higher temperatures liberate more of the greenhouse gas which in turn forces temperatures still higher. A particularly pertinent question is whether methane is being released from hydrates on the ocean floor. These solids are formed from water and methane under high pressure, and may begin to give off methane as water temperatures rise. The amount of the gas held in oceanic hydrates is thought to be larger than the Earth's remaining reserves of natural gas. In collaboration with other British institutions, Dr Fisher's team will begin work this summer sampling water near hydrate deposits to look for indications of gas emerging.
(Voir aussi Le dégel de l'Arctique s'intensifie http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/environnement/2008/05/23/002-arctique-degel-pollution.shtml)
Forecast for big sea level rise (15 April 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7349236.stm
Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis. This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science. Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh. The findings were presented at a major science conference in Vienna. The research group is not the first to suggest that the IPCC's forecast of an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43cm by 2100 is too conservative. CLIP
Next decade 'may see no warming' (1 May 2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm
The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming. However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future. See how modelled temperatures may developThe key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe. The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years. CLIP
Zones of death are spreading in oceans due to global warming (May 18, 2008)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3953924.ece
Marine dead zones, where fish and other sea life can suffocate from lack of oxygen, are spreading across the world’s tropical oceans, a study has warned.Researchers found that the warming of sea water through climate change is reducing its ability to carry dissolved oxygen, potentially turning swathes of the world’s oceans into marine graveyards.The study, by scientists from some of the world’s most prestigious marine research institutes, warns that if global temperatures keep rising there could be “dramatic consequences” for marine life and for humans in communities that depend on the sea for a living. CLIP
World's wildlife and environment already hit by climate change (May 15, 2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/15/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange
Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems. Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures. Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found. The team of experts, including members of the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) ... is the first to formally link some of the most dramatic changes to the world's wildlife and habitats with human-induced climate change. [The] researchers analysed reports highlighting changes in populations or behaviour of 28,800 animal and plant species. They examined a further 829 reports that focused on different environmental effects, including surging rivers, retreating glaciers and shifting forests, across the seven continents. To work out how much - or if at all - global warming played a role, the scientists next checked historical records to see what impact natural variations in local climate, deforestation and changes in land use might have on the ecosystems and species that live there. In 90% of cases the shifts in wildlife behaviour and populations could only be explained by global warming, while 95% of environmental changes, such as melting permafrost, retreating glaciers and changes in river flows were consistent with rising temperatures.
World wildlife numbers down 25% in three decades (May 16 2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/16/wildlife.biodiversity/print
More than one in four of all individual animals, birds and fish on the planet have disappeared in just over thirty years, according to a report that highlights a massive loss of biodiversity across the world. Human activities are to blame, say the authors.The study of 4,000 separate populations of hundreds of different species across land, marine and freshwater habitats reveals they shrunk by an average of 27% between 1970 and 2005. Large sea fish such as the swordfish and the scalloped hammerhead were hit particularly badly, losing 28% of their numbers in the last decade alone. Environment group WWF, which compiled the figures with experts from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said they were "alarming". It said there was no little chance that the world would meet a UN target to significantly slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.Colin Butfield, head of campaigns at WWF-UK, said: "Biodiversity underpins the health of the planet and has a direct impact on all our lives, so it is alarming that despite an increased awareness in environmental issues, we continue to see a downward trend." The WWF Living Planet Index surveys the health of populations of 241 fish, 83 amphibian, 40 reptile, 811 bird and 302 mammal species. It combines published surveys of everything from polar bear dens in Russia and green turtle nests in Costa Rica, to the estimated population of sperm whales in the North Pacific. It does not include all species or populations, but the experts say the results are robust enough to "assess the state of global biodiversity". It finds that land species have lost a quarter of their number since 1970, marine species populations have declined by 28% and freshwater species by 29%. Jonathan Loh, of the ZSL, said: "We have seen a precipitous decline in the number of animals, birds and fish since 1970, while the human population has doubled. Those two trends are not unrelated." Loss of natural habitat and over-exploitation of species, such as over-fishing, are to blame for the collapse, the report says. Pollution and the spread of invasive species are also responsible. Climate change is thought to have played a minor role so far, but could become "the greatest threat to biodiversity over the next few decades".
GOING HUNGRY: WHY BIOFUELS ARE BAD FOR PEOPLE, PROSPERITY, AND THE PLANET (May 15, 2008)
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/08/080515-11.htm
Tensions Over Protecting the Amazon Rain Forest (May 16, 2008)
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/05/16/tensions-over-protecting-the-amazon-rain-forest.html
Brazilian farmers complain about a government campaign against illegal deforestation -- Tensions over that clash of interests have intensified in recent months after the surprising news that, after three years of declines, deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon had accelerated in the last half of 2007. And this week, Brazil's high profile Environment Minister, Marina Silva resigned, saying that she didn't have sufficient political backing to protect the Amazon against powerful business interests and their supporters in the government. It's not immediately clear how her departure—she will still push on environmental issues from her seat in Brazil's senate—will alter current policies, but environmentalists said they have lost their main champion in the government.Reacting to the report of accelerating rain forest loss, Brazil's environmental agency, known as Ibama, has launched a tough enforcement campaign against illegal deforestation known as "Operation Arc of Fire." Since February, the federal police presence in this area and others where significant parcels of forest and farmland meet has grown noticeably. Millions of dollars of fines have been levied, deforestation suspects arrested, and tons of suspect-origin lumber impounded. Brazilian environmental officials and ecology activists consider the effort critical to slowing further encroachment on rain forest, protecting the Amazon's major biodiversity, and combating global warming. It also comes as environmentalists and an industry group are reporting success in discouraging recently cut forest land from being used to produce soybeans. A two-year moratorium on the purchase of such soy was negotiated by the ecology group Greenpeace and major commodity companies, including U.S.-based Bunge, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland, cooperated on that moratorium. CLIP
Amazon Indians Battle Against Plan to Flood Rainforest
http://www.truthout.org/article/amazon-indians-battle-against-plan-flood-rainforest
Patrick Cunningham for The Independent UK reports, "The Amazonian city of Altamira played host to one of the more uneven contests in recent Brazilian history this week, as a colorful alliance of indigenous leaders gathered to take on the might of the state power corporation and stop the construction of an immense hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Amazon."
Whose Rain Forest Is This, Anyway? (May 18, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18barrionuevo.html
Now, with the world focusing on the promises of biodiversity and the perils of global warming, a chorus of international leaders have ever more openly declared the Amazon part of a patrimony far larger than that of the nations that share its territory. “Contrary to what Brazilians think, the Amazon is not their property, it belongs to all of us,” Al Gore, then a senator, said in 1989.Such comments are not taken lightly here. In fact, they have reignited old attitudes of territorial protectionism and watchfulness for undercover foreign invaders (now including bioprospectors).The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is pushing a law that would restrict access to the rain forest, requiring foreigners and Brazilians alike to obtain a special permit to enter it. Brazilian officials say it would separate bad non-governmental organizations from good ones, and deter so-called “biopirates” — those who want to patent unique substances discovered in the forest.“The Amazon is ours,” Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr. said in an interview. “We want to know who is going there and what they are going to do. It’s a question of national sovereignty.”But that question is not as straightforward as it may seem. One man’s savior of sovereignty can be another’s despoiler of the forest.And many Amazon experts say the proposed restrictions conflict with Mr. da Silva’s own efforts to give Brazil a greater voice in global climate change talks — an implicit acknowledgment that the Amazon is critical to the world at large. In addition, his critics have seized on a report in January of a spike in deforestation, as proof the government has not been safeguarding the region well. CLIP
2.
Date: 26 May 2008
From: Daniel Stafford )aqmstaffo@mailbag.com)
Subject: Evade Human Extinction Now!
After watching The 11th Hour, an environmental film on a scale even greater than An Inconvenient Truth, I came away with several new understandings.
First of all, the climate change issue of global warming is really only the worst of a self-inflicted interconnected web of issues killing off species the world over. Together, all of these issues, from deforestation, to pollution, to killing off 90% of sea life, (something we've already done) are adding up to the perfect storm that will wipe the human species off the face of the planet in only a few generations if we don't act now. It isn't just global warming anymore. It isn't just pollution anymore. It isn't just species extinctions anymore. It isn't just crazy weather anymore. It isn't just overflowing land fills anymore. It's Evade Human Extinction Now!
As with everything else that is a result of a collective cultural insanity, framing the issue is one major key to solving it.
This Earth will continue spinning around the Sun whether or not we exist upon it. We are making the choice, in the next ten to fifteen years, whether or not most life, including humans, will survive on this planet. It is that simple, and that direct, and that urgent.
The good news is, once we have enough awareness built up out there, and the collective grass roots will to change, human society is capable of changing quite radically in a very short time. If Detroit can completely retool in six months during the 1940's from making cars to making tanks and airplanes, so can the rest of global industry.
Already, per The 11th Hour, there are over one million environmental activist organizations around the world beginning to act in concert to effect large scale change.
If we as a species do not follow their lead, humankind cannot survive more than another century or two on this planet. If we get it together, and work together, we can have a long and healthy run on this planet, and beyond. We can save the future of innumerable other species as well, many of which our own survival depends on in subtle but critical ways.
Watch The 11th Hour all the way through, and you'll see an integrated presentation of the problems we face during the first half. That alone is more than most other films on such subjects have achieved. Many present only one facet of a larger picture. The 11th Hour goes on to also present an integrated array of solutions. If there were unlimited time, perhaps many of those solutions could be explored more in depth, but there is plenty there to present the overall picture of a society of solutions instead of a society of destruction or of regression.
It is NOT necessary to go back to stone knives, berries, roots, and wearing skins. It is simply necessary to re-design modern society to be able to function within the available resources and so that it preserves the diversity of life on this planet, including humans. Additionally, many possible resources we have available that would be beneficial instead of harmful are grossly under-utilized. In a strange way, this is actually good news, as it gives us something good to change TO.
Critically important is the concept that every person in global society votes, regardless of their age, every single time they make a purchase. Granted, what happens in the political voting booth has huge repercussions, but every day we vote with every bit of currency we spend as well.
So, to Evade Human Extinction Now, what we really need to do is love and respect life, use forms of energy that are beneficial to life, and respect the rights of nature to coexist with us. If we don't respect the rights of natural systems to exist, they will ultimately fail - and no technology can save us from the loss of our own right to exist.
Evade Human Extinction Now! - Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be very grateful for it, and even we ourselves will end up with better lives as a result.
Choose life. I know we can do it. What I don't know is if we will do it.
With great hope,
Dan Stafford
Publisher: The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal
Publisher: The 1st Church of Healing The Earth
3.
Forwarded by Mark Graffis (mgraffis@gmail.com)
From: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/05/10/p25376
12 Stepping Our Way to Armageddon
Carolyn Baker
05/10/08
"The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded."
- H.G. Wells, 1946
I recently received an email from a reader, frustrated with my insistence on holding a vision of what is possible alongside the dismal, inevitable current realities of civilization's collapse. Admonishing me to bear in mind America's Oprah and NASCAR world view and therefore abdicate any sense of optimism I might have, this reader accused me of suggesting that we should 12 Step our way through Armageddon. Rather than being offended, however, I was overcome with gratitude for this reader's image, frustrated with me as he may be, because in spite of the regular "wordsmithing" that I do as a writer, I always feel a sense of relief and validation when someone else gives words that I may not yet have for what I've been thinking, feeling, or doing.
With the image of the 12 Steps in mind, I decided to look more closely at them in relation to the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) and notice how they might in fact be useful not only for recovering from addiction, but for navigating Armageddon. At first I felt shy about applying the Steps to the collapse of civilization, thinking that my readers would think I had seriously gone around the bend, but then someone sent me the "12 Steps Of Peak Oil" from a Vancouver newspaper. At that point, I realized how relevant the Steps might be not only to Peak Oil, but to Peak Civilization itself. Seasoned 12 Steppers argue that despite their 1930s origin, the Steps are applicable to any situation-no matter how monumental, and the collapse of civilization is about as big as it gets. So let's take a closer look.
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 1 requires that I admit my powerlessness over the situation with which I'm confronted. Maybe you're thinking, "Well hey, that's no problem-did I ask for this debacle? All those years that I was an upstanding citizen and voted in elections and had faith in the American dream? What was that for? I did all the right things and now we're looking at Armageddon. Of course, I know that I'm powerless."
But that's not exactly what I mean by admitting that one is powerless. Many of us are stockpiling food, learning skills, busily relocating to other parts of the country or world, investing in precious metals, and so much more, but let's not forget that no matter how much we prepare, we're ultimately powerless over the outcome. While we may know that intellectually, letting it sink into the gut is a whole different story.
Powerless means that we don't know the outcome and can't control it, and that's really scary. I mean what it really all comes down to is the "D" word, you know: Death. And even if we end up celebrating a 100th birthday eating soy cupcakes with our friends in some groovy ecovillage, collapse means that we'll be encountering many more endings than we can now imagine, beginning with the end of our current way of life no matter how small our footprint may be.
Control freaks won't do well with TEOTWAWKI; flexibility, on the other hand, is an essential attribute for survival. No matter how "manageable" our lives might be in the current moment, the collapse of empire is certain to challenge that and will compel us to align with others, give and receive support, trust our intuition as well as our intellect, and be willing to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. As a 12 Stepper might say, true empowerment lies in admitting one's powerlessness.
Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
People entering recovery often have a terrible time with this one. First of all, they feel they might have to buy into all that God stuff, but worse, they feel as if in order to recover, they have to admit that they are insane.
Let me hasten to emphasize that I too recoil at the use of the word "God" and wish to define "power greater than ourselves" as broadly as possible. Over the decades, countless atheists have benefited from using the 12 Steps for addiction recovery precisely because they were able to do the same. Atheists, agnostics, and feminists will have a much easier time with the Steps if they widen their concept of Higher Power to something non-theistic and gender-neutral.
"Insanity" as the Steps define it simply means that one does not recognize anything larger or more significant than one's own ego. Simply put, "something greater" could be one's concept of nature or one's confidence in the human spirit or anything else that one considers more benevolently powerful than oneself.
The 12 Steps inherently fly in the face of the ethics of civilization, based as those values are on the supremacy of the human ego—a pre-eminence that consciously or unconsciously deifies itself and whatever material gain it can amass unto itself at the expense of everyone and everything else. Now what could be more insane than that, and isn't everyone reading these words interested in transforming that paradigm into something more compassionate and sustainable? 12 Step programs further define insanity as doing the same thing that doesn't work over and over again, each time expecting different results. I can think of myriad examples of this in the culture of empire, starting with, "Maybe this time, if we just elect the right candidate for president then...."
12 Stepping into Armageddon begins with thoroughly examining how the culture of empire has inculcated us on every level and in every aspect of our lives. It means understanding how empire has programmed us to believe that we are all-powerful and that if we just do all the right things, we will succeed because our ego needs are the raison d'être for our existence. When we are unable to recognize our powerlessness and resist acknowledging something greater than ourselves, we also rebel against the limits that life on this planet demand of us. We walk around as little "gods" and "goddesses" believing that we can consume whatever we like whenever we like at the expense of all other species as well as our own.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to that power.
OK, breathe. Remember-you don't have to use the word "God", and this Higher Power thing is gender-neutral.
This Step is particularly challenging because it requires action. Steps 1 and 2 just require me to admit something, but Step 3 asks me to DO something-something repugnant to the children of empire. It means I have to surrender my will to that "something greater". Eeeeeeew!
Step 3 is where the rubber meets the road-or not. In order to continue with the rest of the Steps, and therefore recovery, if that's what I'm using them for, or navigating collapse, as the case may be, I have to defer to a greater wisdom. What's even more distasteful is that I'm asked to surrender not only my will but my life.
Well, here we are again back to the dreaded "D" word. Anyone who has been researching and preparing for collapse knows the precarious position of the planet and the human race. If 200 species per day are going extinct, then the bottom line is that we are all staring our own mortality in the face as never before in human history. Collapse is, above all, forcing us to confront our personal mortality and that of our loved ones which is the principal reason so few are willing to deal with it. Who would sign up to feel that vulnerable? However, if we can allow that particular emotion, it becomes more possible to surrender our will and our life because what else do we have to lose?
The logical progression of the Steps is simply that since I'm powerless over the outcome, and there is something greater than my human ego and my five physical senses, it behooves me to consider abdicating my attempt to control what my finite humanity cannot. For this reason, I find that Step 3 relinquishes me from having "hope" because hope is ultimately another attempt to control what I cannot.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
So now that I know that my ego can't manage my life, and I'm willing to surrender the outcome of my life and the world as I have known it to a power greater than myself, I have to look more deeply within. If we are using the Steps in relation to TEOTWAWKI, then a moral inventory could be a somewhat different experience than if we're applying the steps in relation to an addiction. Nevertheless, TEOTWAWKI is not unrelated to the addiction issue. In fact, humanity's addiction to material gain and economic growth has resulted in a delusional disregard for the earth's limits. An expression often heard among 12 Steppers is "self-will run riot" which pretty much summarizes humankind's obliviousness and even contempt toward the earth community.
But let's define our terms. Inventory simply means taking stock of what we have and don't have-what we may need more of or less of. The collapse of empire forces all of us, whether we consciously intend to or not, to consider our values and priorities. People losing houses, jobs, having to relocate out of necessity or by choice, finding that their pensions have suddenly evaporated or who have lost health insurance are forced to make tough decision about priorities.
Those of us who have been aware of collapse for some time and have been preparing for it are faced not only with making decisions such as the ones mentioned above, but are also compelled to look more deeply within to notice what qualities we need to develop in the face of collapse and which ones we may need to minimize. For example, I grew up as an only child and have lived an extremely independent life as an adult. I currently find myself working on reaching out to trusted others, making plans to live in community, and although fiercely committed to personal space and daily periods of solitude, consciously forsaking a life that is all about just me and my needs.
In so doing, I am taken to deeper layers of Step 4 as I contemplate my own part in the collapse of civilization. Although I have left a very small footprint on the earth for most of my life, I must own responsibility for the ways, no matter how small, in which I've polluted the ecosystem, my disconnection from the earth community, aspects of personal independence that have manifested in dysfunction, isolation, arrogance, and rationalization about my need for interdependent connection. In other words, although I'm not on the board of Monsanto, I have played a role in violating the human and more than human worlds.
5. Admitted the exact nature of our wrongs.
Taking a searching and fearless moral inventory compels us to admit our errors to ourselves, to something greater, and to someone else. I begin this process by verbalizing these errors to the power greater than me and then to whomever or whatever I have harmed.
With respect to TEOTWAWKI, I must apologize to generations younger than mine for the failure of my generation to preserve and protect the earth. For example, when teaching college students about the collapse of civilization and its repercussions, I'm often confronted with, "Yeah, and it's your fault and the fault of your generation." Without the slightest hesitation, I wholeheartedly agree, and I tell them that I am genuinely sorry. I also point out that collapse has built up over a period of centuries and that inherent within the values of civilization were the seeds of its own demise. Nevertheless, I have made choices in my lifetime that reinforced those values.
Step 6. Were entirely ready to have all these defects of character removed.
Defects of character? What is this?
It's easy to become defensive around this Step unless one takes it to the next level. I define "defects of character" as those aspects of my personality that have resulted from the programming of empire, or my wounds, if you will. These are the qualities that I have taken on while growing up in empire culture which mitigate against the earth community and my connection with it. I'm very ready to have those removed, but I'm also aware that that means I may need to change my lifestyle, perhaps in drastic ways. Speaking only for myself, I need to look at my appetite for meat (which I've almost extinguished); my tendency to think of my own needs first even when I know I shouldn't; my workaholism, which although greatly diminished in recent years is not entirely absent; my tendency to isolate; my quickness to judge others-the list goes on and on. None of these qualities will be useful as collapse accelerates, and I am working to transform their presence in my life which the next Step facilitates.
7. Humbly asked for the shortcomings to be removed.
Now I'm back to Step 3 and my relationship with "something greater". Because I've surrendered the outcome to it, I can also surrender my character defects and ask them to be transformed-a word that I personally prefer over "removed" since I have come to believe that no part of me can ever be totally removed. Like energy, parts of myself can be transformed but never made to disappear.
8. Made a list of all we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
While Steps 4 through 7 are about oneself, Steps 8, 9, and 10 are relational. Step 8 asks me to notice carefully who has been harmed by my empire-inflicted wounds. This definitely does not apply exclusively to people. Without meaning to, I've harmed animals, birds, trees, soil, water, air-myriad members of the earth community, and I need to reflect on that. In fact, even after learning about collapse and how I need to live differently, I have not changed my behavior to the extent that I want and need to. Step 8 is about willingness and paying attention.
9. Made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
So now that I'm willing to make amends, I must do so. Certainly I must make amends to the people in my life that I've harmed, but just as important are those members of the more than human world that I've overlooked, minimized, disregarded, or just simply didn't notice. Just as a 9th Step may require me to sit down with another human whom I've harmed and make amends, it may also require me to spend a day in the forest, or somewhere else in nature, expressing my regrets to trees, insects, streams, birds, or other non-humans for my obliviousness to them and the countless services they perform in the ecosytem from which I benefit.
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
So Steps 6-9 are not one-shot deals. I am asked to practice them repeatedly. Inventory-taking is forever because what I have or don't have constantly changes, and it's important that I use both the "glass half empty" and "glass half full" approaches to my evolution. Just as I cannot successfully navigate collapse by myself, neither can I practice the Steps in isolation. I need the entire earth community in order to utilize them effectively.
Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with something greater.
Some readers may recoil at the words "prayer" and "meditation", but I remind all of us of one of the key slogans of 12 Step programs which is: "Take what you like and leave the rest." If you find yourself reacting to "prayer" and "meditation", don't worry about it. The point of this Step is to improve conscious contact with something greater, and how we choose to do that is far less important than that we do it. Armageddon will not be easy to navigate, but it will be impossible without a conscious, working connection with a power greater than oneself.
Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Virtually every person preparing for collapse has had at least one, if not countless experiences, of attempting to share research, options, and the realities of collapse with others, only to find oneself blown off by the other person. Not unlike the individual addict who must be ready for recovery before fully applying the Steps, the people with whom we share information about TEOTWAWKI will either be ready to learn more or they will resist and maintain their head-in-the-sand posture. So we must be discreet and respectful, remembering that walking our talk (practicing these principles in all our affairs) is the most important message we can carry.
Waking up is an extraordinarily mixed blessing. With it comes tremendous clarity and joy, as well as sometimes excruciating sorrow as one witnesses more clearly civilization's trajectory of self-and-other destruction. Just as addicts in recovery frequently experience the tragic deaths of other addicts in their lives who will not engage in the recovery process, individuals preparing for collapse invariably encounter numerous loved ones about whom they care deeply who prefer to remain asleep. I feel sorrow daily for those I know who will probably never open their eyes. But I have opened mine, and I imagine that most people reading these words have as well. I carry that and these incredibly practical Steps with me, alongside a plethora of emotions and wonderfully awake allies, as each day we journey more deeply into Armageddon.
While I do not feel optimistic about survival in the abyss into which we appear to be descending, I believe that the principles inherent in the Steps can facilitate our planting seeds that may ultimately germinate and flourish as a new paradigm lived out by some of us and our descendents who are committed to creating lifeboats of localized, sustainable living that serve the entire earth community.
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May 10, 2008 By Carolyn Baker, Coming Out Of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred, is now available for order at Amazon. To order click HERE. The book is available at http://www.carolynbaker.net. This article: http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/484/
4.
Forwarded by Daniel Stafford (aqmstaffo@mailbag.com)
From : http://www.atlargely.com/2008/05/all-the-preside.html
All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
Dear Mr. Bush,
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!
The All-American Nazi
Your family's fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.
--snip--
Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.
Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Oh, but there is much more too:
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.
The All American Traitor
You family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.
Grandpa Bush - that is to say, your grandfather - wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):
Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American
In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.
Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.
Iraq is your Poland
Your