Thursday, March 31, 2011
Chavez says capitalism may have ended life on Mars
"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.
Chavez, who also holds capitalism responsible for many of the world's problems, warned that water supplies on Earth were drying up.
"Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundreds of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts," Chavez said, sipping from a glass of water.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Capitalism's Dismal Future
Paul Mattick writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education:
...Left to its own devices, capitalism promises economic difficulties for decades to come, with increased assaults on the earnings and working conditions of those who are still lucky enough to be wage earners around the world, waves of bankruptcies and business consolidations for capitalist firms, and increasingly serious conflicts among economic entities and even nations over just who is going to pay for all this. Which automobile companies, in which countries, will survive, while others take over their assets and markets? Which financial institutions will be crushed by uncollectible debts, and which will survive to take over larger chunks of the world market for money? What struggles will develop for control of raw materials, such as oil or water for irrigation and drinking, or agricultural land?
Gloomy though such considerations are, they leave out two paradoxically related factors that promise further dire effects for the future of capitalism: the coming decline of oil—the basis of the whole industrial system at present—as a source of energy, and the global warming caused by the consumption of fossil fuels. Even if continuing stagnation should slow greenhouse gas-caused climate change, the damage already done is extremely serious. Elizabeth Kolbert, a journalist not given to exaggeration, called her soberly informative account Field Notes From a Catastrophe.The melting of glaciers threatens not only Swiss views but the drinking supplies of whole populations in such areas as Pakistan and the Andean watersheds; droughts have ravaged Australian and Chinese agriculture for years now, while floods periodically devastate the low-lying South Asian homes of tens of millions of people. The rolling parade of disasters is, unfortunately, only getting started. It will accompany a stagnant economy and only be exacerbated by the increased greenhouse-gas emissions that a return to true prosperity would bring.
What both of these continuing social stresses promise is that the decline of the economy, however cyclically inflected, will simply be the lead-in to a crisis of the social system that, because it is based on the laws of physics and chemistry, will transcend strictly economic issues. If the peaking of oil supplies and the catastrophes of climate change do not provoke a major transformation of social life, then it's hard to imagine what could. This idea may seem unreal today to those of us who still live, for the most part, in what remains of the material prosperity wrought by postwar capitalism, much as the misery and terror of the inhabitants of war-torn Congo are hard to grasp for the inhabitants of New York or Buenos Aires. But this demonstrates only imagination's weakness, not the unreality of the challenges in store for us, as local disasters like the flood of oil that poured out from BP's drilling rig into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 will perhaps make it easier to understand.
The biggest unknown in contemplating the future of capitalism is the tolerance of the world's population for the havoc that this social system's difficulties will inflict on their lives. That people are able to react constructively in the face of the breakdown of normal patterns of social life, improvising solutions to immediate problems of physical and emotional survival, is amply demonstrated by their behavior in the face of disasters like earthquakes, floods, and wartime devastation, as well as in earlier periods of economic distress. That 21st-century people have not lost the capacity to confront social authorities in defense of their interests has been demonstrated by protesting young people in Athens, striking government workers in Johannesburg, and most recently and spectacularly by the Egyptians who, at least for the moment, destroyed a long-lived police state...
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Fukushima And The Nuclear Sword of Damocles
The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.
The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant. Readings from reactor two at the site have been made public by the Japanese authorities and Tepco, the utility that operates it.
Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian workers at the site appeared to have "lost the race" to save the reactor, but said there was no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe.
Workers have been pumping water into three reactors at the stricken plant in a desperate bid to keep the fuel rods from melting down, but the fuel is at least partially exposed in all the reactors.
At least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel "lower head" of the pressure vessel around reactor two, Lahey said.
"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."
The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it reacts with the concrete floor of the drywell underneath, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.
Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool."
From HUMAN SURVIVAL ON A PLUTONIUM-CONTAMINATED PLANET
After 82 days of fasting, protesting the opening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Project [WIPP], the facility near Carlsbad, NM, designed to hold low level nuclear waste produced by our country's manufacture of nuclear weapons, Charles did collapse. Friends took him to Carlsbad Hospital and revived him, before calling the power of attorney.
Since then Charles has served as an example of the sort of activist who has done all he could, and then lapsed into a Zen-like acceptance of the fact that the planet has been irremediably poisoned. He called WIPP "a nuclear waste distribution facility. You can't keep plutonium isolated in wet salt."
He also told Willson that if he were forty years younger, he'd be working on plans to evacuate the planet — he called the imaginary project, "Exodus." But he fretted that only the wealthy would be allowed to escape the poisoned planet, and he admitted that that did not satisfy him.
The Japanese government has told people in the area of the nuclear reactors to move 10 miles away. Yet all the corporate executives have been told to relocate at least 50 miles away. Most have fled to luxury hotels in Tokyo. Massive government-sponsored airlifts have been provided to evacuate corporate bloodsuckers from Japan, while working people freeze and go hungry.
Salute Japanese nuclear workers
The perilous job of racing to stop a nuclear catastrophe is being heroically and selflessly carried out by a small group of workers. The amount of radiation levels they can “safely” absorb is constantly raised by those sitting at a safe distance.
While adults and children were dying, the first “emergency” measure taken by the Japanese government was to dump almost half a trillion dollars into the stock market to prevent a crash.
The G7 countries held an emergency meeting March 19 attended by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke. They discussed their fear that the global capitalist crisis was deepened by this tragedy.
They each pledged to put money from their central banks — the working class’ money — into propping up currencies. Did they take up relieving the largest rise in food prices in 36 years? Did they discuss the fate of the Japanese people, or the planet? No, their concern was how to shore up the currency markets.
From Surviving Nuclear Toxicity
What does radiation do to us? It burns the cells, kind of like burning down a house. It is well known that radiation burns our cells by creating too much free radical damage. Now of course this is like talking Greek to medical officials and professors because if they knew this they would be on the bullhorn telling the public what to do to minimize free radical damage.
This is important information because just about everyone in the northern hemisphere, within a short period of time, will have to live with a gentle radioactive mist all around them and their children. We always have been surrounded by radiation but increasingly so in recent decades because of all the nuclear tests and accidents and use of nuclear materials in warfare (God forbid they are using depleted uranium weapons in Libya) and, of course, the wireless revolution.
But now comes our worst nuclear nightmare, an out-of-control nuclear station belching out plutonium and other very nasty nuclear materials. Imagine it as a mist for that is what it is. If you can conceive of Geiger counters around the world picking this up you know it’s raining nuclear particles just about everywhere. Within the space of only two weeks radiation is being reported in a huge area.
Okay, it’s only a light nuclear rain so far but who wants to go out even in a mild nuclear rain without a nuclear umbrella? But for those poor unfortunate souls who live and work within 50 miles of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, it’s a downpour, and perhaps ‘only’ a strong rain as far away as Tokyo. Now we understand why they tell people to stay indoors, the nuclear density (rain) in an area will only increase the longer the source continues to emit radioactive particles. Staying indoors only affords partial protection for the contamination seeps through in the air, water and food that we breathe and eventually eat and drink.
They can only say that this amount of initial radiation is safe because biological entities do have built in systems to handle very unsafe radioactive particles. Low levels of radiation speak about the quantity of nuclear materials, to their density, but not to the capacity of each nuclear particle to wreak havoc inside our cells by creating flurries of free radicals.
Fears rise over missing political blogger in China
From The Age:
China's crackdown on internet dissent, sparked by the ''jasmine'' revolutions sweeping the Middle East, may have claimed its highest-profile target, with one of China's most influential political bloggers disappearing at Guangzhou airport.
The disappearance of Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen and one of China's more prominent online political analysts, will also prove a headache for Julia Gillard, who is due to visit China late next month.
Dr Yang, a former Chinese Foreign Ministry officer turned novelist and political blogger, has not been seen since calling a colleague from the airport on Sunday to say that he was being followed by three men.
His friends and relatives, including his Sydney-based wife, are worried he has been taken by security police...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Earth Hour - The least we can do - FKN Newz
Revisiting The Hippies
Main Street America is Rising Up
The Kill Team Photos
From Rolling Stone:
More war crime images the Pentagon doesn't want you to see
[WARNING - Images are extremely graphic and disturbing]
During the first five months of last year, a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least four unarmed civilians and mutilating several of the corpses. The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.
The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.”
Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who asked.
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WikiLeaks suggests 9/11 preplanned
The cable outlined “effective methods” for a propaganda war against bin Laden through the Voice of America language services, interviews with bin Laden’s Muslim victims, commissioned articles in the local press and by virtual presence on the Internet. Arguing in favor of an anti-bin Laden website, the cable said, “Although that would appear to be counterintuitive - that the masses don’t use the Internet - almost all Islamic and Islamist groups do indeed have internet access and use it extensively.” “We are unlikely to make much inroad with OBL’s hard-core supporters because they are true-believers absolutists and tend to think and react emotionally: Facts are less important to them than emotions,” it said, noting, “They are not open to persuasion.” However, the American diplomat in Islamabad argued about a majority of Pakistanis, saying, “This middle ground, or at least somewhat susceptible to reason, or at least to other information, should be our primary target.” “The message crafted for them would also be welcomed by educated, westward-looking elite of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, who feel threatened by OBL’s advocacy and violence and theological obscurantism,” the cable said. “The focus of any enhanced USG public diplomacy effort should be to portray OBL and others around him as criminals, both by international and by Islamic standards. Where possible, responsibility of the movement al Qaeda should be emphasized, not just OBL (bin Laden) as an individual,” it said.
For the audiences in Afghanistan, the cable said, “When we focus on bin Laden, and especially for Afghan consumption, we should make three points: 1) The U.S. is not against Afghanistan and the Afghan people, 2) The U.S. is not against any particular any Afghan political faction, and 3) The U.S. wants OBL expelled from Afghanistan to a place where he can be brought to justice.”
The sensational WikiLeaks exposé has caused people to lend credence to the earlier rumour grist that 9/11 was an indigenous conspiracy, planned and executed by the United States to find an excuse for attacking and invading Afghanistan. The recent disclosure of the presence of precious metals in Afghanistan, the information of which the US had prior to 9/11, is a case in point. It has now come to the fore that The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits—including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium—are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys. The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said. While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war. “There is stunning potential here,” General David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview. The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion. However, it has now come to light that the US was in picture of the existence of the minerals before it invaded Afghanistan.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said. However, it is alarming that the US has orchestrated one of the oldest imperialistic façades of invading a country, it suspected contained rich minerals. It could thus be assured of having exclusive rights to mine the minerals and pocket the profits. If this is true, then the US has a lot to answer to the international court of justice, since its war machine has already slaughtered over 30,000 Afghans and despite suffering defeats at the hands of the Afghan resistance, it is reluctant to depart from Afghanistan.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Is Fukushima About To Blow?
The smoldering Fukushima hulk is a perpetual death machine poisoning everything around it--sea, sky and soil. Here's a clip from the Collin's article:
"...The soil contamination is really high. Soil found 40 kilometers away.... the levels on the soil were very high—in fact, a thousand times iodine, 4,000 times the cesium standard. And we just got a report from the Kyoto Research Reactor Institute, Dr. Tetsuji Imanaka, that said that—he had to look a little bit more into the sampling of the Japanese government, but depending on how the sampling was done, this level of contamination in the soil could be twice the amount that was compulsory evacuation for Chernobyl. Aileen Mioko Smith, March 24 (thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")
Twice as high as Chernobyl already, and the disaster is likely to persist for months to come. Things are getting worse, much worse.
The Japanese government has been downplaying the crisis to make it look like they have matters under control, but it's all a sham. They control nothing. The rescue mission has been a flop from the get-go and now things are at a boiling point. The emergency effort has been overtaken by events and now it's a matter of "wait and see". We're approaching zero hour.
Desert of the Real: Jesus, The Matrix, and Hyper-Reality
Desert of the Real: Jesus, The Matrix, and Hyperreality.
Larry and Andy Wachowskis' The Matrix (1999).
Baudrillard compares reality to the map of a great empire's territory. The map of the empire becomes so descriptive that it "ends up exactly covering the territory (but where the decline of the Empire sees this map become frayed and finally ruined" (Baudrillard, 19). The great map, the abstraction, the simulation of the territory, presents the frayed edges as the symbol for the decline of the empire. Compared with the simulation prevalent in the modern world, Baudrillard suggests that the map which was once only a representation of a true substance, has replicated that substance so many times that the simulation has become the substance itself. Today, we cannot use abstraction in the sense that true reality can be separated from a representation of itself. That is to say that you cannot separate the territory from its representation in the map. What then is left for reality and truth? If the simulation, or map, now contains the essence of the territory, than the frayed edges which once symbolized the decline of the empire today represent the outskirts of our current simulation. "It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, The desert of the real itself" (Baudrillard, 20). What is meant by this is that real truth and meaning cannot be found when one only ever encounters simulation. The individual who is aware of the presence of simulation and can separate themselves from it, in a sense becomes free from it. A state of pure reality still exists in relation to the map. It is in the desert of the real that one finds themselves in a position to reject simulation in order to derive at a greater truth.
Simulation makes the human lose all emotional connections with the other, the object. That at it's worst, it turns us into droids, incapable of human emotion..
Written by: Nic Foster. 2005, or thereabout.
America's Atomic Time Bomb
And then the babies started getting sick.
It was in the spring of 1962 that farmer Nels Allison first noticed something was ominously wrong. "Son of a bitch," he said to his wife. Sheep were always "the first to lie down and die" when something was amiss on Allison's farm near Basin City, a rural town near the Columbia River in the far northwestern corner of the continental United States. He started referring to that deadly night "the Night of the Little Demons."
Although the Allisons have long since passed away, the shock endures. As chronicled by journalist Michael D'Antonio in his 1993 book Atomic Harvest, their tale is one of thousands of horror stories that took place in the area surrounding Hanford, Washington, the site of America's first full-scale plutonium production facility. The site haunts the locals to this day -- and imperils them.
Hanford is America's original atomic sin. At this giant facility sprawled over 586 square miles (1,517 square kilometers), a four-hour drive southeast of Seattle into the vast emptiness of Eastern Washington, the United States once produced most of its nuclear raw materials for the Cold War. Though it was decommissioned in 1988, it remains the most contaminated location in the entire Western Hemisphere.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently revised its timetable for Hanford's decontamination, the biggest environmental cleanup in American history. The end date was moved back, once again. It now hopes to finally wrap up this Herculean task by September 2052 -- more than 108 years after Hanford was opened.
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Did God Have a Wife?
God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.
In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.
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Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.
Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.
"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."
Also significant, Stavrakopoulou believes, "is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her." ...
That Elusive Peace Vibration
This task is not as daunting as it might sound. We do not have to create the peace we are looking for as it already exists. Where is it you ask? Take a look inside and there you will find it nestled safely within each and every one of our very own hearts. The peace movement is truly not about making things change outside of ourselves; it is about moving ourselves into that place of peace that already exists within each one of us.
If we stop screaming and fighting so much, take a pause from the chaos of life for a moment, sit down and take in a big resounding breath we will remember that place of love and peace we were all born from. Believe it or not it is still within us all. All of us!
Now that we are all here remembering and standing before this palace of blissful calm and peace, let’s move in. Move yourself into the peace palace with all of your belongings. There is plenty of room for All. This is the peace movement or the moving into peace. We are all now surrounded by peace, it is all around us. We have moved in, taken up house. We are all sharing space in the palace of peace.
Next, take in another one of those resounding breaths and breathe it in. Let us all take in a few more deep breaths and fill ourselves with the peace that surrounds us. Breathe here for a while as we replace, or exchange, our inner air with the breath of peace. Fill yourself up! Now, peace is within us all. The palace of peace dwells with us as we dwell within it.
The peace movement is complete because we have moved into peace as peace has moved into us. Welcome my friends to the New World. Remember to be kind and gentle with yourselves and others fore the path we are now on is as a razors edge. We shall lift each other up as we slip and fall fore we will surely slip and fall.
Not difficult to visualize according to Sufi teachings:
It is the gradual increasing activity which causes vibrations to materialize, and it is the gradual decrease of the same which transmutes them again into spirit. As has been said, vibrations pass through five distinct phases while changing from the fine to the gross, and the elements of ether, air, fire, water and earth - each has a savoir, color and form peculiar to itself. Thus the elements form a wheel which brings them all in time to the surface. At each step in their activity they vary and become distinct from each other, and it is the grouping of these vibrations which causes variety in the objective world. The law, which causes them to disperse, man calls destruction.
Vibrations turn to atoms and atoms generate what we call life; thus it happens that their grouping, by the power of nature's affinity, forms a living entity. And as the breath manifests through the form so the body becomes conscious. In one individual there are many fine and small beings hidden: in his blood, in his brain cells, in his skin, and in all planes of his existence.
As in the physical being of an individual many small germs are born and nourished which are living beings, so in his mental plane also there are many beings, termed muwakkals - elementals. These are still finer entities born of man's own thoughts, and as the germs live in his physical body so the elementals dwell in his mental sphere. Man often imagines that thoughts are without life; he does not see that they are more alive than the physical germs and that they have a birth, childhood, youth, age and death. They work for man's advantage or disadvantage according to their nature. The Sufi creates, fashions and controls them. He drills them and rules them throughout his life; they form his army and carry out his desires. As the germs constitute man's physical being and the elementals his mental life, so do the angels constitute his spiritual existence. These are termed farishtas.
Vibrations as a rule have length as well as breadth, and they may last the least fraction of a moment or the greater part of the age of the universe. They make different forms, figures and colors as they shoot forth, one vibration creating another; thus myriads arise out of one. In this way there are circles under circles and circles over circles, all of which form the universe. Every vibration after its manifestation becomes merged again in its original source. The reach of vibrations is according to the fineness of the plane of their starting-point. To speak more plainly, the word uttered by the lips can only reach the ears of the hearer, but the thought proceeded from the mind reaches far, shooting from mind to mind. The vibrations of mind are much stronger than those of words. The earnest feelings of one heart can pierce the heart or another; they speak in the silence, spreading out into the sphere, so that the very atmosphere of a person's presence proclaims his thoughts and emotions. The vibrations of the soul are the most powerful and far-reaching; they run like an electric current from soul to soul.
And we need at least 8,000 humans to get the ball rolling. From Creating Peace by Being Peace by Gabriel Cousens:
Being Our Peace Prayer/Meditation ~
In order to effectively usher in the new paradigm of peace through a group collective effort of prayer/meditation, it is important that we create a feeling-based prayer in which we are being our prayer. The ancient Essene-Kabbalistic teaching (on which Greg Braden’s “Isaiah Effect” is based) has a specific word for this technology of prayer-- l’hitpallel. It is a unique expression, which is profoundly different than the contemporary meaning of prayer that infers praying to God or begging God to change God’s mind (as if God is outside of us). L’hitpallel is a verb. It means to do something to oneself. This way of being in prayer is embodied in the Native American way. The Native American shamans did not pray for rain, they prayed rain. L’hitpallel is not about some external God hearing prayers; it is about us being our prayers, in other words, to hear our own prayers by being them. This is the key technology. We create a feeling of peace, rather than a prayer asking for peace. In l’hitpallel, we are actively and intentionally filling our hearts and having a feeling-based experience of what it is that we are creating. It is feeling that what we are praying for has already happened, and for this we stay in a state of thankfulness. (If this ancient prayer/meditation doesn’t resonate with you, any form of prayer/meditation with a sincere heart creates a vibration of peace.)
To create peace we must change ourselves—becoming what it is that we wish to see in ourselves and in the world. When we change ourselves, we change the whole situation. This feeling-based prayer puts into place the vibratory possibilities of a particular outcome—in this case world peace. In other words, we create a collective resonance that becomes a holographic model of peace consciousness. Peace Prevails on Earth.
A Global Collective Effort ~
It has been hypothesized that as little as the square root of one percent of the world population, which is approximately 8,000 people, is enough to shift the global mind into one of world consciousness for peace. It is for this reason that the Peace Every Day Initiative is committed to inspire at least 8,000 people to collectively create a powerful thought-form of peace, every day. Our vision is that the number of people meditating collectively through consciousness and intention will soon surpass 144,000, a sacred number for the healing of the world that will bring the Thousand Years of Peace. May the initiative spread to include millions of committed peace workers world-wide.
History shows us that it takes more than a few peace celebrations to sustain peace on earth. This is the time to step-up the effort of our intention and become a continuous, active, global vibration of peace.
Tearing Down Gandhi's Image
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Harvard Mathematicians Reveal How Lily Blooms, Contradict Common Theories
The research, conducted at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), contradicts earlier theories regarding growth within the flower bud. The petals, in fact, behave like leaves.
Published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings characterize the blooming process using mathematical theory, observation and experiment.
"That differences in planar growth strains can lead to shape changes has been known for some time," says principal investigator L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at SEAS. "But, showing that it is at work and dominant in lily blooming is new, as our measurements and simple theory show."
"What is most surprising is that a subject that is so rich in metaphor — the blooming of a flower — had been studied so little from a quantitative perspective."
Mahadevan collaborated with Haiyi Liang, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and now a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. Together, they studied the asiatic lily Lilium casablanca, the bud of which comprises three inner petals wrapped in three outer sepals.
The findings contradict common assumptions about the lily, but they do seem to vindicate one unlikely theorist: German literary master Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In a 1790 essay, "Metamorphosis of Plants," Goethe proposed that petals and leaves could be homologous, meaning that they are both derived from one ancestral form.
[ ... ]
The work was partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Materials and Research Science and Engineering Center at Harvard and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Scientist Leuren Moret - Japan earthquake and nuclear "accident" are tectonic nuclear warfare
http://www.peaceinspace.org
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Concern at plumes of steam over Oldbury nuclear station
A massive plume of steam was seen rising from the Oldbury nuclear reactor, frightening residents on both sides of the Severn.
It came as three Gloucestershire MPs backed a document calling for investment in the nuclear industry and insisted it is the way forward, despite the Japanese nuclear crisis.
A new reactor is being built at Oldbury in South Gloucestershire, but on Thursday, steam billowed from one of the two reactors there, leading concerned residents to fear the worst.
Magnox, which runs the site, said steam was released as part of a normal automatic shutdown after an electrical failure.
"My wife said the noise was horrendous," said anti-nuclear campaigner Reg Illingworth, who lives near the site.
He said he feared that if a more serious problem occurred, thousands of people in the surrounding area, including the Forest of Dean, would have to be evacuated.
"Magnox issued a statement saying there was nothing to worry about but given the concerns about Japan it was worrying."
Radioactive substances from Fukushima plant to go around globe
According to Kyodo News:
Radioactive substances released from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station have already reached the United States and Iceland, and are expected to go around the globe in two to three weeks, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said Thursday.
But the amount is too small to affect humans, the Vienna-based CTBTO told Kyodo News.
The commission operates a network of monitoring facilities at 63 locations in the world, including one in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture.
A senior official at the commission's monitoring department said figures observed in Takasaki continue to go up and down and that the amount of radioactive substances from the Fukushima plant, which has been crippled by the March 11 mega earthquake and tsunami, cannot be said to be on the decrease.
Small amounts of radioactive substances were already detected at observation facilities in western California on March 18 and in Iceland on Tuesday, and they are expected to reach European countries in a few days, according to the official.
Diplomatic sources at the International Atomic Energy Agency said many Southeast Asian countries are worried about the adverse effects of the radioactive substances.
But Japan's Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said it does not expect any impact on foreign countries, citing data observed so far.
Friday, March 25, 2011
World's Fastest Banjo Player Will Have To Leave U.S.
From the KFGO radio station:
Johnny Butten, recognized as the fastest banjo player in the world in the Guiness Book of World Records has had his visa application by The Department of Homeland Security denied.
Butten who lives in Hitterdahl with his wife and children was told he must leave the country by Saturday because his application for a "Green Card" visa was rejected, and his current Visa runs out on Saturday.
The Government no longer recognizes the Guiness Book of World Records as a major award, part of the requirement in getting a visa. That award was recognized when he recieved his current visa 3 years ago.
Butten has lived in this area for three years and besides his musical entertaiment he is a member of the Hitterdahl Fire Department...
YUGOSLAVIA VERSUS LIBYA: NATO's War of Aggression against Yugoslavia
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research
Remember Yugoslavia. 24 March 1999.
This article was first published in early June 1999. It documents the nature of NATO's "humanitarian war" directed against an entire Nation.
The humanitarian justification to bomb and invade Yugoslavia was fabricated.
A similar process is now being applied to Libya.
The bombing of a sovereign country, is being carried out by the so-called "international community" to "save the lives of civilians" under the new logo of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1973.
Libya 2011: The realties are otherwise: civilians are the unspoken victims of US-NATO bombings. A Blitzkrieg is being carried out against an entire population.
According to the late Walter J. Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in relation to the humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia:
"The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent "Polish atrocities" against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.
This assessment by Walter Rockler applies to Libya, which has all the essential features of the 1999 bombing campaign against the Federation of Yugoslavia.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 24, 2011
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General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May that "NATO'S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties.". General Clark also confirmed that "he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.
As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in "NATO rhetoric". The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to "helping Milosevic's propaganda machine."
Low Intensity Nuclear War
With NATO air-strikes entering their third month, a new stage of the War has unfolded. NATO's "humanitarian bombings" have been stepped up leading to mounting civilian casualties and human suffering. Thirty percent of those killed in the bombings are children. In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance is waging a "low intensity nuclear war" using toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium. Amply documented, the radioactive fall-out causes cancer potentially affecting millions of people for generations to come. According to a recent scientific report, "the first signs of radiation on children including herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles" have been observed in Yugoslavia since the beginning of the bombings.
In addition to the radioactive fall-out which has contaminated the environment and the food chain, the Alliance has also bombed Yugoslavia's major chemical and pharmaceutical plants. The bombing of Galenika, the largest medicine factory in Yugoslavia has contributed to releasing dangerous, highly toxic fumes. When NATO forces bombed plants of the Pancevo petrochemical complex in mid-April "fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out. Workers at Pancevo, fearing further bombing attacks that would blow up dangerous materials, released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube."
Critical Ass
World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards, rollerblades and roller skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."[1]
The dress code motto is "Bare as you dare".[2] Full and partial (especially topfree) nudity is encouraged, but not mandatory, on all rides. Any mandate to cover intimate parts is forbidden; this is a distinguishing feature of WNBR against other cycling events.
Creative expression is also encouraged to generate a fun and immersive atmosphere during the ride, capture the attention and imagination of the public and media, and make the experience more personalized and fulfilling for the riders. Body art, such as body painting, are common forms of creative expression, as well as costumes, art bikes, portable sound reinforcement systems (such as public address systems, bullhorns and boomboxes) and musical instruments or other types of noisemaker.
Pre-ride parties for WNBR have become events unto themselves, often featuring musical bands, DJs, body-painting, temporary structures/installation art, political tabling, and catering. In addition to simply being able to ride clothes-free on community streets, some rides have established precedent by having body-painting parties, often involving numbers of naked riders and artists in high-visibility municipal parks.
Magnetic Hill in Ladakh Defies Gravity
Egypt to protest against anti-protest law
The decree-law also assigns severe punishment to those who call for or incite action, with the maximum sentence one year in prison and fines of up to half a million pounds.
The new law, which still needs to be approved by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, will be in force as long as the emergency law is still in force. Egypt has been in a state of emergency since the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Since former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February, Egypt has witnessed escalating nationwide labour strikes and political protests. Amongst those protesting have been university students, political activists, railway workers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, journalists, pensioners and the police force.
Many labourers have expressed their shock at the decree. “We really had hopes that the new government will support us and look into our demands. We expected them to say we have all of your legal demands on our desks and there is a timeline of a month or two within which they will be achieved,” said Ali Fotouh, a driver in the public transportation sector.
“I don’t understand what they mean by protests that affect the traffic and the business. This is not fair, why don’t you solve our demands so that we don’t go on strikes. This tone reminds me of the old days of Mubarak, threats and oppression used by the regime. This is no longer valid after January 25 Revolution.”
Many agree with Fotouh that this decree will incite even more protests and create even more distrust between the new government and the army on one side, and the people on the other.
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‘I could be the father of a Japanese Chernobyl’
One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.
Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. (6501) in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a “time bomb,” was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.
“Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?” Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. “I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It’s got a faulty reactor inside.”
Tanaka’s allegations, which he says he brought to the attention of Japan’s Trade Ministry in 1988 and chronicled in a book two years later called “Why Nuclear Power is Dangerous,” have resurfaced after Japan’s worst nuclear accident on record. The No. 4 reactor was hit by explosions and a fire that spread from adjacent units as the crisis deepened.
No Safety Problem
Hitachi spokesman Yuichi Izumisawa said the company met with Tanaka in 1988 to discuss the work he did to fix a dent in the vessel and concluded there was no safety problem. “We have not revised our view since then,” Izumisawa said.
Kenta Takahashi, an official at the Trade Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said he couldn’t confirm whether the agency’s predecessor, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, had conducted an investigation into Tanaka’s claims. Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman at Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, said he couldn’t immediately comment.
Tanaka, who said he led the team that built the steel vessel, was at his apartment on Tokyo’s outskirts when Japan’s biggest earthquake on record struck off the coast on March 11, shaking buildings in the nation’s capital.
“I grabbed my wife and we just hugged,” he said. “I thought this is it: we’re dead.”
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