Flow and go on flowing

Go for the little things

AVATAR

When we put profit

above life...

we are feeding on our young

(watch trailer)

 

Overpopulation: Our Greatest Threat

Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth.

The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment and waste disposal. Overpopulation places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.

If resources required to sustain the organism are being consumed by the organism faster than the resource can be renewed, then the organism is overpopulated. For example, humans are destroying topsoil and consuming fossil fuels much faster than the planet can renew them and those resources are currently required to produce and distribute the necessary quantity of food to feed the population, and therefore humans are overpopulated on Earth.

(read more)

A mentira tem perna curta

Brasilians have a proverb, "A mentira tem perna curta," meaning literally, "A lie has short legs," and rather than trying to prejudice short people, I think it is putting out the notion that with short legs a lie won't get far - optimistic I would say, but nevermind

before watching these videos of his speech, which is a barn-burner in my opinion, it might be useful to know that after Lula took power in 2003 some people changed the proverb to "A mentira tem perna curta, língua presa, barba branca e um dedo a menos," literally, "A lie has short legs, speaks with a lisp, has a white beard, and is missing a finger," which is not a bad description of Lula

anyway, here are two videos of his speech on December 18 in Copenhagen, less than 10 minutes each, with english sub-titles,
part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQzVjDp5WA8.
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGx8Ku08L_c.

here is the original at the COP15 site: http://www1.cop15.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/cop15/templ/play.php?id_kongressmain=1&theme=cop15&id_kongresssession=2720, and I have laid it out in parallel translation here: http://whoami-whoareyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/and-his-name-shall-be-called-wonderful.html.

this seems to me to be the nut of it right here, "Eu não sei ... Se a gente não conseguiu fazer até agora esse documento, eu não sei se algum anjo ou algum sábio descerá neste plenário e irá colocar na nossa cabeça a inteligência que nos faltou até a hora de agora. Não sei. Eu acredito, como eu acredito em Deus, eu acredito em milagre, ele pode acontecer, e quero fazer parte dele." / "I don't know ... If we have not succeeded in creating this document until now, I don't know if some angel or some wise man will descend into this meeting room and will put into our heads the intelligence that we have been missing until this very hour. I do not know. I believe, as I believe in God, I believe in miracles, it could happen, and I want to be a part of it."

in the news today I noticed that he has passed the law, but with three pieces of it removed - not a good sign but I am still trying to understand exactly what these excised pieces may mean ...

also to remember that the 38% reduction he talks about is based on 2005 not 1990 levels, so it is weasel talk from the outset to some extent, on the other hand Brasil's emissions have not grown at quite the rate of say, Canada's, since 1990 either, so his ambitions are about twice those of the Canadians

in the end all I know is that listening to this speech, more than a few times, gives me a tiny measure of hope, it makes me weep, maybe it just reminds me of the happy times I had in Brasil years past, but also, these words seem to me to be coming from a guy who is probably no worse than me - I believe in God too, and in miracles, we sure need some miracles, one miracle, whatever

be well, David.

May Peace Prevail On Earth

Mordechai Vanunu (Hebrew: מרדכי ואנונו‎) is an Israeli former nuclear technical assistant who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by an American woman named Cheryl Bentov and kidnapped by Israeli intelligence operatives. He was transported to Israel and ultimately convicted of treason and espionage.

Vanunu was born in Marrakech, Morocco, on 14 October 1954 to a Jewish family; his father was a rabbi. In 1963, at the age of nine, he emigrated under the Law of Return with his parents and the first 4 of his 11 brothers and sisters to Israel. He studied in an ultra orthodox elementary school, and attended, but did not finish, a Bnei Akiva yeshiva high school.

Vanunu completed his three years of military service as a sapper in the IDF Combat Engineering Corps, with the rank of First Sergeant. After completing his service, Vanunu began working as a technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Concurrently, he became a part-time geography and philosophy student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

At that time he became critical of many policies of the Israeli government, forming a group called "Campus" with four other Jewish students and five Arab students. Vanunu was also affiliated with a group called "Movement for the Advancement of Peace." In early 1980s Vanunu converted to Christianity from Judaism. Vanunu graduated from Ben-Gurion University in 1985 with a BA in Philosophy and Geography.

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. He says he has been persecuted by the authorities in Israel because of his conversion to Christianity, saying "I want to tell those who say I am a traitor, I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian."

In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In response, Amnesty International issued a press release on 2 July 2007, stating that "The organisation considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release." Vanunu has been characterized by some as a whistleblower and by others as a traitor. Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era".

On 28 December 2009, Mr. Vanunu was once again arrested "by Jerusalem Police in a hotel in the capital following an alleged meeting with a Norwegian national. He remained in jail on Tuesday, though was set to be transferred to house arrest..."

(read more)

IRONY

Regarding a Theory of Human Emotions

Humans are endowed with a life of the mind that encompasses the unique ability to reason and a diverse range of emotions. It is the emotions that provide the drive and motivation to act in the world as well as imbue an individual existence with both color and spirit. Emotions project the individual’s reaction to personal experience. They are felt internally and are an external manifestation of a person’s response to external conditions.

I believe it is reasonable to assume that the emotions have a neurological basis; it has been well established that the area of the brain referred to as the amygdala, located within the limbic system, is the site where neurological activity associated with the emotions is found. Over the millions of years of human evolution, the neuronal infrastructure of this section of the brain was assembled in order to improve the survivability of the species in an essentially hostile environment.

In my mind, the panorama of the emotions can be conceptually divided into two distinct categories. Within one subset, I place those emotions that are elicited in response to a perceived and imminent threat to the safety and integrity of the individual or group. These emotions include fear, anger, hatred and rage.

Humans are gregarious by nature and have a natural affinity towards others. This socially-oriented proclivity has immense ramifications in regards to the fate of human populations. There exists in all of us what is perceived as a need for a sense of “connectedness” that drives this movement towards others. It is the state of health of this connectedness that is the source of the emotions I place in the second category. The sense of belonging can either be enhanced or diminished. The emotions that reflect this enhancement are love, joy, delight, happiness and elation. Those emotions that are elicited as a result of the feeling of diminishment of belonging are grief, sadness, sorrow, depression and despair.

This innate need for feeling connected not only applies to others in the human family but to the natural world as well. This reality is reflected in the richly textured myths of early human societies. Native American populations viewed themselves in a context of connection to all that surrounded them including the inanimate world. Life in the modern technological era has deprived us of this sense of belonging to the greater world. I have concluded that it is this schism that is at the heart of anxiety that drives so many to distraction.

The internal and overwhelming sense of isolation that is the hallmark of the modern world has diverted humans from their true nature. Collectively, humans are neurologically wired to be an integral part of all that surrounds them. This desire for “oneness” lies at the heart of so many of the world’s religions. It is this state of harmonious relationship that so many seek, especially in form and texture of their god(s).

We are essentially a tribal species. It is this need for fully participating within the fabric of a social environment that is so often thwarted by the hard-edged structures that are imposed by the exigencies of modern life.

I am convinced that it is possible to retain the benefits of technological progress while seeking to soften our rigid social structures and permit a greater sense of openness and inclusion. The significant threat that human activity poses to the health of the natural environment may provide an impetus for a change in the way we have come to perceive others and the natural world. We should seek to enhance and not curtail the internal desire for wholeness, while utilizing and maintaining our higher faculties as well.

Re-entry

Naked Air

I'm showing up at the airport

in a speed-o and a bathrobe

and no luggage

They're Here! You're Next!

Circular, not Linear!

One of the myths that we so-called moderns have all rather too readily bought into is that of what I call linearity - let me write it large for emphasis: THE MYTH OF LINEARITY. Yes, that's a powerful myth indeed, traceable all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, I believe. The thinkers of the Enlightenment gave great support to this myth with their own parallel one of indefinite progress. Let me write that myth large here for you: THE MYTH OF PROGRESS. However, more often than not, the wisdom, garnered over long years of living, of the ancient religions, seems definitely to contain a little more of the truth - certainly much more existential truth, that is truth as it is involved in the daily experience of living. They proposed a circular myth. Let me write that large, too: THE CIRCULAR MYTH. One could write this myth in other words, too, like: THE MYTH OF CYCLES. Linearity is a pretty one-dimensional one (also bi-directional, given that a line points in two opposite directions) whereas the circular/cyclic one is more dynamic and this can spiral outwards and inwards and on and on and on.

Anyway, the Christmas Season is, indeed, quintessentially a mythic one. Christmas itself is a profound MYTH. Santa Claus and Christ belong to the same mythic dimensions, and we poor human animals need to be inspired by our more profound myths. Let me return to the cyclic myth here. I contend that the cyclic myth is a healthier one for a number of reasons: (i) it is in harmony with the seasons and with planetary movement (I refer to astronomical principles here, not to the pseudo-science of astrology), (ii) it is more in harmony with the nature of the human animal, who as a creature participates in the cycles of conception, growth, decay and death and so on and on and on and on and (iii) it also appears to me that it is more psychically true - that is, we grow not in a linear fashion, but in a cyclic one. For instance, take my regrets as I grow older, for hurting X or Y or Z; for not doing A, B or C; for not saying "sorry", for not telling X or Y that I loved them before they "shuffled off this mortal coil" etc. Sometimes, I quite fancy that I have dealt with these "hurts" and "hurtings", to have quite dealt with them, "sloughed them off", only to have them return, as if within the circle of regret, no sooner have I erased an outer circle, a further inner concentric circle raises its ugly circumference. It were as if as soon as I had peeled back a layer of the onion of regret I had only exposed a deeper-seated eye-watering layer beneath.


Back to Dickens:


The work of all great novelists is replete with wisdom and none more truly than that of the great story teller Charles Dickens. One of my favourite books by Dickens is his wonderful Tale of Two Cities, with those opening lines, worthy of a medieval divine in their import: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." How we all might wish we had the wit to pen them. Yet, I still would like to quote some other lines from this famous book, coutesy of my current favourite contemporary analyst, Dr. Irvin D. Yalom:

For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind of smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now by many rememberances that had long fallen alseep. (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, quoted in Yalom's Staring at the Sun, 149.)

I am reminded by the lines from one of my favourite modernist poets, T.S. Eliot which run thus: "In my beginning is my end. ..In my end is my beginning."--from Four Quartets, "East Coker."

You're A Good Man Charlie Brown

Peace On Earth

An eye for an eye

will make us all blind

Mahatma Gandhi

So this is Christmas

Happy Xmas (War is Over)
John Lennon, Yoko Ono


So this is Christmas
and what have you done
another year over
a new one just begun

and so this is Christmas
i hope you have fun
the near and the dear ones
the old and the young

a very merry Christmas
and a happy new year
let's hope it's a good one
without any fear

and so this is Christmas
for weak and for strong
the rich and the poor ones
the road is so long

So happy Christmas
for black and for white
for the yellow and red ones
let's all stop the fight

a very merry Christmas
and a happy new year
lets hope it's a good one
without any fear.


War is over, if you want it
War is over now

(watch video)

The Botany Of Desire

Plants and animals

are our friends...

it's the Botany of Desire

The Sun Of God

(click title for astronomical rebuttal)
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/transcript.htm

Yin Yang

The Yin/Yang symbol is derived from the movement of the earth relative to the sun. When observing the cycle of the Sun, ancient Chinese used a pole posted at a right angle to the ground and recorded positions of the shadow. They divided the year's cycle into a circle 24 Segments of about 15 days, and used six concentric circles, and recorded the length of shadow.

Beginning at the summer Solstice when the shadow was shortest and yin begins and then every 15 days, they plotted the shadow length from the outside of the circle inward until winter Solstice when the shadow was longest and Yang begins. Then they then began plotting the length from the center of the circle outward until the summer Solstice. This is because they believe the Chi energy changes directions right after the Solstice. When they connected all the measurements it resulted in the creation the familiar pattern of the Yin Yang. The Yin Yang would be the opposite color scheme if we were to record them from the southern hemisphere and this pattern would be less dramatic if one were to measure it on the equator. (link) (link)

Dimensions

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience

We are spiritual beings having a human experience

Teilhard de Chardin

Bon Appetit

Julia Child was a spy?

Pakistans not so historic Judgement of 16 December 2009

The so called land mark judgement is a concerted endeavour to remove the sindhi president .the motivations are multiple and complicated while the rationale is rule of law.hidden are the ethnic aspects of the issue.while NRO was not a golden law all the thrust of the judgement is against those who benefitted from it while those who negotiated it are angels.some lecturing think tanks and some serving in the pakistani establishment.

basically NRO consists of cases established by nawaz sharif regime in 1997-99 and later improved by the military junta.the dispute is not that the cases are wrong.the dispute is that only sindh was targeted.thus the so called historic judgement is not historic.it ignores all corruption from 1947 till 1985 when nawaz sharif became the establishments man.

the key issue here is to target a man for doing something wrong because he is a political threat.while so many wrong doers are enjoying political status and high social standing because they were crooks before 1985 or because they were controlling the ehtesab buraeu between 1997 and 1999.

if the army is sensible it will not touch zardari.if it is immature it will and although zardari may be removed pakistans destabilisation will escalate.this is a classical example of partial justice selective distortion and triumph of sin thou shall but in secret.

major beneficiary of this judgement would be a select 10 thousand political and military families from punjab
in the political person of the PML N and major losers would be pakistan as a state.this is a classic case of a judiciary destabilising the country although apparently acting on sound moral principles.

------------------------------------------------

The whole confrontation started once a clash of egos started.

The Sharifs took an unlterior advantage and used it for their own benefit.

In 1997 when the Supreme Court according to the Punjabi political school resorted to alleged judicial activism it was attacked and no so called punjabi civil society protested.

Now if allegedly the supreme court has again resorted to judicial activism it is OK.Just because what it is doing supports the cause of PML N which is a basically Punjab based party.

All said and done only the political ambitions of the generals to play political games would be reinforced.but then we must remember that most of the judges were comfortable working under musharraf as long as they did not have a clash of egos

i am surprised that in 1997 when sajjad ali shahs court was attacked where was this civil society and aitizaz ahsan and asma jahangir.in 2007 civil society was active ?


FORGET ABOUT HIM BECAUSE HE WAS NOT A PUNJABI CHIEF JUSTICE BUT A SINDHI , OH AND THAT TOO FROM LIARI




somewhere deep in the sub conscious are the ethnic factors.

somehow if a sindhi is corrupt it is more serious.after all a sindhi finds it ethnically more difficult to establish a line with a non sindhi judge or to manouevre inside the esablishment.

theoretically any argument can be twisted and anything can be justified but i find something very ulterior and ethnic in the 16 december judgement.

the supreme court just stuffed under ground the famous case of the generals bribing the PML N politicians in 1990.

the supreme court never touched the murder and disappearance of Asadullah Mengal , Sardar Ataullah Mengals son allegedly killed by pakistani intelligence in 1975 and his dead body never found .

FORGET ABOUT HIM BECAUSE HE WAS NOT SON OF PML N LEADER FROM PUNJAB BUT ONLY A MENGAL AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS SAY THAT BRAHUI IS A DRAVIDIAN RACE




the supreme court never bothered about three baloch leaders murdered by pakistani agencies in turbat in 2008.

But if a PML N leaders son from Punjab is killed and dead body never found the supreme court will take a gigantic suo moto action


this so called judgement is a great political mile stone in punjab but if you ask a a baloch and a sindhi or a pashtun they would be indifferent.it is so because this judgement will have no affect on the quality of life in pakistans three provinces.even the life of a common punjabi may not change at all unless he has a link with fat MPAs and MNAs of the PML N who would replace the PPP in case a new elections are held.All by design of the real forces that control Pakistan.Ten Thousand pathetic wind bag political families.

OBAMA-RAMA

Obama-Rama

Shama-Lama

Ding-Dong

(click here)

Victory

To conquer your adversaries, you must first conquer yourself...
The state of the world depends on all it's users
The abuse of life is the most deadly thing.
So to solve the problems of earth, first there must be a revolution.
The mind is a strong place, that's where all things first arise.
So when a thought it produced, only expect it to be strong.

For the time will come when a strong thought is needed...
when a strong thought is needed, to proclaim victory over the laws..
to proclaim victory over the laws, of entropy, and death, and the end.
This strong thought its hope, and peace, and love...

FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY

I Can Fly

I can fly

I can make a machine

I can make it fly

I can leave the earth

I can soar above the clouds

I can reach the heavens

I learned to fly when I was 6 years old

I can fly

And Now To Something Completely Different

Say no more,

know what I mean,

nudge, nudge

wink, wink.