"There is no good or bad...
only thinking makes it so."
...Hamlet...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
An English Student
The "kettling" that Barnaby talks about here is when the police surround demonstators and hold them, in this case in the freezing cold.
Who built the moon ?
The Moon is certainly the most puzzling object in our corner of the universe. The many visits made by mankind to the Moon during the 20th Century did little to answer any of the pivotal questions regarding its origin or importance. Our closest neighbor in space is probably more of an enigma now than it has ever been. In Who Built the Moon (Watkins 2005), authors Christopher Knight and Alan Butler have opened a discussion for new questions regarding the existence of the Moon.
Although it is extremely large relative to the Earth, the Moon is very light in mass, in fact only 1/81st part the mass of the Earth, despite being just under 1/3rd the size. This is all the more perplexing now that it is known for certain that the Moon is made from exactly the same sort of rock as the Earth – though with very few of the heavy metals that give our world is mass.
The same observable facts about the Moon that made it so attractive and mysterious to our ancient ancestors still display themselves on a regular basis. The most significant of these is the Moon's ability to exactly cover the face of the Sun at the time of total eclipse. This is possible because the Moon is 'exactly' 1/400th part of the size of the Sun and also that its orbit takes it to a position 1/400th of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. In so large a universe as ours outrageous coincidences are certain to happen but this is far from being the end of the story. Such are the orbital characteristics of the Moon that its movements in the sky, when seen from Earth, exactly mirror those of the Sun. As an example, when the Sun sets north of west at midsummer, the full Moon sets south of west at the same time. Although not immediately obvious, this phenomenon might be even more remarkable than the possibility of total eclipse.
The size of a planetary body such as the Moon has little or nothing to do with its orbital characteristics, which are specifically tied to its speed. Yet time and again Knight and Butler came across number parallels that simply defy logic. For example the Earth is 3.66 times larger than the Moon and takes 366 days to go around the Sun. Another peculiarity emerged when it was realized that the Moon, which orbits the Earth in 27.322 days, takes a very neat 10,000 days to complete 366 orbits.
"We discovered so many peculiar mathematical relationships that we were astounded, but we eventually pared them down to a few very specific facts," said Knight. "It amounts to this: The Earth is 109.3 times smaller than the Sun and the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun. This inevitably means that the Moon must be 3.66 times smaller than the Earth. Add to this the fact that the Moon orbits at a distance exactly 1/400th that between the Earth and the Sun and what you are left with is so unlikely that it cannot be accounted for by simple chance." (read more)
The Mystery Of Water
Take a multi faceted cut glass crystal wash it well. Hang it at a sunny window, take note that the crystal is blessing you with rainbows on your ceiling or walls. Use a large glass, rinse well and fill with water. Hold the glass by the crystal so that tiny intense rainbows are held within the water. As you do this look out of the window into the world, relax and watch as the crystal continues to charge the water.
When you feel ready drink the water, sip it, as you do so visualize the spirit of the rainbow in you life. Feel yourself filling up with crystal light. If you do not finish the water keep it with you and drink it through out the day.You may find that you see things differently in all aspects of your life and the rainbows will continue to bless you with energies that will make your work in the mundane much simplified. Leave the crystal hanging in the window, remember to wash it regularly.
In these short winter days a candle will do just as well for sun light.
American Isolation
I have been worried for some time now about the attitudes coming from American individuals, there seems to be even more sensitivety than usual lately, which is why I’m writing this, to clear the air and try and get a grip on what is really happening. Americans, along with everyone else are being asked to “Wake up” to look at our respective governments and cultures and challenge what we see to be part of the conspiracy to enslave all of us. Yet time after time when it comes to the crunch Americans will retreat into a defensive position, quoting propaganda such as “We are Free” yet when a definition is sought for “freedom” none is given.
Clearly we are none of us free and are all the victims of the propaganda machine. We each have to see through it for ourselves, find our way through the rabbit hole, learn critical thinking and make our own minds up, as long as it really is our own minds then rational debate and discussion will not be a problem. What concerns me, particularly recently is that rational debate is very hard with brothers and sisters across the pond, not only for me, many friends of mine are finding that American people are becoming very emotional when their programming is challenged and cut themselves off from further contact.
The whole body scanner in the US and TSA scandal and lack of funds has stopped Americans travelling abroad, this together with the false flag of terrorism means that for the past ten years we have seen very few American tourists in England, travellers are open to new ideas and concepts and may well have taken some home with them. Now with the TSA and body scanners many people will be put off from travelling to America. People who could have told you what is really going on here will not be visiting.
The Wikileaks seems to be designed to ridicule the US government and to highlight the prejudices you may have against foreigners and has already caused a lot of anti American rhetoric here. The call from US senators to make Wikileaks a terrorist organisation has met with sighs and shakes of disapproval, many here are already astonished at how much the American individual will allow their own government to get away with, and are perhaps beyond words.
My worry at the moment is that Americans, the individual men and women that we know and love are becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, that real communication is becoming harder and harder, debate, already hard is now becoming impossible. As even the gentlest attempt at waking up an individual is met with emotive accusations at everyone "hating America" we don’t, we hate enslavement of us all, and most truly believe that unless we are all free no one is, many people are putting up with all sorts of abuse just to stay in touch, we don’t want to loose you Americans, we want your freedom too!
Isolation is a real danger to Americans, you are living in a huge country with a well-oiled propaganda machine, and you have been “dumbed down” for generations both through propaganda and through your diet. You can be told what it’s like out here and many of you will believe it. You government is already shutting down web sites, with out warrants and it seems this situation will escalate. Your government has already built 600 internment camps in the US and the whole Denver Airport situation seems very creepy.
Please, please do not allow yourselves to be isolated any further, dislike me and other “alien nationals” all you want, debate with me all you want, prove me wrong, which I would love, I do not want to think we are all so easily manipulated and I would hate to loose any more friends from over the pond. My maiden name is Alden, highly likely therefore that one of my ancestors sailed on the Mayflower, and I do, as do many others, all over the world think of you as brothers and sisters, members of a great family that is man, my hand will always be held out in friendship, many others are here for you too, please remember that through the days ahead.
With love and best wishes, always
Monday, November 29, 2010
Leslie Nielsen
Leslie William Nielsen, OC (February 11, 1926 – November 28, 2010) was a Canadian-American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in over 100 films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying over 220 characters. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Nielsen enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and worked as a disc jockey before receiving a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse. Beginning with a television role in 1948, he quickly expanded to over 50 television appearances two years later. Nielsen appeared in his first films in 1956 and began collecting roles in dramas, westerns, and romance films. Nielsen's lead roles in the films Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) received positive reviews as a serious actor.
Although Nielsen's acting career crossed a variety of genres in both television and films, his deadpan delivery as a doctor in Airplane! (1980) marked a turning point in his career, one that would make him, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "the Olivier of spoofs." Nielsen enjoyed further success with The Naked Gun film series, based on a short-lived television series Police Squad he starred in. His portrayal of serious characters seemingly oblivious to (and complicit in) their absurd surroundings gave him a reputation as a comedian. In the final two decades of his career, Nielsen appeared in multiple spoof and parody films, many of which were met poorly by critics but performed well in box office and home media releases. He was recognized with a variety of awards throughout his career and was inducted into both the Canada and Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nielsen married four times and had two daughters from his second marriage. On November 28, 2010, Nielsen died in his sleep in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida hospital of complications from pneumonia.
(read more)
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international non-profit media organization that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.
The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (7 June 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.
WikiLeaks has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award. In June 2009, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International's UK Media Award (in the category "New Media") for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances", a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. In May 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news".
In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. forces, on a website called Collateral Murder. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review. In October, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations.
WikiLeaks was launched as a user-editable site, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model, and no longer accepts either user comments or edits, which means, according to Jimbo Wales, that it is not a wiki.
(read more) (wikileaks.ch)
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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"Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health" C.C. Jung
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Saturday, November 27, 2010
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva was born on November 5, 1952 in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in the valley of Dehradun. Her parents were intimately involved with the natural world; her father was involved in forest conservation and her mother was a farmer. Their love of nature must have played a significant role in shaping her commitment and her devotion to conservation and preservation of those natural resources so essential to life.
Shiva received her early education at St. Mary’s school in Nainital and at the convent of Jesus and Mary. She went on to receive her B.S. in Physics. She was awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada in 1978. Her academic training was in the area of nuclear physics; the title of her thesis was, Hidden Variables and Locality in Quantum Theory. She is a renowned scientist who has published over 3000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
She is well known, moreover, for her activism regarding ecological, environmental and economic issues, especially in relation to healthy food and clean water accessibility and safety. She is a staunch opponent of agribusiness. As we shall see, she is an unrelenting critic in regards to the role of globalization in destabilizing local societies, local economies and what she often refers to as the commons.
The commons represents the resources that are collectively owned or shared by a particular society or between societies. These resources can include amenities such as clean water, public land, accessibility to healthy food, essential services such as fire and police protection, emergency medical care, etc. In some societies the commons is more expansive than others. For example, access to medical care is seen by many countries as an integral part of the commons, while others do not.
Through a good portion of her adult life, Shiva has participated in activist movements especially in regards to the deleterious effects of so-called “Globalization.” We will examine her views in some detail.
Shiva participated in the non-violent Chipko movement during the 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand. The Chipko movement practiced non-violent resistance or satyagraha as developed by Gandhi (see the section on Mahatma Gandhi for more detail). The movement, some of whose main participants were women, adopted the approach of forming human circles around trees to prevent their felling. The noteworthy event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of female peasants in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, mobilized to stop the cutting of trees; they were threatened by the contractor working for the state Forest Department. In spite of these threats, hundreds of such grassroots level actions blossomed throughout the region and eventually throughout India. This movement was significantly successful in its original mission.
Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.), and a key figure in the global solidarity movement known as the Alter Globalization Movement. She has long been a staunch and vocal opponent of globalization as epitomized in the policies of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). What follows is a brief history of these organizations.
It all began in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944. Economic leaders from the Allied powers met to plan for the aftermath of the Second World War. The institutions that were created are with us to this day exerting enormous influence over the economies of the nations of the world. The IMF and the World Bank had their beginnings here. The IMF is a specialized agency whose stated purpose is to stabilize exchange rates and facilitate international trade. Each member contributes to the fund in gold and currency. The World Bank is otherwise known as the International bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Bretton Woods Conference set up the World Bank, GATT and the IMF so that the US dollar would take the place of gold as the medium of international exchange once the war was over and provide long-term loans to countries devastated by the war. The essential ingredient of the Bretton Woods policies was the dollar, which would replace gold and which the US government could print as much as needed. In October, 1947 GATT was created to ensure the dismantling of trade barriers.
The World Bank lends money to the so-called third world so that they can use that money towards development. The nations that agree to the terms of these loans often find themselves so deeply in debt that they find it difficult to repay. The usual response of the lending institution is to insist that the debtor nation cut back on its social programs. A Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) is often proposed which basically calls upon the debtor nation to make cuts in programs that benefit the poor and often to privatize industries and services if they expect to receive additional loans to stay afloat. Shiva and outspoken opponents of these institutions claim that the net effect of this relationship is that money is loaned to build the appropriate infrastructure to allow access to natural resources and ultimately export these resources to the wealthy countries that have financed the loans. Nations caught up in this relationship find that they have lost much of their economic base especially in agriculture that had previously afforded them a modicum of self-sufficiency.
Shiva’s particular concerns revolve around industrial farming especially as practiced by agribusiness and the role of global institutions in subverting local agriculture. She has spoken out strongly in opposition to industrial agriculture when applied to shrimp farming and its impact on India and what she sees as the rising threat of the use of genetically modified seeds. In response to the application of this new technology to seed production, Shiva started an organization called Navdanya created to stress the importance of biodiversity, practice chemical-free agriculture and free agriculture from monopoly control. According to Shiva, “As farmers are transformed from producers into consumers of corporate patented agriculture products, as markets are destroyed locally and nationally and expanded globally, the myth of “free trade” and the global economy becomes a means for the rich to rob the poor of their right to food and even their right to life.”
To exemplify the deleterious impact of the foreign domination of trade, Shiva sites the horrendous Bengal famine of 1943 (see the section on Muhammad Yunus for further details) that devastated what is now Bangladesh. Three and one-half million Bengalis starved to death as previously described. At the time the region was dominated by the British who engineered the forceful exportation of 80,000 tons of food grain prior to the famine.
In regards to the global economy and agribusiness, Shiva has fundamental and over-lapping concerns. One is the increased use of genetically modified crops worldwide as previously cited. The fact that companies like Monsanto have actually patented genetically modified life forms like soybeans and that the farmers who use these crops cannot legally save seeds creates a serious impediment to small independent farms and the assurance of food safety. An additional concern, from Shiva’s perspective, is the displacement of varieties of agricultural products that have developed over thousands of years of human agriculture by the use of fragile and vulnerable monocultures that may jeopardize food production in the future.
There is the additional pressure of international financial institutions like the World Bank that encourages the shift in the production of food products for the local economy to products intended solely for export. An example of this, and there are many, is the production of cotton for export in the south of India. In addition, there has been an analogous shift in Central and South America towards the production of crops destined for export to be used in so-called “biofuels.”
Vandana Shiva continues to be an outspoken critic of agricultural policies that have been dictated by international financial institutions in the name of globalization. The preservation of the commons is of fundamental importance to her and she has been a strong and powerful advocate for the powerless worldwide.
Shiva received her early education at St. Mary’s school in Nainital and at the convent of Jesus and Mary. She went on to receive her B.S. in Physics. She was awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada in 1978. Her academic training was in the area of nuclear physics; the title of her thesis was, Hidden Variables and Locality in Quantum Theory. She is a renowned scientist who has published over 3000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
She is well known, moreover, for her activism regarding ecological, environmental and economic issues, especially in relation to healthy food and clean water accessibility and safety. She is a staunch opponent of agribusiness. As we shall see, she is an unrelenting critic in regards to the role of globalization in destabilizing local societies, local economies and what she often refers to as the commons.
The commons represents the resources that are collectively owned or shared by a particular society or between societies. These resources can include amenities such as clean water, public land, accessibility to healthy food, essential services such as fire and police protection, emergency medical care, etc. In some societies the commons is more expansive than others. For example, access to medical care is seen by many countries as an integral part of the commons, while others do not.
Through a good portion of her adult life, Shiva has participated in activist movements especially in regards to the deleterious effects of so-called “Globalization.” We will examine her views in some detail.
Shiva participated in the non-violent Chipko movement during the 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand. The Chipko movement practiced non-violent resistance or satyagraha as developed by Gandhi (see the section on Mahatma Gandhi for more detail). The movement, some of whose main participants were women, adopted the approach of forming human circles around trees to prevent their felling. The noteworthy event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of female peasants in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, mobilized to stop the cutting of trees; they were threatened by the contractor working for the state Forest Department. In spite of these threats, hundreds of such grassroots level actions blossomed throughout the region and eventually throughout India. This movement was significantly successful in its original mission.
Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.), and a key figure in the global solidarity movement known as the Alter Globalization Movement. She has long been a staunch and vocal opponent of globalization as epitomized in the policies of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). What follows is a brief history of these organizations.
It all began in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944. Economic leaders from the Allied powers met to plan for the aftermath of the Second World War. The institutions that were created are with us to this day exerting enormous influence over the economies of the nations of the world. The IMF and the World Bank had their beginnings here. The IMF is a specialized agency whose stated purpose is to stabilize exchange rates and facilitate international trade. Each member contributes to the fund in gold and currency. The World Bank is otherwise known as the International bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Bretton Woods Conference set up the World Bank, GATT and the IMF so that the US dollar would take the place of gold as the medium of international exchange once the war was over and provide long-term loans to countries devastated by the war. The essential ingredient of the Bretton Woods policies was the dollar, which would replace gold and which the US government could print as much as needed. In October, 1947 GATT was created to ensure the dismantling of trade barriers.
The World Bank lends money to the so-called third world so that they can use that money towards development. The nations that agree to the terms of these loans often find themselves so deeply in debt that they find it difficult to repay. The usual response of the lending institution is to insist that the debtor nation cut back on its social programs. A Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) is often proposed which basically calls upon the debtor nation to make cuts in programs that benefit the poor and often to privatize industries and services if they expect to receive additional loans to stay afloat. Shiva and outspoken opponents of these institutions claim that the net effect of this relationship is that money is loaned to build the appropriate infrastructure to allow access to natural resources and ultimately export these resources to the wealthy countries that have financed the loans. Nations caught up in this relationship find that they have lost much of their economic base especially in agriculture that had previously afforded them a modicum of self-sufficiency.
Shiva’s particular concerns revolve around industrial farming especially as practiced by agribusiness and the role of global institutions in subverting local agriculture. She has spoken out strongly in opposition to industrial agriculture when applied to shrimp farming and its impact on India and what she sees as the rising threat of the use of genetically modified seeds. In response to the application of this new technology to seed production, Shiva started an organization called Navdanya created to stress the importance of biodiversity, practice chemical-free agriculture and free agriculture from monopoly control. According to Shiva, “As farmers are transformed from producers into consumers of corporate patented agriculture products, as markets are destroyed locally and nationally and expanded globally, the myth of “free trade” and the global economy becomes a means for the rich to rob the poor of their right to food and even their right to life.”
To exemplify the deleterious impact of the foreign domination of trade, Shiva sites the horrendous Bengal famine of 1943 (see the section on Muhammad Yunus for further details) that devastated what is now Bangladesh. Three and one-half million Bengalis starved to death as previously described. At the time the region was dominated by the British who engineered the forceful exportation of 80,000 tons of food grain prior to the famine.
In regards to the global economy and agribusiness, Shiva has fundamental and over-lapping concerns. One is the increased use of genetically modified crops worldwide as previously cited. The fact that companies like Monsanto have actually patented genetically modified life forms like soybeans and that the farmers who use these crops cannot legally save seeds creates a serious impediment to small independent farms and the assurance of food safety. An additional concern, from Shiva’s perspective, is the displacement of varieties of agricultural products that have developed over thousands of years of human agriculture by the use of fragile and vulnerable monocultures that may jeopardize food production in the future.
There is the additional pressure of international financial institutions like the World Bank that encourages the shift in the production of food products for the local economy to products intended solely for export. An example of this, and there are many, is the production of cotton for export in the south of India. In addition, there has been an analogous shift in Central and South America towards the production of crops destined for export to be used in so-called “biofuels.”
Vandana Shiva continues to be an outspoken critic of agricultural policies that have been dictated by international financial institutions in the name of globalization. The preservation of the commons is of fundamental importance to her and she has been a strong and powerful advocate for the powerless worldwide.
Wake Up America!
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.
I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.
I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.
Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.
This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.
Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives............read more
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
my eyes
I wish my eyes weren't opened
because now that they are
I will have to do something
about the evil I see in the world
The Euro Game Is Up - Nigel Farage MEP
Nigel Farage Member European Parliament tells it like it is!
More like this please :>)
Oh, oh, oh It's Magic!
Global day of action, on the 24 November there is a call for a loving day to raise energies for the awakening ahead, on this day we ask that you share your orgasm globally. Take a moment to think about this divine and wonderful moment, the energies you raise and how in touch you are with the universe when you come, yes! Yes! Yes!
All that is asked from you that as you come you expand energies to include the whole world, the energies we are calling for are Courage and Clarity, so we can all face the days ahead with courage and things will be clearer to all of us.
Please join us, with your loved one, by yourself, whatever feels good to you.......give it up for Global love :>)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
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