The World as we (used to ) know it...

     From: 
http://www.satyacenter.com/full-moon-pisces-forecast-2010 -- read the whole article at this link.
     Below is a portion reflecting on "a long conversation with a very spiritual friend who is very concerned about world events.

     Pointing to some pre-teen boys and girls at our table, he said, “Those children will be drafted into the military, unless something happens soon to change the course of history. This war will go on for decades. Our environment is being destroyed, our health care system is in shambles, our political leaders are rapacious dupes of the corporations who are ripping us off. It makes me mad, but when I try to tell people what's really going on, they act like I'm some kind of conspiracy nut. I work hard at my spiritual practice, but I keep getting discouraged about all this stuff. Why does the world situation seem so bleak? Why is it so hard to educate people about these problems and why do they seem to resist the truth so much? What can I do? I have the feeling I'm witnessing a cycle, a cycle that has probably repeated itself many times in the past.”
     Here's my response to my friend.  I think that events in the world reflect this world's status as a midway point between spirit and matter. There are other worlds with more evolved civilizations, more spiritually evolved populations, and other worlds with less evolved and more “barbaric” or more “evil” or more “matter-entrapped” civilizations.
     Earth is a magnificent place to work out an understanding of the dualities inherent in material creation for this reason alone.
     At this time in Earth's history, the human population is reaching the end of a long period of evolutionary history which highlighted the advances of the individuated consciousness, the rational mind, and the scientific model of reality as applied to the material world, considered as separate from the observer and separate from the world of “energy”, ie spiritual worlds.
     Thus we find ourselves trapped in a materialistic culture that worships material success and power over nature, power over other sentient beings, and for this reason is self-destructive in the extreme.  (emphasis added)
     The social structure of this society is a reflection of this moment in evolutionary consciousness, highly structured, hierarchical, and driven by mental considerations of perceived self-interest on the part of small elites who govern on the principles of fear, greed and obfuscation.
     However, the next evolutionary step for human beings is to re-establish conscious ancient connections with the web of life, with the extended consciousness of the human over-soul, and with the multitude of spiritual beings in higher worlds, to offer in self-sacrifice their highly developed individuated consciousness to the Higher Self, and to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth.

     ENDNOTE:  my best "advice" -- get OUT of cities and find (build) your "tribe" ~!

IGNORED BUT NOT DONE WITH... the BIG SPILL

The Gulf Crisis is Not Over


Slow Violence and the BP Coverups
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcclintock08232010.html
By ANNE McCLINTOCK August 23 / 4, 2010

A CounterPunch Special Report -- offered here in toto. I couldn't say it any better ~!

     Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf: the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit, the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up. This triple vanishing trick, collectively choreographed by BP and sundry federal agencies, culminated on August 4th in a report released by NOAA that claimed 75% of the oil spill had been captured, burned, evaporated or broken down.
     The White House hailed the report as something to celebrate. Energy advisor Carol Browne announced:
“the vast majority of the oil is gone.”  (AS IN 'GONE OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND')  A clamor of outrage immediately rose from the Gulf, as residents refused to dance the crisis-is-over, happy-feet dance. Hundreds of locals furiously insisted that they were still seeing masses of oil on ocean, beaches and marshes, and dead fish, dolphins, sharks, birds and other marine life washing ashore. Then on August 18th scientists from the Universities of Georgia and South Florida produced an open challenge to the White House report, asserting that 70% to 79% of the oil in the Gulf still remained in the water. Charles Hopkinson, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia declared: “The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect.” (emphasis added)
     Spike Lee, filming in the Gulf, scoffed at what he called the BP/White House “abracabra kawabanga” trick and called on journalists to stay with the story. A few weeks earlier, the triple vanishing act had come
together personally for me in a story that Steve, a private contractor, told in the shadows of a southern Louisiana bar. I call the contractor Steve, though that is not his real name. I cannot tell you his real name
because he has assured me that he will kill me if I do. I had been in the Gulf for three days with Karin Hayes, a film-maker, documenting the oil-spill when Steve approached us in the bar, urgently wanting to tell us
something.
     “It’s as if a nuclear apocalypse has gone off in the Gulf,” he said. “The media is not telling the truth. No one is telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Yesterday on the beach where we work, my crew cleaned up seven hundred bags of oil. Today we went back and the beach was completely covered in oil, as if we had never been there. Today we carried away another seven hundred and fifty bags. Every day we clean up, then the tide brings it in again. The oil is everywhere, deep under the sand. Today I wanted to measure the oil, so I stuck my shovel into the sand and the oil was down there eight inches deep.”
     Steve leaned in close, “Do you want to know how long my contract is to work down here?” he asked. “Three years.” His jaw muscles tightened as if he wanted to suck his words back into his mouth, but could not. “They are telling everyone it is not so bad, but clean-up will take many years. I am going to be here a long time.” Steve wiped a hand heavily over his eyes as if they were burning. “Let me tell you something.          
     Today we saw three sharks washed up dead on the beach. The insides of their noses were black with oil. The membranes of their mouths were black with oil. Their eyes were black with oil.”

CARPE DIEM ~!

     One definition of this term is an admonition to seize the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future.  Since all the "stuff" I've been looking at recently (and DEALING with of late) has led me to conclude that any "future" a) won't be anything like our recent past and/or b) may not be worth messing with, anyway, I think T-shirts and bumper stickers loudly proclaiming CARPE DIEM ~!!  is a nifty idea.
     Yesterday, Fri 8/20/10, I sank into the History channel and caught a re-run of their series, "How the Earth Was Made" and got captivated by the potential blow-up of the Yellowstone volcano -- while this is not new news, the BBC documentary, 12 parts, each about 10 min., at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-RKzqNtz0 WAS indeed more current and really gripping.  Once I got into it, stopping was not an option -- like trying NOT to rubber-neck at a massive car wreck~!
     Then, today I got all caught up in the HIstory channel series on "The Universe", some repeats, some current, one in particular on CME's or coronal mass ejections.  They (and all the yapping about 2012) address magnetic pole reversals -- which happens, say every 700,000 years and we're just a tad bit overdue for another one.  Two-leggeds prolly wouldn't notice swapping of the poles too much -- migratory birds might be more confused for a year or so -- UNLESS we were nakeed, hanging out here in space for a period of days til everything, especially our magnetosphere, which is our PROTECTION against CME's came back to right.
     Sans the magnetosphere, as I understand such things, a really BIG CME could and would wipe out everything electrical on planet Earth -- fry all the transformers, power grids and appliances,i.e. a magnetic apocalypse.  When I'm stronger, I'll proly check out the you tube stuff available on the magnetosphere (getting weaker). 
     IF a really big CME came this way, sans protection, all those fried transformers could NOT be repaired (so they claim) and it takes six months to build a new one from scratch.  Ergo, it might be a decade to restore the current grid with 1/3 to 1/2 of everyone in the developed world dying in the meantime, due to a magnetic storm.  There may be some efforts to "plan ahead" (what a novel idea for humans, let alone bureaucrats) and retrofit the grid with surge protectors for transformers.
     Then there's the "solar max" and "solar minimum" -- 11 year cycles of big and bigger sunspots or solar flares vs. weaker ones.  Seems we're right now IN a "solar max" period, which will culminate in 2013.
     And, also from the History channel, there's a good review of 2012, the "end" of the world per prophecies at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KGg0BWFb-4&feature=related.  Confusingly, there are several other videos there by almost the same title, but with a decidedly christian, fundamentalist slant, which I don't care for so much. 
     Astrophysics and geology are two of my pet favs -- can't get enough about either  -- no doubt ONE reason men my age don't find me attractive AT ALL ~!  I THINK ~!  Waaaaay too much.  Most people seem to already KNOW all they need (or want) to know. Not me.  My maxim #1:  THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.  Maxim #2:  You can't KNOW anything if you can't PROVE it -- you can only believe it.  Corrolary to #2:  new facts CAN change what you "know".
     Oh well.  I really DO figure the odds are 51% we're all gonna be toast in another few, short years -- hate to be gloomy, but between peak oil, rising food prices, weather anomalies, powerless, effect politicians who can only squabble with each other, POTENTIAL astronomical events, and economic instability, I already long for "the good old days" of the early 1970's -- NOT the 1930's of my parents / grandparents ~!  Carpe diem.

BP SCAMS ... more ~!

... and all this at a time when "Congress" is considering cutting food stamps to deal with THEIR 'financial crisis' / deficit ~!  Hell, I GAVE the gummint a good $1,400,000.00 in FREE labor, care and feeding of a handicapped child -- figure 20 years at $70,000.00, what 'private providers' get for her NOW ~!  Now, retired, I get a piddly little amount of social security, and an even more piddly amount of food stamps which don't last ten (l0) days ~!!

New Outrages Keep Gushing From BP, by Jim Hightower
http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/new-outrages-keep-gushing-from

     With BP's well capped and CEO Tony Hayward exiled to Russia, perhaps you thought that surely there will be no additional revelations about BP to enrage you. But now comes this: prison labor.
     In its national PR blitz to buff up its image, the oil giant has loudly been boasting that it has hired devastated, out-of-work local people to handle the clean-up. Many have been hired, but the people themselves say not nearly enough. The Nation magazine now reports a big reason for the shortfall — BP has been using inmates to do much of the shoveling and scooping to remove oil from Louisiana beaches.
     In the early days of the cleanup, crews suddenly appeared wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with bold red letters spelling out, "Inmate Labor." Investigative reporter Abe Louise Young writes that the sight of prison laborers outraged the local community, so they were removed.
     Not the inmates, the uniforms. Now they wear BP shirts, jeans and rubber boots with no prison markings, and they are moved to and from the job in unmarked white vans. No officials with BP or the feds could or would tell Young how many inmates are being used or what they're being paid.
     However, a local sheriff's official told Young, "They're not getting paid — it's part of their sentence."
     But guess who is getting paid for this convict labor? BP. It's getting paid by you and me. Under a little-known tax provision passed during the Bush regime, corporations can get a "work opportunity tax credit" of $2,400 for every work release inmate they hire.
     And that's not all we're subsidizing. For example, BP, which rented the drilling rig from Transocean Corp., used a special tax break to write off 70 percent of the rent it paid. Seventy percent! This added up to a savings of $225,000 a day for BP. Also, back in 1999, Transocean deliberately moved its corporate address offshore in order to dodge its tax obligations to our country.  It relocated from Houston to the Cayman Islands, then to Switzerland —slick moves that have allowed the giant corporation to avoid paying $1.8 billion it owed in U.S. taxes.
     No industry gets the absurd array of subsidies that Big Oil now enjoys — subsidies at every stage of its operations, including the ones used by BP and Transocean to search for oil in our public waters. As one political leader put it in 2005, "With $55 oil, we don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore."
     That was George W. Bush talking! Five years later, oil is $80 a barrel and the industry is pocketing record profits — yet the giveaways continue. Again and again, BP has promised that it would pay all cleanup
costs for the mess it made. Now, however, the British-based oil giant has quietly told investors that it expects to get a $10-billion subsidy from Uncle Sugar to help cover the costs.
     Say what? Not only did the company's top executives assure us that this whole god-awful mess would be on their dime, but so did our top government officials. As President Obama flatly declared in May, "We will demand they pay for every dime they owe for the damage they have done." Even Rep. Joe Barton — the GOP gooberhead who so obsequiously apologized to BP's CEO for America's insistence that he set up a corporate fund to compensate victims — was forced to backtrack and say that, of course, he expects BP to pay the tab.
     So what is this $10 billion hit on us taxpayers? It's another little corporate gotcha that lobbyists quietly got tucked into our tax code, allowing huge firms to grab a credit for up to 35-percent of their losses. The damages and cleanup being paid by BP, says one tax expert, are "just another cost of doing business," so they qualify for all applicable corporate breaks. After all, says another expert, while BP said it would pay the costs of the cleanup, it "never promised that it would not seek any deductions" to recoup those costs from American taxpayers.
     Ergo BP pays for the "clean-up" on US shores and the US taxpayers reimburse BP.  A sweet deal if you can get it ~!

ISN'T THIS TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE ???

I WONDER HOW MUCH TRUTH THERE IS TO THIS.

The Crime of the Century: What BP and the US Government Don't Want You to Know
August 4, 2010 11:46 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8897473

     In May, Mother Nature Network blogger Karl Burkart received a tip from an anonymous fisherman-turned-BP contractor in the form of a distressed text message, describing a near-apocalyptic sight near the location of the sunken Deepwater Horizon -- fish, dolphins, rays, squid, whales, and thousands of birds -- "as far as the eye can see," dead and dying.
     According to his statement, which was later confirmed by another report  from an individual working in the Gulf, whale carcasses were being shipped to a highly guarded location where they were processed for disposal.
     Robyn Hill, who was Beach Ambassador for the City of Gulf Shores until she became so ill she collapsed on the job one morning, was at a residential condominium property adjacent to the Gulf Shores beach when she smelled an overwhelming stench. She went to see where the odor was coming from and witnessed two contract workers dumping plastic bags full of dead birds and fish in a residential Waste Management dumpster, which was then protected by a security guard. Within five minutes, a Waste Management
collection truck emptied the contents and the guard departed.

     Guess this is BP's IDEA of "containment"???

SUNDAY, SUNDAY...

     As the old folk song used to start off, "Sunday, Sunday".  Doncha think Sunday (or Saturday if you're of a Jewish persuasion) should be a day of rest, winding down, renewal (of mind, body and spirit) and looking within and communing with your own spirit or better, with the Creator?  I do.  So, today, I wanted to make a positive offering for this Sunday. 
     I've long been a fan of Tony Burroughs and his work / the Intenders -- he's started a new project, "Intenders' Vision" where 1-2x a week, you received a short little email to focus your positive energy and intentions TOGETHER, with other "Intenders of the Highest Good" toward us CREATING a better world.  There IS great synergy in shared prayer and intention.  This has been proven (more on that later).  And, when you click on the little green (really a good sized-button) button, you're taken to the Intenders site for a count -- and see that you've probably joined some 38,000 to 45,000 other people~!
     Please consider doing this.  You'll be blessed and you'll BE a blessing~!
     The Intenders message is poised and ready to go into the mainstream so that we can fulfill our calling at this time. At present, people need to become more empowered if they're really going to make a difference in our world. They need to get proficient at manifesting, and until they do, they cannot have much of an effect on things. More people need to awaken to what they are creating with their everyday thoughts and words. More need to be able to manifest consciously if we're going to break through the critical mass marker.

     That's why we're bringing The Vision Alignment Project out to the world at this time; for, tucked within it is a subtle, but very powerful lesson in manifesting. Anyone who takes part in it will automatically become a better manifestor, and therefore be more capable of having a positive effect on our world.
     Indeed, that's why the Intenders are here. We agreed to be here at this time of magnificent change for the purpose of ushering in a new world, a world so much freer, so much more expansive and sweet that we will look back in admiration of the strength we had in order to have put up with the old ways for as long as we did.
     And you know what? Whether you're an Intender of the Highest Good or not, you agreed to be here at this time, too. You agreed to be here to help give birth to a new, golden way of life on Earth.  Otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now.
     PS: Please ask everyone you know to sign up for The Vision Alignment Project. It's free and it's one of the best things you can do to make a difference now.  Go to:   http://www.visionalignmentproject.com/ and see if the short little video resonnates with you.  Thanks.

GOOGLE DON'T BE EVIL !

     According to news reports, Google is about to cut a deal with Verizon that would end the Internet as we know it by allowing giant corporations to control what websites are load quickly and easily on the Internet and dump everyone else onto an Internet slow lane.
     There are a couple of petitions floating 'round the net to sign and send to the PTB (powers that be) to oppose this monopolistic venture -- I signed a petition urging Google to kill the deal with Verizon. Can you join me at this link:  http://pol.moveon.org/google/?r_by=-18017861-0uI_NLx&rc=paste

Thanks!

TANKS BUT NO TANKS !

THE ABYSMAL MISMANAGEMENT OF THIS (GULF OIL SPILL) DISASTER WILL TURN OUT TO BE THE HALLMARK OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND ITS UNDOING AT THE NEXT ELECTION - IF THERE IS EVER ANOTHER ONE!!
From: http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html

Avertible catastrophe -- Lawrence Solomon - June 26, 2010
     Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.
     The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.
     To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.
     The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.
     In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

SPILL KILL OR GULF KILL???

     Oil industry insider Matt Simmons blew the whistle on the made-for-TV capping of the so-called oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday, July 15, during an interview on KPFK radio, the NPR station in Los Angeles.
     Simmons, former energy adviser to the second President Bush, explained that according to his reading of the data from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, capping of the so-called riser and the subsequent announcement by U.S. President Obama was "the biggest con job we've ever seen."
     Simmons, creator of an investment bank catering to oil companies, told radio host Ian Masters that the real problem continuing to gush oil into the Gulf was not the 6-inch "riser" that apparently has been capped amid much TV hoopla, but that an open hole or cauldron perhaps up to 10 miles distant from where British Petroleum's cameras are focused which continues to spew 120,000 BARRELS per day, and that BP's much publicized effort to drill relief wells in what the company says is an effort to stop the flow of oil is nothing but a cynical publicity stunt.
     "The dimensions of this lie are beyond belief," said Simmons, explaining that the idea of a relief well is "tricky at best," since trying to hit a pipe of less than a foot in diameter 35,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf may be entirely futile because the casing of the original pipe is not even there, having blown away at some point.
     But Simmons noted that both BP and Obama continue to deny that this open hole, or cauldron, even exists, even though Simmons and others insist the NOAA data from satellites prove by speed of flow and depth of light that the amount of oil that has been flowing through the on-camera riser could not possibly account for the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf.
     "The riser is totally irrelevant," Simmons stressed, adding "and there's no way to cap the open hole." He explained that BP continues to deny the open hole exists and theorizes the continuing flow of oil into the Gulf is really just the residue from what has already been spilled during the first 90 days of the disaster.
     "There is denial that there's even a problem," Simmons said. "In about a month or two people will realize that this actually was the biggest con job we've ever seen."
     Simmons also noted an additional danger. "What the researchers now believe is that basically is that between 4000 and 4500 below the ocean floor lies an oil lake that's somewhere between 100 and 120 miles wide and it's about 4500 feet deep. It's this toxic waste and crude and it's releasing methane gases that are absolutely lethal which is why all the fish and dolphins and sharks and whales are dying. And workers too, which is why so many have gotten sick, or maybe really sick.
     "The health problems are so serious," Simmons said. "When you inhale methane you just die."
     The only possible solution, Simmons insists, "is a small diameter low level nuclear device. They insert it down the well 18000 feet, and set it off. It will fuse the rock and glass, and it's totally safe, three miles under the seabed."
     Radio host Masters asked, "When do we get the truth?"
     Simmons responded, "Basically the walls are starting to cave in on BP. there are only so many things you can make up."
     "But here's the really scary thing," Simmons told the Pacifica radio audience. "If we have a storm, let alone a hurricane, what hurricanes basically do is they churn up cold water from the base of the Gulf. This time it's not going to be cold water, it's going to be black poisonous crude. It will also shut down the 18 power plants along the Gulf Coast.
     "So we're going to entrap 20 million people in harm's way."
Radio link: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_100715_170004dbriefing.MP3 or try http://www.kpfk.org/

CAN'T GO 'OM AGAIN ???

     Drat, you mean things won't return to how they used to be?  According to some visionaries, we can't go home again (but maybe that's a good thing). 
     See: "The more of you that decide to accept the fact that things are changing, that they will never go back to the way that they were -- the more of you who do this, the more you are making space in society and in the world, for everyone to eventually step out of denial and move forward. You will not see the effects of this right away, but it will make an enormous difference if you will gently, consistently look to the future based on what you see happening now rather than imagining how you can try to get things to go back to the way that they were. That will not happen. Any efforts that you as an individual or your government or large institutions make to try to put things back the way they were, will turn out to be just patches that eventually wear through."
     From:Permission is given to copy and redistribute the Message Preview provided that the contents remain complete, all credit is given to the author, and it is freely distributed. Please include this copyright information and the web address, http://www.akashictransformations.com/ with your distribution.