This is great. See who are the biggest spenders of Corporate Lobbying.

A List of Corporate Lobbying by Jill Richardson

• By Jill Richardson
  La Vida Locavore, June 18, 2009
  Straight to the Source
  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18394.cfm

Out of curiosity I decided to see who was spending the most on lobbying in America. And Oh My Goodness – NO WONDER our policy sucks. No wonder it’s nearly impossible to pass health care reform that provides all Americans with affordable care, a global warming bill that doesn’t suck, and the Employee Free Choice Act. No wonder we’re in these two stupid wars. I know everyone’s aware of the problems lobbying poses to our country, but good lord, if people saw the sheer magnitude of it (and the comparatively paltry amounts spent in the people’s interest) they would be outraged. So here goes. Here’s the list of the top 100 (ranked by amount spent on lobbying in Q109). Enjoy.

I pulled up all of the reports for first quarter 2009 but over 20,000 items came up (and the report only shows the first 3000). OK, try again – all reports for over $1 million for first quarter 2009. This time a little over 100 came up (including AIG, who spent $1,250,000 on lobbying during that period).

So here’s how to read this list: These are the amounts spent by the corporations listed. However, many (if not most) of these corporations ALSO contract out to private lobbying firms, so the amounts you see here MIGHT not be the total amount they spent on lobbying in Q109. For example, Monsanto spent $2,094,000 for its in house lobbying but then contracted out to Arent Fox LLP; Lesher, Russell & Barron, Inc. ($60,000); Ogilvy Government Relations ($60,000); Parven Pomper Strategies ($40,000); Sidley Austin LLP; TCH Group, LLC ($50,000); The Nickles Group, LLC ($63,000); The Washington Tax Group, LLC ($40,000); and Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group ($30,000) – for a total of $2,437,000 in first quarter 2009.

Health Care, Health Insurance, & Pharma
3. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000
6. Pfizer, Inc: $6,140,000
12. American Medical Association: $4,240,000
18. American Hospital Association: $3,580,000
19. Eli Lilly and Company: $3,440,000
37. America’s Health Insurance Plans, Inc: $2,030,000
39. CVS Caremark Inc: $2,005,000
47. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association: $1,800,000
49. GlaxoSmithKline: $1,780,000
63. Merck & Co: $1,500,000
65. United Health Group, Inc: $1,500,000
69. Sanofi-Aventis U.S. Inc: $1,460,000
76. Novartis: $1,347,134
87. Abbott Laboratories: $1,260,000
89. Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals, LP: $1,250,000
92. Medtronic, Inc: $1,238,000

Oil
2. Exxon Mobil: $9,320,000
4. Chevron U.S.A. Inc: $6,800,000
7. Conoco Phillips: $5,980,935
16. BP America, Inc: $3,610,000
20. Marathon Oil Corporation: $3,380,000
45. American Petroleum Institute: $1,810,000

Defense
5. Lockheed Martin Corporation: $6,380,000
11. General Electric Company: $4,540,000
28. Northrop Grumman Corporation: $2,570,000
30. Boeing Company: $2,410,00
51. Honeywell International: $1,760,000
73. Raytheon Company: $1,360,000

Telecoms
10. AT&T Services, Inc: $5,134,873
14. Verizon (excluding Verizon Wireless): $3,760,000
21. National Cable and Telecommunications Association: $3,370,000
23. Comcast Corporation: $2,760,000
68. Motorola, Inc: $1,470,000

Automotive
22. General Motors: $2,800,000
27. United Services Automobile Association: $2,590,244
52. Ford Motor Company: $1,750,000
84. Toyota Motor North America: $1,290,000
86. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers: $1,264,400

Financial
32. Financial Services Roundtable: $2,260,000
33. Prudential Financial, Inc: $2,180,000
41. American Bankers Association: $1,890,000
61. Visa, Inc: $1,540,000
74. Investment Company Institute: $1,359,917
75. Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association: $1,350,000
82. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.: $1,310,000
90. Citigroup Management Corp: $1,250,000
90. Credit Union National Association: $1,250,000

Biotech
36. Monsanto: $2,094,000
40. Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO): $1,920,000
44. Bayer Corporation: $1,843,672

Railroads
24. Association of American Railroads: $2,759,545
54. Union Pacific Corporation: $1,717,108
71. BNSF Railway: $1,400,000

Life Insurance
42. American Council of Life Insurers: $1,867,075
44. New York Life Insurance Company: $1,840,000
64. State Farm Insurance: $1,500,000
93. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company: $1,237,000

Other
1. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $9,996,000
8. National Association of Realtors: $5,727,000
9. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: $5,480,000
13. AARP: $4,090,000
15. Southern Company: $3,650,000
17. Altria Client Services Inc: $3,580,000
25. Amgen, Inc: $2,750,000
26. National Association of Broadcasters: $2,600,000
29. Edison Electric Institute: $2,550,000
31. Fedex Corporation: $2,370,000
34. Textron, Inc.: $2,140,000
35. General Dynamics Corp: $2,101,945
38. International Business Machines (IBM): $2,030,000
43. United Technologies Corporation: $1,860,000
46. Recording Industry Association of America: $1,810,000
48. CTIA-The Wireless Association: $1,790,000
50. Time Warner Inc. $1,780,000
53. The Dow Chemical Company: $1,735,000
55. American Electric Power Company: $1,716,913
56. Microsoft Corporation: $1,650,000
57. Qualcomm, Incorporated: $1,620,000
58. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc: $1,600,000
59. L-3 Communications: $1,580,000
60. Exelon Business Services, LLC: $1,540,000
62. Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc: $1,530,000
66. Norfolk Southern Corporation: $1,485,026
67. Koch Companies Public Sector LLC: $1,480,000
70. American Airlines: $1,450,000
72. Oracle Corporation: $1,390,000
77. Air Transport Association of America, Inc.: $1,340,000
78. Disney Worldwide Services, Inc.: $1,330,000
79. Sepracor, Inc: $1,324,157
80. National Association of Home Builders: $1,320,000
81. UPS: $1,316,426
83. Siemens Corporation: $1,300,000
85. Duke Energy Corporation: $1,282,770
94. Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., Inc: $1,230,000
95. Business Roundtable: $1,220,000
96. Wellpoint, Inc: $1,220,000
97. American Wind Energy Association: $1,212,504
98. F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd: $1,206,427
99. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association: $1,200,000
99. CBS Corporation: $1,200,000

The irony of the candy industry. Hershey uses child slave labor.

Wow, this story makes giving up cheap chocolate an easy thing for me to do.  I knew about the horrible practices of Nestle and how they give away their infant formulas to hospitals in impoverished countries.  Read here to see how this plays out in Nestle’s favor in a disgusting way. And so I went for Hershey’s instead but that will no longer be a temptation for me.  Read below… Action Alert

Tell Hershey to Go Fair Trade & Organic Stop Abusive Child Labor in Cocoa Production For years, the Organic Consumers Association has been taking action along with the International Labor Rights Fund to stop abusive child labor in the cocoa industry in West Africa.  As a result of the constant pressure, major chocolate companies like M&M/Mars and Cadbury have recently agreed to stronger labor and environmental standards in the production of the cocoa they use. But one iconic US brand is lagging behind – and they need to hear from YOU! Please join thousands of people across the country in calling Hershey to ask them to switch to Fair Trade & Organic certified cocoa and sugar — for all of their products.

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Shattering The Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians

Shattering The Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians

Kathy Freston

Author, Health and Wellness Expert

Posted: June 11, 2009 01:34 PM

Huffington Post

Going through the comments of some of my recent posts, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study, explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging–eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively–that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand…. We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat). We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey. And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”

The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now. Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores”–that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution. For many years, I too, clung to the idea that meat and dairy were good for me; I realize now that I was probably comforted to have justification for my continued attachment to the traditions I grew up with.

But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.

Click here for great-tasting recipes and meal plans, and here for tips on eating more vegetarian foods.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/shattering-the-meat-myth_b_214390.html

How to Win an Argument With a Meat Eater

How to Win an Argument With a Meat Eater

• The Hunger Argument
• The Environmental Argument
• The Cancer Argument
• The Cholesterol Argument
• The Natural Resources Argument
• The Antibiotic Argument
• The Pesticide Argument
• The Ethical Argument
• The Survival Argument

“Outsmart him. Outrun him. Outlive him.” — Dave Scott

The Hunger Argument

Number of people worldwide who will die as a result of malnutrition this year: 20 million
Number of people who could be adequately fed using land freed if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10%: 100 million
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by people: 20
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 80
Percentage of oats grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 95
Percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock: 90
How frequently a child dies as a result of malnutrition: every 2.3 seconds
Pounds of potatoes that can be grown on an acre: 40,000
Pounds of beef produced on an acre: 250
Percentage of U.S. farmland devoted to beef production: 56
Pounds of grain and soybeans needed to produce a pound of edible flesh from feedlot beef: 16

The Environmental Argument

Cause of global warming: greenhouse effect
Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more
Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75
Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly related to livestock raising: 85
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet: 260 million
Amount of meat imported to U.S. annually from Central and South America: 300,000,000 pounds
Percentage of Central American children under the age of five who are undernourished: 75
Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef: 55 square feet
Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year

The Cancer Argument

Increased risk of breast cancer for women who eat meat daily compared to less than once a week: 3.8 times
For women who eat eggs daily compared to once a week: 2.8 times
For women who eat butter and cheese 2-4 times a week: 3.25 times
Increased risk of fatal ovarian cancer for women who eat eggs 3 or more times a week vs. less than once a week: 3 times
Increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily vs. sparingly or not at all: 3.6 times.

The Cholesterol Argument

Number of U.S. medical schools: 125
Number requiring a course in nutrition: 30
Nutrition training received by average U.S. physician during four years in medical school: 2.5 hours
Most common cause of death in the U.S.: heart attack
How frequently a heart attack kills in the U.S.: every 45 seconds
Average U.S. man’s risk of death from heart attack: 50 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat: 15 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat, dairy or eggs: 4 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption of meat, dairy and eggs by 10 percent: 9 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption by 50 percent: 45 percent
Amount you reduce risk if you eliminate meat, dairy and eggs from your diet: 90 percent
Average cholesterol level of people eating meat-centered-diet: 210 mg/dl
Chance of dying from heart disease if you are male and your blood cholesterol level is 210 mg/dl: greater than 50 percent

Source = “Diet For A New America” by John Robbins
Please Visit EarthSave.

to see the rest click here…

The American Academy Of Environmental Medicine Calls For Immediate Moratorium On Genetically Modified Foods

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18080.cfm

• Press Release
  American Academy of Environmental Medicine, May 19, 2009
  Straight to the Source

[Editor's Note: Click here to read the AAEM's Position Paper on Genetically Modified Foods.]

Contact Information
Dr. Amy L. Dean, D.O. Public Relations Chair Member, Board of Directors American Academy of Environmental Medicine
734-213-4901
environmentalmed@yahoo.com

Wichita, KS – The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) today released its position paper on Genetically Modified foods stating that “GM foods pose a serious health risk” and calling for a moratorium on GM foods. Citing several animal studies, the AAEM concludes “there is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects” and that “GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.” The AAEM calls for:

* A moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term safety testing and labeling of GM food.
* Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community and the public to avoid GM foods.
* Physicians to consider the role of GM foods in their patients’ disease processes.
* More independent long term scientific studies to begin gathering data to investigate the role of GM foods on human health.

“Multiple animal studies have shown that GM foods cause damage to various organ systems in the body. With this mounting evidence, it is imperative to have a moratorium on GM foods for the safety of our patients’ and the public’s health,” said Dr. Amy Dean, PR chair and Board Member of AAEM. “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions,” said Dr. Jennifer Armstrong, President of AAEM. “The most common foods in North America which are consumed that are GMO are corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed oil.” The AAEM’s position paper on Genetically Modified foods can be found at http:aaemonline.org/gmopost.html. AAEM is an international association of physicians and other professionals dedicated to addressing the clinical aspects of environmental health. More information is available at www.aaemonline.org.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine was founded in 1965, and is an international association of physicians and other professionals interested in the clinical aspects of humans and their environment. The Academy is interested in expanding the knowledge of interactions between human individuals and their environment, as these may be demonstrated to be reflected in their total health. The AAEM provides research and education in the recognition, treatment and prevention of illnesses induced by exposures to biological and chemical agents encountered in air, food and water.

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING

http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html

Copyright Notice Article References
A table of contents with direct links to article sections can be reached here.

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR P SYCHIC FUNCTIONING

Professor Jessica Utts
Division of Statistics
University of California, Davis

ABSTRACT

Research on psychic functioning, conducted over a two decade period, is examined to determine whether or not the phenomenon has been scientifically established. A secondary question is whether or not it is useful for government purposes. The primary work examined in this report was government sponsored research conducted at Stanford Research Institute, later known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC.

Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.

The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long-run statistical results needed for replicability.

A number of other patterns have been found, suggestive of how to conduct more productive experiments and applied psychic functioning. For instance, it doesn’t appear that a sender is needed. Precognition, in which the answer is known to no one until a future time, appears to work quite well. Recent experiments suggest that if there is a psychic sense then it works much like our other five senses, by detecting change. Given that physicists are currently grappling with an understanding of time, it may be that a psychic sense exists that scans the future for major change, much as our eyes scan the environment for visual change or our ears allow us to respond to sudden changes in sound.

It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.  more

How can a mutated virus – of three different species emerge on the scene?

Since I first heard about the Swine flu – which was last Sunday – I found it highly suspicious that it was described as a coctail of human, bird and swine strains of influenza.  Then I got a newsletter from my favorite organization the Organic Consumers Association and they laid out the possibilities of just how probable and likely the rise of such an illness is.  Check out this article from the Huffington Post…

Swine Flu Outbreak — Nature Biting Back at Industrial Animal Production?

David Kirby

Journalist

Posted April 26, 2009 | 05:17 PM (EST)

Officials from the CDC and USDA will likely arrive in Mexico soon to help investigate the deadly new influenza virus that managed to jump from pigs to people in a previously unseen mutated form that can readily spread among humans.

One of the first things they will want to look at are the hundreds of industrial-scale hog facilities that have sprung up around Mexico in recent years, and the thousands of people employed inside the crowded, pathogen-filled confinement buildings and processing plants.

Industry calls these massive compounds “confined animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs (KAY-fohs), though most people know them simply as “factory farms.” You have seen them before while flying: Long white buildings lined up in tightly packed rows of three, four or more. Within each confinement, thousands of pigs are restricted to indoor pens and grain-fed for market, while breeding sows are kept in small metal crates where they spend most of their lives pregnant or nursing piglets.

In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico.

“Classic” swine flu virus (not the novel, mutated form in the news) is considered endemic in southern Mexico, while the region around the capital is classified as an “eradication area” – meaning the disease is present, and efforts are underway to control it. For some reason, vaccination of pigs against swine flu is prohibited in this area, and growers rely instead on depopulation and restriction of animal movement when outbreaks occur.

U.S. and Mexican epidemiologists and veterinarians will surely want to take swine samples from Mexican CAFOs and examine them for the newly discovered influenza strain (No one knows exactly how long it has been in circulation). And though it is too early to know if this new virus mutated and incubated on Mexican hog CAFOs, the industrialized facilities unquestionably belong on the list of suspects.

Pigs are nature’s notorious “mixing bowls” for inter-species infections, and many swine flu viruses have long contained human influenza genetic components. Then, in the late 1990’s – when industrialized swine production really took off in North America – scientists were alarmed to find that avian influenza genetic material was also mixed into the continent’s viral soup (see below). Fortunately, it was not the dreaded and lethal H5N1 strain, which most people know of as “bird flu.”

So where did this new, virulent and highly infectious influenza emerge from? According to Mexico’s Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, the virus “mutated from pigs, and then at some point was transmitted to humans.” It sure sounds like something happened on some farm, somewhere.

For years, leading scientists around the world have worried that large-scale, indoor swine “factories” would become breeding grounds for new pathogens that could more easily infect humans and then spread out rapidly in the general population – threatening to become a global pandemic.

We know that hog workers in Europe and North America are far more likely than others to be infected with potentially lethal pathogens such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), drug-resistant E. coli and Salmonella, and of course, swine influenza. Many scientists also believe that people who work inside CAFOs are more at risk of contracting and spreading these and other “zoonotic” diseases than those working in smaller-scale operations, with outdoor pens or pasture and far lower animal density.

But until now, hog workers with swine flu have rarely gone on to infect other people, save for close family members. And that is why this new strain of swine influenza virus is so vexing – and alarming. It seems to spread quite easily through casual human contact.

This new strain making headlines and killing people contains genetic components of human flu virus, avian flu virus and – for the first time ever – two types of swine flu virus: American and Eurasian. “Such a combination of components (genes) was not found so far, neither among humans nor among pigs (as far as we know),” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said in an email.

Nobody yet knows whether the mysterious mixing of two continents’ swine flu genes is what made this outbreak so deadly, and so infectious among people, but you can bet that the world’s best labs are already on the case. Another possibility is that a new and more aggressive strain of avian influenza got into the new mix as well.

How could this happen? There are several plausible explanations.

A New Avian Component?

Avian influenza viral components can easily mix with swine flu virus to create new bugs – and this can happen on both traditional hog farms and inside CAFOs, scientists say.

Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a lengthy report on factory farming that included research on emerging forms of avian-swine-human influenza viruses. The molecular forensics of rapidly mutating animal pathogens makes epidemiological investigations all the more challenging, it said. “Populations exposed to infectious agents arising in CAFOs are even more difficult to define as some agents – such as a novel avian influenza virus – may be highly transmissible in or well beyond a community setting,” the Pew report stated.

The transmission of avian or swine influenza viruses to humans, the report said, (almost wistfully, in retrospect), “seems a rather infrequent event today.”

But the commission also issued this grave and perhaps all-too prescient warning:

The continual cycling of swine influenza viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks provides increased opportunity for the generation of novel viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission of these viruses. In addition, agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities. This bridging increases the risk of novel virus generation in that human viruses may enter the herds or flocks and adapt to the animals.
Reassortant influenza viruses with human components have ravaged the modern swine industry. Such novel viruses not only put the workers and animals at risk of infections, but also potentially increase zoonotic disease transmission risk to the communities where the workers live. For instance, 64% of 63 persons exposed to humans infected with H7N7 avian influenza virus had serological evidence of H7N7 infection following the 2003 Netherlands avian influenza outbreak in poultry. Similarly, the spouses of swine workers who had no direct contact with pigs had increased odds of antibodies against swine influenza virus. Recent modeling work has shown that among communities where a large number of CAFO workers live, there is great potential for these workers to accelerate pandemic influenza virus transmission.

“We met with a team of researchers from the University of Iowa who are studying avian flu, and their real concern was the very scenario that may have happened in Mexico – that avian flu may get into a swine CAFO and rapidly mutate and then get passed to workers, and then on to other people very quickly,” Bob Martin, who was executive director of the now-disbanded commission and currently a Senior Officer at the Pew Environmental Group, told me.

“Their concern was that new strains of avian flu combining with swine flu could make the swine flu more deadly,” he said. “And because viruses pass so easily between pigs and people, the new avian component could make swine flu more virulent.”

Researchers such as Gregory Gray, MD, a University of Iowa professor of international epidemiology and expert in zoonotic infections, warned that CAFO workers could serve as a “bridging population” to rural communities sharing viruses with the pigs, and vice-versa. Other scientists suggested that CAFO workers could theoretically spread disease quickly to great distances. An outbreak of infectious avian flu on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, for example, could reach the Rocky Mountains within 36 hours.

The Iowa team was also worried that CAFO production could lead to another 1918-style global pandemic. One theory behind that calamity is that waterfowl cross-infected U.S. pigs with a new type of avian-swine super-virus that was quickly transmitted to farm workers, possibly in Iowa, who went off to military training camps for WWI, and then spread the pathogen worldwide

“One very big concern was that swine flu mixed with wild bird flu, or bird flu in a chicken CAFO, tended to be ripe for incubating new types of viral infections, especially since the animals are so densely packed together,” Bob Martin said.

Hog CAFOs are supposed to be completely closed environments, in order to protect the pigs from outside diseases. Visitors are usually required to shower and don special protective clothing (again, for the animals’ benefit) before going inside a confinement.

But these are not hermetically sealed environments, and pathogens can enter and exit a CAFO in a number of ways other than via swine workers (or flies, another proven vector of CAFO diseases).

To begin with, some swine CAFO’s recover water from their waste lagoons and recycle it back into the animal housing, in order to wash out the barns while also cutting down on dwindling groundwater supplies (a particular concern in parts of Mexico, to be sure). But wildfowl routinely land in CAFO lagoons, where they can easily shed influenza virus into the water. This can also happen at facilities that use water from nearby ponds or rivers.

Here in the U.S., the National Pork Board had already urged all producers to take a number of steps to reduce the risk of avian-to-swine influenza transmission (A new advisory has also been posted today).

“It is in the best interest of both human public health and animal health that transmission of influenza viruses from pigs to people, from people to pigs, from birds to pigs and from pigs to birds be minimized,” says the group’s website, Pork.org.

To read the rest of the article click here.

To take action and tell President Obama and Tom Vislack to ban these factory farms click here.

Watch a short video that gives a nutshell version of how this can happen…

Doctors confirm woman’s imaginary 3rd arm!

I found a crazy story in the news today that I just love!  I’ve always been fascinated by phantom limb syndrome and yesterday at dinner with a few friends,  I was told about a medical breakthrough that had recently been reported about a guy who lost the tip of his finger in a model train accident, (already sounds like the setup for a joke) but his brother who worked in a scientific field dealing with limbs and regeneration sent him a powder that was still in the pre-approved stages.  He told his brother to dip his recent injury in the powder.  I don’t know if he was to bandage it with the powder or if it was a daily administered treatment, but it turns out somehow this substance  kept the tissue from healing and instead caused the finger tip to totally regenerate, fingernail and all!  The only difference between his new finger tip and the other fingers is the fingernail grows much faster on the regenerated tip than the others.  Crazy!

Last night on the phone with my parents I was telling my dad about The Secret Life of Plants.  A fascinating read about how plants have a sort of phantom leaf memory of their own, as well as scientific proof of plant consciousness!  Then this morning I saw this amazing story… (the date made me wonder so I checked snopes.com and so far nothing is showing up on it there.) Here’s the link

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Doctors_confirm_woman_s_imaginary_third_arm.html?siteSect=105&sid=10522330

April 1, 2009 – 11:59 AM

Doctors confirm woman’s imaginary third arm

Image caption: The brain of the 64-year-old patient reacts as if she had a third arm (T. Willemsen)

A 64-year-old woman has reported to doctors at Geneva University Hospital the presence of a pale, milky-white and translucent third arm.

After examining the case, the woman’s neurologist, Asaid Khateb of the hospital’s experimental neurophysiology laboratory, called the rare phenomenon credible.

The arm appeared to the woman a few days after suffering a stroke, doctors said.

But this case of what is known as a supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) is a genuine head-scratcher.

The upshot is that the woman can use the apparitional extremity to relieve very real itches on the cheek. It cannot penetrate solid objects.

She does not always perceive the arm but “retrieves” it when needed, doctors told the Swiss news agency.

It is nevertheless the first case known to doctors of a person being able to feel, see and deliberately move a limb that doesn’t exist. The findings are published in the Annals of Neurology.

Pinpointing

Khateb and his colleagues examined the patient’s brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a tool that allows doctors to see whether the brain is truly stimulated, and to pinpoint where. In this case, the investigations revealed that the woman actually experienced what she described.

Researchers instructed the woman to move her right hand. As expected, the motor cortex and visual processing areas in the left side of her brain became mobilised.

The same effects were observed to a lesser extent when the woman simply imagined moving her right hand. Imaginary movements of the woman’s paralysed left hand prompted the same activity in the brain, but on the right side.

But when doctors asked her to move her phantom arm, her brain reacted as though the arm really existed and could be moved. In addition, the patient’s visual cortex was also activated, indicating the she actually saw the imaginary limb.

And when she was instructed to scratch her cheek, regions of the brain relating to touch were activated.

Mystery

Khateb said the exact cause of the imaginary arm remains a mystery. Supernumerary limbs are rare. There are only nine known cases of a patient both feeling and seeing an arm.

“Existing evidence from stroke-elicited SPLs convincingly implicates the mismatch between the subject’s well-established sensorimotor representations and a suddenly aberrant pattern of communication between the brain and the paralysed limb,” the authors wrote.

They said it could represent a missing link between classical phantom limbs and phenomena such as out-of-body experiences.

Phantom limbs are more commonly associated with people who have had an amputation – between 50 and 80 per cent of people who have had body parts removed suffer from it. In most cases it is painful, according to a 1984 article published in a scientific journal called the Clinical Journal of Pain.

“Ultimately however these conditions might offer a unique way to understand how the brain constructs a normal experience of bodily awareness and the self,” they concluded.

swissinfo with agencies

It’s been so long

It has been forever since I have udpdated the blog. I have no excuses except that I have let myself get carried away on things like facebook, catching up with old highschool buddies, and the guitar.  I have really become absorbed in the guitar.  I

am taking a class at a school downtown and I am learning so much. When I’m at work, or away from home for any reason really, all I want to do is play the guitar.

It has saved me from gettng bogged down and immersed in the hysteria of the news of the day.

Earlier this year a co-worker was let go due to the failing economy, and I got a little freaked out.  I couldn’t sleep and life just kind of changed for me.  Then one day while I was home, I just felt the need to pick up my guitar.  I started playing some

really cool inovative stuff.  It became a daily obsession as my worries melted away to the joy of playing.  Soon it didn’t matter that it seemed that the shit was hitting the fan, I just needed to get home to play my guitar.  So that is where I am today.

It makes sense to me that this was the child I left behind so many years ago, coming

to my rescue.  All my life all I ever wanted was to sing and play music.  Once when I was around 10 years old, my brother and I were waiting in the driveway in our car, for our mother to come out so we could go to the store.  That was the most fun thing to do when I was a kid, go shopping.  Anyway, I was singing my heart out as usual, to whatever was on the radio – and you know I believe it was a “Yes” song, dear god!-

Anyway my brother stopped me cold.  He hated my enthusiasm for singing.  It was embarrassing for him to be out at Pizza Hut or somewhere with his family and his little sister would be singing for the whole restaurant to hear.  He’d beg my parents to make me stop so we could actually hear the song for a change but they’d tell him to be nice and leave me alone.  I always won and continued to sing my heart out.  Then this particular night he said to me, “You know just becasue you can sing doesn’t mean you’ll ever be able to do anything

with it. There are other people out there who sing way better than you.”  Or something to that effect.  Honestly it never dawned on me before that I wouldn’t be

a singer when I grew up.  I never compared myself to anyone else either.  I was floored, the wind was knocked out of my sails, and I played it off as if he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already consider.  From that moment on, I became shy about singing in front of others.  He finally won.  And I totally lost, until now.

This whole world crisis experience has been an amazing transformation in the works, for me and so many other people, but what I found out very early on was that the only way we are going to come through it all intact is to go to that little kid inside each of us, and ask, “what is it that you want to do today?”  The conversation in the 80’s was healing the inner child, but at this moment in time, I think it’s the inner child that holds the key to healing us!

Anyway, whatever you used to want to do when you were a kid but relenquished to adult duties, go and do!  Burry your thoughts in that activity!  Learn to paint, draw, or play an instrument.  Go out and shoot hoops, or learn to tumble or dance.  You don’t have to

make a career out of it, but definitely make fun out of it.  Enjoy yourself!  It’s the least we can do in a time like this.  It might just be the key to saving the planet!

What does a trillion dollars look like?

This is too cool.  Go to this link to see it from one hundred, to one million and upwards until you get to a trillion.

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

This from CBS 13… And I have always been afraid of these little boogers.  Now I think I like them.  Link to the website that published this story below…

http://cbs13.com/local/Paraplegic.Man.Suffers.2.958151.html

Mar 12, 2009 9:53 pm

US/Pacific

Paraplegic Man Suffers Spider Bite, Walks Again

Reporting
Mike Dello Stritto

MANTECA, Calif. (CBS13) ―

Brown Recluse Spider

He has been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again, and his doctors call it a miracle. CBS13 went to Manteca to find out how a spider bite helped get him back on his feet.

“I closed my eyes and then I was spinning like a flying saucer,” explains David Blancarte.

A motorcycle accident almost killed David 21 years ago. At the time he might have wished he was dead.

“I asked my doctor, ‘Sir what happened? I can’t feel my legs’,” said David.

Ever since, David’s been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.

“I’m here for a spider bite. I didn’t know I would end up walking,” says David.

A nurse noticed David’s leg spasm and ran a test on him.

“When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like ‘whoa’ and I yelled,” he says.

He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.

“She says,’your nerves are alive. They’re just asleep’,” explained David.

Five days later David was walking.

“I was walking on the bar back and forth,” he said.

Now David is out of the hospital and on his feet and walking.

David basks in his glory and gives a ray of hope to other hoping to walk again. The 48-year-old former boxer and dancer is taking it in stride, knowing his best days are still ahead.

David’s dream is to see his 14-year-old twin daughters grow up and get married so he can walk them down the aisle and have that first dance.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Just watch, you’ll love it.

Astronomers capture breathtaking images of Helix

the eye of god...

Morgan Freeman on Race and Black History Month

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A Different World | One Minute Shift

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Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

Daemons and the creative spirit.

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Thomas Jefferson on the importance of civil rebellion

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”

It’s just a nightmare. We will come out of this.

Something became really clear to me on Saturday that I have never fully realized until now, and of course there was no reason I would have noticed.

I had two reoccurring nightmares as a child.  The first one involved planes plummeting from the sky, crashing into school buildings, and other buildings while I could hear it from a distance.  I never saw the impact, but I always saw the plane descend, and always heard it crash.

The other dream was one that not only affected my dream state, it gripped me into my waking state for several minutes after as well.  This one involved all of my physical worldly possessions whirling at high speeds above my head in some sort of tube that I could see through, meeting their demise at the end where there was an incinerator or a compactor.  I was helpless and barefoot in my pjs while I watched it all go.  My parents down the hall could always hear my struggles in the night and they would come to rescue me with soft caresses and a warm washcloth for my forehead.  When I broke from my sleep I was trapped between worlds, my nerves on the outside of my skin.  I experienced what I believe autistic kids live with.  I was hypersensitive to all sounds, movements, pressures, colors, smells.  Everything was too much for me to handle.  If my bed sheet was smooth it was like a vast ocean swallowing me, drowning me; it was far too smooth for comfort.  If there was a wrinkle in my sheets I was in a tulmultuous ocean, rising and falling drowning me as well.  My closet doors at the foot of my bed reached up to heaven, and sort of breathed in and out.  My parents moved too fast, spoke too loud, too quickly, everything hurt me.  Finally I would awake.  We’d all go back to bed and forget until the next time it happened.

The first dream came true.  I haven’t had a plane crash dream since 2001.  I had one shortly after 9/11 and never again.  I saw the planes hit from a distance on my TV.

The second dream is coming true too, only this dream I conquered on my own.  When I was around 11 years old I had the dream while staying with my aunt and uncle in Georgia.  I didn’t have my parents to wake me.  I didn’t know my aunt and uncle very well.  I had to get myself up out of a strange bed while my whole body screamed in agony, I stepped into a strange dark living room and talked myself back to reality, to safety.   That was the last time I have ever had that dream.

I think this means something.   We are going to bring ourselves out of this mess once and for all.  It’s only a nightmare.

S

I want my $700 billion back! Fire all the banks! Let’s print our own money!

AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workers

By FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writers Frank Bass And Rita Beamish, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 22 mins ago

AP – In this Sept. 26, 2007, file photo Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, talks to reporters in his Capitol Hill …

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP’s analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions.

It is unclear how many foreign workers the banks actually hired; the government does not release those details. The actual number is likely a fraction of the 21,800 foreign workers the banks sought to hire because the government limits the number of visas it grants to 85,000 each year among all U.S. employers.

During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.

Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.

___

Frank Bass reported from East Dover, Vt.

The Humods Project

This from:

BreakthroughAlert.com

The Humods Project ~ Breakthroughs in nano/bio molecular engineering are turning our tools, appliances, homes and vehicles into ever smarter cognobots and turning us into humods, beings modified to enhance our minds, bodies and lifespans. The Humods Project tracks these breakthroughs and suggests memes to encourage the development and use of these super-empowering technologies.

Meme 1: Within the systemic complexity of our Universe is a mechanism that generates an endless abundance of unique lifeforms and requires those lifeforms to develop increasing levels of complexity, including a greater level of intelligence than humans currently enjoy, in order to avoid extinction. Our Universe is biased towards generating intelligence, and lifeforms failing this challenge are systematically removed by one of the many extinction causing events our Universe utilizes to sweep away its failures.

Meme 2: Asteroids and comets impact, rouge black holes roam, erupting super volcanoes bring on ice ages, species-ending plagues breakout, mega solar flares erupt from stars like ours that could fry the surface of our planet, as conceivably could a gamma ray burst from a restive black hole. We already know of many ways our Universe can bring about the extinction of lifeforms that fail to obtain sufficient knowledge to spread their kind across multiple star systems, and there are likely to be others that we don’t yet know about.

Meme 3: Extropy is life. Rewards flow to those that are constantly rethinking, refining and adjusting their techniques to better meet the opportunities and challenges ahead. Open minds that systematically use tools like the Scientific Method to delve into the nature of our Universe are rewarded with knowledge that prevents our extinction, cures our diseases, lengthens our lifespans, makes our toils less burdensome, and our lives more rewarding.

Meme 4: Dogma is death. A mechanism within the natural order of our Universe causes adopters of dogmas or other destroyers of extropy to suffer. Struggles over conflicting tribal, cultural and religious dogmas have cost uncountable millions of lives. Dogmas routinely plunge populations into famine and civilizations into ruins. Dogmas foster death, deprivation, starvation, stagnation, and implant within the minds of our children superstition and fear.

Meme 5: Change is risky, but these risks must be intelligently faced, because obsession with risk avoidance causes stagnation and eventual extinction.

Meme 6: Avidly pursue and utilize technologies empowering you to expand your cognitive capability and lifespan. Such upgrades help to insure that we can accomplishing all that we must in a timely enough manner to avoid extinction.

Meme 7: First strive to find and maximize your own talents. Then direct your efforts and resources towards fostering the breakthroughs necessary to develop all of the technologies we must have to insure the survival of our kind.

Meme 8: Oppose the development of super-empowering technologies for destruction, terror, surveillance and control.

Meme 9: Spreading our memes to more minds is vital to the survival of our kind.

PRINT THIS PAGE AND POST IT AT UNIVERSITIES AND LABS (a setting of 80% in the Firefox print function will fit it all on one page).

CROWD SOURCED ~ send proposed changes or additions to ~ humods [at] gmail [dot] com

Fluoride in your water – attacks the pineal gland

I’ve been hot on this fluoride issue for a number of years now.  I hate it.  I wish I could do something to get rid of it short of buying a $1000.00 filtration system that costs money to maintain with new filters and such, but the best thing I guess I can do is to go to my community and petition for it’s removal at the source.  Want to know what is horribly wrong with fluoride?  Watch this video below, if you are at all intrigued you will likely want to see the other two videos to complete this documentary.  I will give a link to the youtube page that has them all here.

Think it’s bogus?  I recently heard an expert speak of the harm fluoride does to dogs’ bodies.  They are so much smaller than we are and even though it is considered safe when diluted 1 part per million in our water, it effects their bones and joints much more than our own. (However arthritis in humans has been linked to fluoridated water).  The interviewee stated that the first thing to go in dogs are the hips and hind legs.  My dog has had problems with his back legs since he was a puppy.  Our vet has even x-ray-ed him to determine the problem.  Nothing conclusive could be determined.  I began buying reverse osmosis bottled water for his and my kitties’ water only one week ago and he stopped his limping the very next day!  He is still walking well today.  Maybe it’s a coincidence but I don’t think so.  Watch this film and be amazed…

Inspiration Peak : View topic – Bella and Tara… Best Friends Forever

This is wonderful.

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Peer Polity – or sustainable suburban communities

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sustainability, self-sufficiency, and this broken down hamster wheel of perpetual growth that we are all currently realizing can no longer sustain us as we are.  There is a brilliant guy named Jeff Vail who is currently a lawyer and formerly an intelligence officer with the US Air Force and energy infrastructure counter-terrorism specialist with the US Department of the Interior.  Vail’s ideas are so forward that it’s hard to find things in search engines that relate and take them further.  Check out his blog at http://www.jeffvail.net/

I believe he has a true idea of what the future of America and probably the whole world is going to have to morph into in order for us all to live peacefully, happily and sustainably – harmlessly.  I for one will love getting out of the rat race that mercilessly calls for more and more financial growth.  I guess the quest for  financial growth has become more like a cancer than anything else.  Now take note that I am not anti-wealth and I don’t believe money is the root of all evils.  I think ignorance is that.  But anyway, currently there are laws in place that give corporations the same rights as individuals, and this is terribly flawed.  It is also unconstitutional and the decision to rule in the favor of business in this way was corrupt and illegal.  Just as it is illegal for the govt. to tax our wages but I digress. Setting corporations up as individuals with the same rights as you or I promotes a sociopathic entity that is hell bent on making a profit for it’s shareholders, no matter how it’s done, and there is no physical body to prosecute.  This is where we are at the moment.  Everyone surrounding me is so excited about Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, but I can’t help but think of him as just another boss in a system of corporatized businesses that all coagulate under one umbrella and with one purpose in goal, profit, profit, profit, no matter what the cost to the environment, global economy, or human lives.  Really it’s no different than getting a new boss at the old company that you really wish you didn’t have to go to day in and day out, trading your life for a bag of pennies at the end of the day.  He works for the big guy that wants you to continue working longer hours for less pay and in return, in light of all the government bailouts and inflation, more of the pay you are making less of will be taxed to preserve the beast that is the grand corporation called government.

I recently bought a book written by a man who was America’s most decorated soldier at the time of his death, author: Butler, Smedley D., titled War is a Racket.

“For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”  Butler, from chapter 1 of War is a racket.

I guess this guy finally figured out that all of the “freedom fighting” that he did in the multiple wars he fought wasn’t for the preservation of freedom for American citizens.  It was all for the freedom of several corporations of the day to better position themselves in other territories for the sake of making more profit with less overhead, with less conflict and fewer restrictions.  Shit, Obama sounded just like Bush with his saber rattling against Iran during the debates.  War is about profit – and he’s going to take our battered and abused troops over there as soon as his higher ups tell him it’s time.  If you doubt this, you should really watch this…

http://exposureroom.com/members/8thestate.aspx/assets/289a7b621eb447e581bfe61b164442a4/

http://exposureroom.com/members/8thestate.aspx/assets/f7791a6590f44bf39302d099c7702721/

http://exposureroom.com/members/8thestate.aspx/assets/9ba242dc78b640628847e4d45c6f1407/

Anyway, we can deteriorate with our economy or we can forge a whole new way of living, sustainably, self-suficiently and most importantly, joyfully under our own structuring and our own blueprint of what we know life should be about.  Here’s one more thing I’m going to leave you with to help you figure out what I’m actually suggesting we do for one another.  It’s an interview with Jeff Vail on the problems with hierarchy in social structure and a concept called rhizome.

Here is the link…http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/entry/2009-01-07T11_42_09-08_00

Peace be with you.

Flying People!

This is absolutely amazing. You have to see it to believe it. These people are flying. I want to do it!

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The C-Realm Podcast

This is probably the most intelligent podcast / radio show I have found thus far.  I have only listened to a few of the latest episodes, but he’s dealing with the real issue of what is going on in our world right now.  It isn’t as fantastical and entertainment based as C2C, it is very conscious based meaning if you like podcasts and C2C for escapism, you will have to come back to reality with this one.

(*Coast is a very intelligent show, but it is still in need of advertisements so on some levels it does play down to some degree depending often on the host.)

So knowing that, it is entertaining but it is also informative about the collapse of our growth based economy and the possibilities of where we are headed.

Listen if you dare!

http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/

Buy my new book Namaste on LuLu

On April 30th, 2006, my life changed drastically in a matter of seconds. Though what occurred was only a subtle shift from the life I had known up until that moment, something was born that could neither be ignored nor forgotten. I began a correspondence with another being that was neither visible nor audible to the naked senses. This was not a long distance pen pal, contacting me through the US Postal Service, nor an internet blog partner with instant messenger access. The correspondence took place in my office on the screen of a laptop computer, and I was the only physical person present.

At first I thought it to be my imagination, but I humored myself by responding to an apparently separate voice through the sentences of what was intended to be a simple journal entry. When the subject seemed to get away from me, and fantastic information about my family history I had never considered before was being revealed at my finger tips, I raised my head and hands, and began to become aware that I was not writing this alone.

The book begins by exploring what we are as humans on this Earth, our purpose, and the ways in which we will learn to apply these aspects of the self. The concept of Oneness is elaborately detailed through glimpses of my personal experience, and a general case study of global society as a whole. We grappled with reincarnation, and possible alternatives, predetermination and free will, and the concept of Christ Consciousness.

After I had established that there really was something unusual occurring for me, and many beliefs I had previously, were turned on end, I decided to come back to the issue that caused me to sit down to write in the first place. I needed to know what was reality, and what was misleading me from knowing reality.

“(This begins with my voice) …but I do not see this world as something I choose to identify myself with. What I mean is the fear, the hatred, the callous disregard for the fellow human being and for the Earth and her natural resources. I do not choose this! I desire a world where people come from integrity, respect for all life, tolerance and love. Now if this is what I choose to see, how do I get my vision to square with what my eyes are seeing?

Good question. You get it to do so by choosing it to be. Be the last four things you just rattled off, integrity, respect, tolerance, and love, and soon your vision and eyesight shall merge as one. To see Oneness, be Oneness.”

As in all conversations, this one took off in multiple directions, but it carries a cohesiveness that is something I know I could never fabricate alone. Finally I was lead to an understanding of my initial quandary, but I refused to let go of the conversation then and there.
Throughout the pages that followed, I was given insight about the power and weaknesses of our five senses. I learned how they are manipulated to control us, and how we can take that control back. The information expanded to an in depth study of the chakra system, prana, the kundalini, and powerful aspects of manna, which is the physical stuff of life. These pages are filled with intriguing exercises, meditations, and the wisdom of a bird’s eye view on the absurdities of human behavior.

With a pinpointed perspective on the senses and chakras, I came to a better understanding of what it means to cast the seeds of life so to speak. I learned that the power of words as we use them will reap for us a harvest in the future. That harvest could be one of joyful living or despair, and what determined such was the awareness or lack thereof, which we bring to our conversations, and day-to-day activities.

This book reveals the multifaceted jewel of the mundane, and offers a new hope for reverence and wonder at all that life hands us. In the end, I am left with a kiss, and given tremendous insight on something seemingly so common as the act of kissing and how it reveals the secret to our liberation from the fear that has kept us from knowing our greatest truth.

Multiple 2008 Studies Confirm Genetically Modified Crops Damage Human Health and the Environment

Studies of the Week:
Multiple 2008 Studies Confirm Genetically Modified Crops Damage Human Health and the Environment

From the Organic Consumers Association newsletter 1/27/2009

Although genetically modified (GM) corn is banned in most of the world, it has been approved as “safe” for human consumption in the U.S. for 12 years and is now likely unknowingly consumed, in one form or another, by more than 90% of Americans on a regular basis. But a recent series of peer-reviewed studies were published in 2008 confirming previous studies indicating potentially severe health and environmental problems associated with the biotech crops. Recent alarming scientific research includes:

1) A new long term study by the Austrian government confirms previous findings that consumption of GM corn, for as little as 20 weeks, can damage the reproductive system, lower fertility rates and increase illness and death rates in offspring.
Learn more

2) Researchers in Mexico reported in December that some popular varieties of GM corn negatively affect the learning response of bees. Scientists say this may be an indicator of the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, a recent catastrophic and mysterious die-off of as much as 30% of the world’s honey bee population in the past couple of years.
Learn more

3) In Italy, scientists published a study that put the biotech industry in a public relations tailspin. In the study, laboratory tests showed a direct connection between consumption of GM corn and a damaged immune system.
Learn more

A Conscious List of New Year’s Resolutions.

Forget the battle of the buldge!  We have other things far more pressing than our waistlines to think about for the coming new year.  I put together a list of my own New Year’s Resolutions and I encourage everyone to add to it anything of importance you feel I missed.  May Peace and Prosperity be with you through the coming months, and may your life be blessed with purpose!  Happy New Year!

For 2009

I offer a conscious list of

New Year’s Resolutions

For our fellow human Brothers and Sisters

1. honor all walks of life for we are one and to deny another is to deny the self.
2. feed clothe and shelter those who are in need.
3. support sustainable industry and buy fair trade materials to honor the worker.

For the domesticated animals who bring us so much love joy and nourishment

1. Support organic, transitioning and family owned sustainable farms.  Considering healthcare costs and planetary destruction, shopping this way is actually cheaper in the long run.
2. Eat less meat. Just for starters, Flatulent farm animals are responsible for 14 per cent of global methane emissions.
3. Be kind and respectful to all our animal friends.  They have so much love and kindness for us.  It’s the least we can do for them.

For Mother Nature

1.  Give her thanks and blessings everyday and think twice about what you are about to throw away.
2. Find out what permaculture is and how you can incorporate it in your own gardening.
3. Play with intention when interacting with water.  When bathing or drinking intend that precious water help wash away all negativity you might be carrying in your aura.  I like to ask water to cleanse me and make me open to the truth of all things, to remove the veils from my eyes, and intend that the water I return to the earth be enriched by me.

For Wildlife

1. Respect the habitat of mother nature’s creatures.
2. in meditation imagine yourself living in the skin of the creature you most fear.  Try to see life behind its eyes and maybe shift your consciousness.
3. defend and support the endangered species act!

For Peace

1. be the change you wish to see.
2. organize and attend PEACE rallies.

3. silently and privately imagine your higher self embracing from the heart those you encounter on your daily path, especially those who appear to be most agitated and angry. And most of all those who you harbor in anger or hatred in your own mind.

4. Most importantly, turn off your TV!

Why is New Year’s celebrated during the DEAD of winter?

On our first walk of the morning today, my girlfriend and I were discussing how arbitrary the placement of our Western New Year’s Day Celebration.  I mean, think about it, January?  The dead of winter – we take the deadest time of the year to symbolize new birth?  It would make much more sense if our calendar year began in March or April wouldn’t you think?   I decided to seek out why such an inappropriate time was chosen for this celebration of new beginnings and I found a pretty nice resource…here.

Here is a taste.

“Happy New Year!” That greeting will be said and heard for at least the first couple of weeks as a new year gets under way. But the day celebrated as New Year’s Day in modern America was not always January 1.

ANCIENT NEW YEARS
The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox

(first day of spring).

The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year. After all, it is the season of rebirth

, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.

The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year’s Eve festivities pale in comparison.

The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.

In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

To read the whole worthwhile article go here…http://wilstar.com/holidays/newyear.htm