History's done. Time to repeat. (Fergistan)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly EDITORIAL

Rebirth of the deva Venus, Nascita di Venere, by Boticelli (scentsciences)

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What life was like...rebirth comes again.

Isn't it strange how things repeat -- how they come around again almost exactly the same but just a little different? On the smallest, most intimate level, that of cittas and kalapas (ultimate mind and matter in Buddhist psychology and physics), what replaces the passing phase of a mind-moment or material-particle is ALMOST identical but not quite.

We would only ever know-and-see this with the light-of-wisdom, the nimitta-light, reviewing the mind door, as Theravada meditation master Pa Auk Sayadaw details. But we would have to build a firm foundation of concentration (jhana, meditative absorption) beneath a canopy of insight (vipassana) to ever come to know that directly. Review the mind-door by the heart and you, too, can see it after developing the requisite skill in meditation.

The seers of ancient pre-India (the Indus Valley Civilization) knew that time and events are cyclical, coming around again. The time that lapses between events, however, is measures in aeons (kalpas), akin to our geological-time of epochs and ages, Jurassic, Neolithic.. But within each grand cycle of time, each Great Aeon, there are smaller cycles looping around sooner.
 
Karma, or what we as Americans like to refer to as "What comes around goes around," can take a LONG time. Actions and their pleasant and unpleasant consequences can be separated by so much time that it becomes easy to believe that no results are ever coming. The results are always plural when they come, so to say "action with an equal and opposite reaction" is very misleading, as if those who use the Newtonian expression were foolishly trying to be all "scientifical."

Cycles upon senseless cycles

Buddhism is more immediate than science, more open to personal investigation and more convincing to those who know-and-see directly with no one as their authority above personal experience. The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Noble Sangha lead us to freedom from having to rely on any authority for what is true or not true. When one knows-and-sees, there is no question about it. Until we reach the state beyond-training, that of an asekha, we indeed need guides, and there are none better than these three precious gems.

"Hands up, don't shoot!" - Don't move! Let's see some ID, boy! (Josh P/pactenboy/twitter)

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Welcome to Fergistan

Just as it is on that rarefied level so, too, on our human plane: State-sponsored militant terrorist P.M. Bibi Netanyahu has re-ordered his army to attack and kill civilians in the Gaza Strip under the pretext of rooting out Hamas fighters defending Palestinians against an unbearable Israeli/U.S. oppression and a strangling, not to mention illegal -- blockade and occupation. And the same excuses are still used in the mainstream media, never having been put to the test in the Hague, where such things should be adjudicated.
 

Fresh clashes in Fergistan as Nat'l Guard arrives to put down the restive natives. Thirty-one people were arrested overnight in violent oppression by police on mainly peaceful protesters. The unrest has continued since the Aug. 9 murder of teen Michael Brown by Ferguson police. (Jeff Roberson/AP/NPR)

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And thanks to weather modification and the consequent climate chaos it has caused, there are fires burning all over California. Yosemite has just gone up in flames. Kern County is burning. The Angeles National Forest is ablaze in Tecolote and Shoemaker above Glendora...

Our original mind is like the sky, no center and no limit, infinitely vast, with happiness as our natural state. It has become obscured by clouds, and we identify with them rather than the deep blue boundless sky. These clouds are thoughts and emotions. In Buddhism, meditation is a means of unclouding the mind; it is the antidote to suffering (Natasha C.).

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Police have murdered another black young man in St. Louis, Missouri. There are more corpses piling up overnight at the hands of Los Angeles police. The "police state" is related to the atrocities being carried out in Israel/Palestine. Israel is staging ground, the weapons dealer, the practical side of how to exterminate an indigenous minority with legal rights to the land. How would we steal the land from indigenous people unless we first put them on reservations then killed them off from every direction? (That's our Western model of empire).

When all seems hopeless, there's hope.

Dead bodies here, fires there, the whole world seems to be going up in flames, so what's the connection? They are connected in a way that cannot be easily understood. The environment reacts and responds to us in a way that can hardly be understood. Seers (rishis), shamans (like shramanas before them), and mystics report that we are connected -- there is no separation -- and what we regard as objective and subjective is not actually accurate. Peace can be generated somewhere by well intentioned meditators sitting somewhere else. It is not a placebo effect because, as in some rigorous prayer studies, the targets do not know the meditation or prayer is going on.

A permanent solution to a temporary problem?

Likewise, the world at large knows when nonpeace is going on, and it reacts. The reactions compound, and we have "natural disasters." How can they be "natural" if we are involved and influencing them? It is because WE are part of nature, not something merely observing it or living in it. We are every bit a part of the environment as what we see "out" there. The objective is subjective as animists would say if they were using such terms, and the subjective is objective to anyone looking at us in our environment. Think peace, practice peace, be peace.

Or sit back and enjoy the show. Did you see that soccer player gently back kick the ball into the net? Not that show (distraction), this one: Once the CIA and other agencies from the White House to the military-industrial complex decided to murder a president. It wasn't the first time they plotted to depose a leader in a very expedient way, but this was a popular young president beloved by most citizens who thought him quite innocent and good. The plans were made, the "lone assassin" patsy selected, and cover up/conspiracy set in motion...

Doctor, my life if full of fear and anxiety...

(Epidemic/"Hands of Ruby") "All hiding behind their own blinds/ Rifle shot from killing arm/ Motorcade with Johnson is riding behind/ Suspect captured after struggle/ Taken into custody/ What the hell is wrong with some? Ignorawcity!/ Double blast, you agree/ Pointing eyes, you agree/ Massive chaos in the air/See the man lifeless there!/ Take the time to lead this nation out of fear..." More

MLK and JFK and the plan was well underway, RFK and Malcolm may just be the beginning

Climate chaos: Forest fire rages in Los Angeles

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The Colby Fire is raging in the deep foothill suburbs of Los Angeles and moving west due to wind gusts and the state's continuing drought.

Temperatures are in the eighties, humidity is at 10%, and the chemtrails -- which seem to be more about geoengineering and toxic weather modification attempts lately, more so than spreading heavy metals and aiding HAARP experiments. Right wing AM radio has been laughing heartily at the misnomer "global warming" due to the polar vortex and dropping temperatures across the country, even the very chilly nights in California. But climate change is general and punctuated not a simple linear increase in across the board measures. All temperatures do not rise everywhere to call it warming.

Such simpleton logic and climate-denier misinformation is alarming. Increases in rain and flooding in one place means drought and fire in another. Hurricanes and cyclones spinning out of control is not a harbinger of a new ice age. Our declining snowpack shows movement in the other direction.

• Glendora police have taken three people into custody in connection with a 1,700-acre brush fire that ignited in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora early Thursday, [bur]ning homes and prompting mandatory evacuations. More

Glendora castle burns (sgvtribune.com)

And geoengineering (cloud seeding, aerosol chemical cloud/haze cover, squeezing more rain out of weather systems, redirecting hurricane paths with atmospheric agitators...) does not correct what human activity is disrupting. Their are natural cycles, and there are exacerbated cycles. Human doings are aggravating the problem. The result?

Monsoon patterns are changing; forest and freeze zones are retreating north; seas are acidifying; poles are melting (in general as seen over time); coral is dissolving; toxic fuels are leaving their mark; and corporations are raking in record profits. 

No one can successfully deny that the climate is generally worse -- hotter, colder, wetter, drier, and more chaotic. Look at the places it used to snow, used to rain predictably, used to cool, used to remain above water.

• PHOTOS: Firefighters try to protect the main house as a fire burns a section of Singer Mansion on Kregmont Drive in Glendora (Los Angeles Times/Irfan Khan)

The central question is, Why? Even if all the planets in the solar system are growing warmer, our human-created pollution, our annihilation of ecosystems, our monocropping, our allowing of endless military-industrial complex war and crushing poverty, all of which exhausts natural resources, is contributing. 

What FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and similar ideologues are doing is unconscionable.

Why would rightwingers, such as Tea Party racists and Tea Party egalitarians (are there many?), help the Koch Brothers, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council, the source of most actual conspiracies affecting the US and the world), Chevron, BP, and transnational corporations continue to ruin the planet while denying that something is terribly wrong? Sea levels are rising. Fukushima and nuclear sites on the East Coast of the US are contaminating. And Republicans, with plenty of help from their brothers the nominal Democrats, are colluding.

Meanwhile in nearby HOLLYWOOD-Land...

The West's version of Bollywood (the world's largest producer of movies, located in Mumbai/Bombay, India) does not stop even when the hills are on fire, the skies are choked with smoke, and a second coming of a post Ariel Sharon messiah is ready to launch (or be launched by the NSA, Mossad, and similar spying agencies around the world). Nominations were announced and it is looking very good for "12 Years a Slave," based on the true story of the American slave trade, and Amy Adams in "American Hustle," based on the true story of Abscam. "Gravity"? Bullocks. And better luck next time, Tom Hanks. See all the nominees: Oscar.go.com

Fukushima across the Pacific (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; SafeCast.org, Jan. 11, 2014

Uh, Lois, we may have to move.

This map is from a detailed simulation of the spread of Pacific Ocean radiation.

It shows the anticipated levels as of August 2013. It may look scary, but the red color indicates that the levels of Cs137 (cesium/caesium) from Fukushima are 10,000 times less than when released in March 2011. The light blue indicates levels that are less than one-millionth.

 

Let’s be clear: The release of radioactive contamination from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant to the environment -- air, land, and sea -- is a massive disaster. There is no other way to describe it.

 

(Radiation on California Beaches) Last month's shocking video,

“Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco! (Dec 2013)”

 

(Bassfiend/deviantart.com)

Radiation in the air has spread far and wide. It was even detectable, just barely, on other continents. Radiation in the ocean is spreading more slowly but inexorably [with the daily dumping of contaminated water into the Pacific].

Fish caught off Japan have been too contaminated to be sold for human consumption. And wide expanses of farmland in Japan have been contaminated as well. But what effects can be expected overseas? What effects can be expected in Hawaii, Alaska, Seattle, California... Boston? More

Climate change denial after typhoon Haiyan

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (L&P, KPFA.org)

The most powerful storm in recorded history over the Philippines and Vietnam (wiki)

NAFCON is a national multi-issue alliance of Filipino organizations in the U.S.

 

Aid the Philippines (nafconusa.org)

Some climate deniers have a point. Not all global warming is due to human activity. But some is. We can hardly stand by as the Koch brothers and other corporate elites profit from the status quo.

• HELP: NAFCON (National Alliance for Filipino Concerns)
• AUDIO: Typhoon aftermath

One famous climate denier, Coast to Coast's host George Noory, recently explained that no one wants to see the environment polluted, but that is different from the climate chaos we are experiencing. No, Noory, it is not.

Is anyone coming to the rescue this time?

Our pollution is exactly the problem: This is how human activity (cars, grossly inefficient gas combustion engines, oil drilling and spilling, military imperialism, nuclear power and accidents, deforestation, coal mining, tailings, mountain top removal, fires, chemical manufacturing...) is adversely affecting climate or general weather patterns. It is making the planet inhospitable. As creatures die off, ecosystems are disrupted (and as ecosystems are disrupted, creatures die off). We are creatures, earthlings. We are doing more to damage the planet and make the climate chaotic and deadly than any other group of inhabitants.

Ordinary sun spots and flares emanate on a cyclical basis, and Earth's atmosphere used to protect earthlings until the corporate complex found it more profitable to deplete.

 

Dr. Jane Goodall asks us all to go veg (VT)

Lesser of two evils Al Gore brought attention to the issue with "An Inconvenient Truth."  Sadly, Gore is a billionaire whose family originally made its money from  ranching. Ranching (raising animals for slaughter and human  consumption) is one of the most polluting industries, second only to  automobiles. Gore conveniently left that out of the movie. As Dr. Jane Goodall, famous for her work with primates, has said: Go vegetarian,  and go a long way to saving our environment. That is one thing we can  all do to save the world, while climate deniers keep getting rich by  polluting it more.

Yoigc Sun Salutation (worldiniowa.com)

They fear losing money, no matter what the cost to the rest of us, the 99%. But Gore and the so-called "liberals," who continue Bush-era policies and plans, have a scheme in mind. Climate deniers are right to say that "carbon credits" and creating a magical marketplace for polluters is a joke and a crime. Carbon is not the problem. It is natural and increasing. Let's check methane, which contributes much more to warming and ozone depleting. We ignore real pollutants (cow exhaust, monocrop farming, permafrost thawing, Fukushima spills, fracking, tar sands, deforestation to make way to raise and slaughter cows, pig farming and slurry ponds...) to focus on distractions. Climate deniers falsely claim volcanoes are to blame, so let's just keep running over a billion gas combustion engines daily (in factory machinery, generators, cars, and so on). Help save the world and the animals on it.

• Trust the American Red Cross to do the job?
• What is climate change denial? Ignoring science

(nafconusa.org)