This is a documentary well worth watching, all 1:30 hours of it...

Dim lights

HOME official website:
http://www.home-2009.com

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

- filmmmaker- Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Posted: January 17, 2011 12:00 PM

Another devastating chapter in our long history of massacres with guns unfolded in Tucson Arizona on January 8th with the ambush of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, her entourage and bystanders. Will this shocking tragedy finally deliver a wakeup call to federal and state governments, as well as local communities, for a fresh and courageous re-examination of gun policies?

Several years ago I found myself wondering what Charles Darwin would say about gun ownership in terms of adaptation and intelligence in a presumably civilized society.

I walked into my neighborhood supermarket on the upper east side of Manhattan and promptly found myself in the midst of an armed robbery.

I was standing in line at the checkout counter when a big burly fellow forced his way forward, pushing customers aside. I was annoyed and almost blurted out something nasty. Then I noticed another young man near the front of the checkout area staring at me. He flashed open his jacket showing an assault weapon. At first I thought it was a toy and almost laughed. Then the big guy grabbed the money from the cash register and the two fled. It all happened too fast for me to get nervous -- until afterwards. The six of us present did not have to say that we could have easily been killed on a whim. Our frozen expressions said it all.

Where does Charles Darwin fit into this scenario? His survival of the fittest theory of evolution would say that we -- the customers -- were not fit to survive, unlike the guys with the guns. Had they killed us, we would have been evolutionary losers -- our genetic lines destroyed in favor of the robbers' genes.

Then, too, the most popular theory about the nature of intelligence built into the most widely used instrument for assessing intelligence, the Wechsler Intelligence Tests, would rule that the unarmed customers were less intelligent, even mentally deficient, compared to the criminals.

According to Dr. David Wechsler's view, intelligence is not fixed but is relative to the environment that you live in. In other words, intelligence is defined by the skills necessary to adapt to a particular society: "Intelligence is the global capacity of the individual to deal effectively with his environment." By this definition, if you were living in an agricultural society and had no farming skills you would be considered low in intelligence and would find yourself at the bottom of the economic and social ladder -- a maladaptive loser.

In a technological society though, farming skills alone would not get you very far. You would need verbal skills, abstract thinking ability, and a host of other cognitive tools for successful adaptation. In fact, today even farming requires technological literacy.

But what if you are living in "gun world" -- a violent society where there are so many gun toting folks (more than 200 million firearms in private hands) that you have a good chance of getting gunned down? The answer is embarrassingly obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Get a gun and you will instantly raise your I.Q. That will also move you up on the evolutionary scale and place you among the fittest to survive.

Let's revisit the supermarket and see what happens when the patrons are as intelligent and as fit to survive as the hold-up men. Now all six customers have guns. The moment we see the armed robbers we draw our weapons and open fire. Yes, a few of us might get hit. But maybe not if we are faster on the draw -- or if some of us are. Since there are more of us than them we have a good chance of winning. In any event, we would exhibit glowing proof of our fitness for evolutionary victory -- and our high intelligence by having the tools and skills to "master our environment." Our living bodies and the thieves' dead bodies would prove our evolutionary superiority.

Is this the kind of world we want? Most of us would say no. But like it or not, it's happening, as more and more citizens arm themselves to cope with "gun world" where the "big bang" takes on a new meaning for evolution. Some communities have even introduced ordinances that require individuals and households to own guns to improve their chances for survival of the fittest in gun world. And the Arizona State Legislature is about to vote on legislation that would permit students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. Guns are such a lure that a car dealership in Missouri offered a free AK-47 assault rifle with the purchase of a new truck.

But there is a better and wiser way. Humans have the unique ability to consciously direct evolution. We can choose to have a civilized society in which guns do not define either evolutionary fitness or intelligence. If we applied better oversight, stopped the sale of assault weapons, if illegal gun possession meant stiff prison sentences, and if there were even tougher penalties for using guns in crimes, or illegally supplying them, our definition of fitness, adaptation and intelligence could be turned on its head. Guns would then make you unfit, maladaptive and unintelligent.

We can surely figure out a way to stop the surge of guns into the wrong hands -- if we have the will to do it. We have a choice and the power to make it happen.

You may call it foolish, but I for one will not get a gun. I will remain an evolutionary loser and a mentally deficient member of gun world, hoping that we will have the courage to become truly civilized and turn the tables on those who would lead us down their dark path.

Legislators: the bullets and our national intelligence are in your hands. Charles Darwin's ghost is watching -- and he doesn't have a gun.

This article is a revised an updated version of my UPI R&S section blog that appeared in August 2009.

When Generosity, Love, and Kindness are Public Policy, the
Violence We Saw in Arizona (& is pervasive in American culture)
Will Dramatically Diminish  by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gifford and the murder of so many others in Arizona has elicited a number of policy suggestions, from gun control to private protection for elected officials, to banning incitement to violence on websites either directly or more subtly (e.g., Sarah Palin’s putting a bull’s-eye target on Gifford’s congressional district to indicate how important it would be to eliminate her from the Congress).

On the other hand, we hear endless pleas to recognize that the assassin was a lonely and disturbed person whose choice of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books reflects his own troubled soul, not his affinity to the “hatred of the Other” that has manifested in anti-immigrant movements that have spread from Arizona to many other states and in the United States has taken the form of anti-Islam, discrimination against Latinos, and the more extreme right-wing groups that preach hatred toward Jews.

The problem with this debate is that the explanatory frame is too superficial and seeks to discredit rather than to analyze. I fell into this myself in the immediate aftermath of the murders and attempted assassination. I wrote an op-ed pointing to the right wing’s tendency to violent language and demeaning of liberals and progressives, and its historical tie to anti-Semitism and anti-feminism. Once I heard that the arrested assassin had a connection to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, I reacted from my own childhood pain at realizing that most of my extended family had been murdered by the Nazis. So I pointed to the current violent language used by the right-wing radio hosts and some of the leaders and activists of the Tea Party, and how their discourse helps shape the consciousness of those in pain and provides them with a target. But the problem really is much deeper, so I’m sorry I put forward an analysis that was so dominated by my own righteous indignation that it may have obscured a deeper analysis, and mistakenly insinuated that all Arizonans were responsible for the racism in the current policies toward immigrants and that all people on the Right embrace the hate rhetoric of some of their most extremely popular hate addicts like Glenn Beck, or the ignorance of history that led Sarah Palin to label as "blood libel" the criticisms directed at her. I apologize again, as much for the tone of anger as for the content of that kind of generalization. And although Michael Bader has made a persuasive case that we must challenge media that pretends that use of threats of violence comes as much from the Left as the Right (see his piece at www.tikkun.org), I was very happy that President Obama's call for tolerance and mutual respect seemed to be getting a good response across the political spectrum (and only wish that his call to avoid violence was adopted by his own administration in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and around the world--apparently unaware that if you train your own population to go kill people around the world, some will come home with a love of guns and a certainty that violence and toughness are the ways to deal with problems).

So here is the analytic key to understanding what we must do:

We live in a society in which the fundamental framework of meaning to life has broken down as the ethos of selfishness, materialism, looking out for number one, and “making it” at all costs, endemic to the capitalist order and a part of all previous class based or patriarchal societies. People increasingly see each other through the framework of “what can YOU do to advance my interests, pleasures, or desires?” People are valued by the capitalist order to the extent that we can help the elites of wealth and power increase their wealth and power. When we no longer can, we find ourselves unemployed and desperate to survive economically, socially ostracized, and lonely. No wonder, then, that so many people decide that the only rational behavior is to maximize their own advantage and pursue their own self-interest without regard to the consequences for others. In so doing, we mis-recognize each other, and are in turn mis-recognized by everyone else. Instead of being seen as the embodiment of a sacred or holy or God energy (what religious people call “being created in God’s image”), we are seen as beings whose primary value is based on whether we can fulfill someone else’s agenda. And in that sense, we are not recognized for who we most really and deeply are! This misrecognition makes us feel lonely and misunderstood by almost everyone.

When surrounded by people who only see you in these narrow utilitarian or instrumental terms, many people feel lonely (even inside their own families) and devalued. Of course, this plays out differently for different people. Some will simply become depressed and withdrawn. Others seek comfort in alcohol, drugs, sexual promiscuity, or promiscuous consumption of material things. Still others will seek the momentary experience of solidarity with someone at a football or baseball game when their team is winning, or in a religious or political movement that affirms their value but demeans everyone outside their side, or even in the fantasized community they access through Facebook or other online adventures.

And then there are many who find no such compensatory framework for the real pain that they share with so many millions of others. They become lonely and withdrawn and retreat into their own fantasy world, and in more extreme cases become mentally ill or otherwise dysfunctional. It is a huge mistake to imagine that these conditions develop independent of the social order--just ask yourself why the proportion of violence in the US compared to our population is so much greater than that in other advanced industrial societies (clue: it is not in our genes, it is in the way we have organized our society).

We at the Network of Spiritual Progressives have called for a new kind of politics that seeks to build a society based on love, kindness and generosity — we call it “The Caring Society — Caring for Each Other, Caring for the Earth.”

Several of the people who knew the assassin said that they knew that he was acting weird and felt the need to stay away from him. A community college ousted him. No one thought to organize a group of people to reach out to him, to help him out of his isolation or to get him connected to professionals who might treat him. That is just not part of the ethos of a “looking out for number one” society. Too many people have been taught to think “don’t get involved with someone else’s problems — it might get you into trouble in unpredictable ways.”

So many people walk by the homeless, angry at them for having reminded us of the daily suffering caused by an economic system of which we are part but which we do not think we could change without spending a lot more energy than we have, and risking potentially dangerous confrontations with the rich and powerful forces that control our society. We don’t want to get involved with them, not only because doing so may open us to be vulnerable to their suffering, but also because we ourselves don’t feel that we’ve gotten the recognition we deserve for our own suffering, so “why should I spend my time involving myself with these strangers whose suffering would only add to my burden, particularly since I doubt I have the capacity to do much for them?”

Too many people imagine that we can simply turn our back on the suffering of others, or control it through a military, police, and psychiatric system when the daily barrage of media propaganda hasn’t been sufficient to keep the “dangerous others” in line. Yet we are mistaken, because the suffering of others cannot be escaped and manifests in the election of increasingly right-wing politicians, in crime, and in psychotic behavior from people who may someday enter our personal space in a violent way as did the assassin in Tucson! At your local supermarket, or on the highways, or in a movie theatre or coffee shop or in a shopping mall, or where your children go to school! It has already happened in all of these places, and it will get worse!!! Or perhaps you imagine you could just stay in your home and never leave, and thus be protected? A far more rational, though by no means easy, way to get lasting protection for yourself and your children or grandchildren is to create the Caring Society.

Creating a caring society would require a new bottom line so that every social and governmental policy, every corporation, every school and university, and even every personal behavior is judged to be rational, productive or efficient not only to the extent that it maximizes money or power, but also to the extent that it maximizes love and caring, kindness and generosity, and ethical and ecological sensitivity, as well as enhances our capacity to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is. Allow yourself to imagine a society based on these principles, teaching them in schools, making them the core of the message of the media, and rewarding the behavior of those who embody this New Bottom Line in their work world and/or in their personal lives. This is the Public Policy that would make a huge reduction in violence in our lives and our society!!!

Two major policy initiatives embody this approach and need your support:

1. The ESRA (Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment) to the U.S. Constitution being introduced into Congress this week on the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision. The ESRA aims not only to overturn that decision but also to eliminate all private money in national elections and replace it with public funding. It requires media to supply free and equal time for all major candidates while banning private advertising during the months before the election, and it requires large corporations to get a new corporate charter once every five years — a process that requires them to prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens using the new bottom line as their guide for assessing corporate social responsibility. The ESRA also requires teaching the values of caring for each other and for the earth at every grade level in any school receiving public funding directly or indirectly (please read it and ask your elected representatives and your city council and state legislature to endorse it — www.spiritualprogressives.org/ESRA and join our campaign to build public support).

2. The GMP (Global Marshall Plan), which would replace the strategy of domination as the way to achieve Homeland Security with a strategy of generosity. The GMP would commit the United States to dedicating 1-2 percent of our annual Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty to a program to eliminate domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, and inadequate education and inadequate health care. The program would also seek to repair the global environment and enlist all the other advanced industrial countries in this same venture. (Please read it and ask your elected representatives and your city council and state legislature to endorse it at www.spiritualprogressives.org/GMP and join our campaign to build public support.)

Only within a society whose economic and political institutions are reshaped around this new bottom line do we have a chance of dramatically reducing violence and increasing our safety as individuals or our “homeland security” as a society. It’s not enough to have love in our hearts, because the assumptions and consciousness that is shaped by our contemporary schools, media, and daily experience in the world of work dramatically shape the minds of everyone around us in ways that make it near impossible for anyone but the most privileged or the born saints to keep true to the values of love, kindness, generosity, and caring for each other and the earth while we maneuver through daily life and try to make a living.

Anything short of that societal transformation toward the Caring Society is actually utopian and fanciful, and leads to blaming each other or some group or policy option for the irrational behaviors that are tearing our society apart. So, yes of course, gun control would be helpful as would more psychological support services. Yes, the violent discourse of the Right, like the violence that young men are taught to esteem as they are given the option of “serving their country” through the armed services with its legalized murder of Afghanis and Iraqis, and the media saturation with violence all contribute to our normalizing individual and social pathology, are not just “background” but infuse the consciousness of everyone with the notion that violence is the “realistic way” to deal with whoever is deemed “the enemy.”

We Americans shut our eyes to the 12,000-20,000 children under the age of five who die each day (approximately 12 million a year) from hunger or diseases related to malnutrition and inadequate health care facilities around the world. We don’t even count this as violence, though the mal-distribution of wealth and hence of food and health care are part of the system in which we daily participate and to which we pay our taxes and support by our consumerism. We shut our eyes to the suffering of the poor in our own society, not realizing that in so doing or in supporting lower taxes and cuts of government services we are striking out against the poor in violent ways, guaranteeing that they will be thrown from their homes and denied adequate food, shelter, and health care. We refuse to see the structural violence built into the daily operations of the global economic system of which we are a central part and the violence that we do when we vote against those who would provide adequate support for the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden.

Yet we must not forget that all this violence is only a manifestation of the violence to our humanity that occurs daily in a society in which each of us is constantly being devalued and mis-recognized unless we clawed our way to the top of the economic or political ladders to become “successful.” So I understand and sympathize with those on the Right who say, “hey, don’t blame me” because in fact their behaviors are just another part of the cry of pain that so many people feel deeply and have no way of understanding or dealing with. Our society is bursting with the silent screams of tens of millions of people suffering systematic and daily assaults on their dignity, their humanity, and their capacities to be loving, kind, gentle, and generous. So much unrecognized and pervasive pain! Until we transform this big picture, all the little efforts, all the noble reforms, all the good intentions, will amount to little. Moreover, and this is the point missed by those who say “later we’ll deal with that pain, but first we must defeat the Right and provide jobs and food and shelter,” we will never be in a position to deliver on people’s material needs until we build a movement of the majority of Americans to do that, and we will never succeed in building such a movement until we can effectively address this pervasive pain and provide adequate alternatives to the pain reduction provided by fundamentalist religions, drugs, alcohol, profligate materialism, and politics aimed at blaming some relatively powerless group for all the pain whose origin actually lies in the fundamental ethos of our global economic and political system. And that, more than anything else, is why we need a worldwide tikkun olam (healing, repair and transformation of the world). How to get there is described in the Spiritual Covenant with America that guides Tikkun's action and education arm: The Network of Spiritual Progressives.


Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue. To see how to turn these ideas into actual political practice, read the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ESRA) and the Global Marshall Plan (GMP), and then please join as a member of the Network of Spiritual Progressives  (all can be found at www.spiritualprogressives.org). Please help us by joining our movement--and please post this on your Facebook page, your website, your tweeter, and send it to your friends and ask them to do same!!!! And please come to our 25th anniversary celebration--likely you will learn a lot and have a fulfilling time and maybe meet people who will play an important role in your personal life or in your employment or professional life!!!

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Reviewed by Eleanor Stonhamathor of "Wounded Healer 

I'm not sure why they do that....This is what Commander Eileen Collins, the
first woman to lead a United States Shuttle mission, said when she looked
back to the earth in 2005 and saw some of the deep wounds of the earth, in
the man made environmental devastation of central Africa. But it is not only
Africa that is affected. The problem is global.

November 1, 2010
 
 http://www.youtube.com/user/PatriciaCotaRobles
 
 http://eraofpeace.org 
 
A lot of attention is being focused on the elections taking place in the USA this November. Unfortunately, most of the ideas being expressed are very negative and hateful. These
obsolete behavior patterns do not reflect the reality of the Divine Plan that is unfolding on Earth at this time. At a grass-roots level there are literally millions of people striving
to cocreate the patterns of perfection for the New Earth. One of those patterns involves the establishment of Divine Government. This will be a government that functions from
the highest level of Humanity’s consciousness. A government OF the I AM Presences of Humanity, BY the I AM Presences of Humanity, FOR the I AM Presences of Humanity. This will be a government that clearly comprehends the Truth of Humanity’s Oneness with ALL Life. It will be a government that always responds with Reverence for ALL Life in alignment
with the highest good for all concerned.

{youtube}F7Id9caYw(/youtube}

 Last month, an 11-year-old had much to say about the perils of the American food system. Speaking at a TED conference for young people called TEDx in Asheville, North Carolina, Birke Baehr discussed food irradiation, GMOs, CAFOs, farm run-off, the problem with marketing food to kids and more, all in five minutes. On the subject of paying more for better quality food, Baehr said, “With all the things I’m learning about the food system, it seems to me that we can either pay the farmer or pay the hospital.”

He also talked about his future aspirations. “Awhile back I wanted to be an NFL football player. Now, I’ve decided I’d rather be an organic farmer instead,” he said to the cheering audience. “That way I can have a greater impact on the world.”

The ratio of representation may seem like an abstract idea, but it is not.

All the evils in our society can be traced in large part to this. A greater
ratio can enable us to realize our greatest potentials in our society.

People feel dis-empowered politically. Voters don't know who or what
they are voting for. As a result, they don't vote. Republican Democracy
doesn't really exist. Crime, domestic violence, unemployment, oppressive
laws, ecological problems, low quality education and all kinds of social,
economic and emotional problems that we have today can be traced to
the dehumanizing effects of an inadequate ratio of representation.

Our founding fathers discussed this problem of the ratio of representation
at great length in the first Constitutional Congress and agreed that one
elected representative for every 40,000 citizens was the correct ratio of
representation at the national level for the House of Representatives. The current
ratio of representation is 1 to 600,000. This does not and cannot work.

They composed an article to be added to the U.S. Constitution to this effect
so that it would be the law. But unfortunately this article was not ratified by
the states. So the structural article on the ratio of representation designed to ensure
that the Bill of Rights would be viable and respected did not become law. As a result
population expansion has diluted the principle of representative democracy to the
point that most people no longer vote. Voting, especially in national elections,
has become a meaningless act.

The corruption of the national United States government is so bad that the

citizens who still care are outraged and no longer participate.

The best solution to the problem of the ratio of representation at the national
level my not be to have 10 times as many Congress persons, although having
5000 Congresspersons would be much, much better than the 500 that we have now.
With 5000 members of Congress, this institution would much more adequately
represent the people – us.

The same problem of the ratio of representation also exists at the state and local
levels. In Los   Angeles county, for example, one supervisor represents over a
million voters. When one gets elected, they are in for life because no one can
unseat them. They are called the five Kings.

And the greatest corruption at the local level is electing city council
people at large. Without election districts at the village or city level voters
cannot control even their local government elected representatives.

The best solution to the ratio of representation for all levels of government:
national, state, county and village is to have an elected Neighborhood Representative
for each 1000 people – who is a paid full time neighborhood representative.
This elected person can totally re-humanize and educate our society. This
simple structural reform can make our republican democracy actually work for
everyone and empower rebirth of our country. Each Neighborhood Representative
(NR) would hold a monthly meeting for the neighborhood constituents and publish
a monthly newsletter. Citizens who don't make the monthly meeting can
contact the N.R. personally so that their views and good ideas are voiced.

The results of the neighborhood meeting can be expressed at a district council
meeting of NRs at a monthly meeting in each political district: for city, county,
state and national.

 

There will be a monthly meeting of NRs in each city council district with their
council person. There will be a meeting of NRs in each county's supervisoral district
with their county supervisor. There will be a monthly meeting in each state
assembly district for NRs to meet with their assembly person.

And a meeting of NRs in each congressional district with their congressperson.

This creates a possibility for a monthly cycle of communication between all
citizens and all of our elected officials – council person, supervisor, assembly
person and congressperson – on any issue or idea. Republican democracy can
actually work and be a satisfying experience for everyone.

This means that the neighborhood representative has to attend 5 basic
meetings per month: one in the neighborhood and one in each of the political districts.

In some states, voting precincts are the perfect size of 500 to 1000 registered voters each and can be the already existing basis for defining a neighborhood. Having an elected Precinct Representative would be a wonderful new innovation in American Democracy and would enable Republican Democracy to actually work.

To have a full-time paid NR will cost only $10 per month per voter. Ten dollars per month from 1000 people creates a $10,000 per month budget for each of our elected NRs. This is a small price to pay to resurrect real government of the people, by the people and for the people.

It would be nice if existing governments would build the cost of NRs into their budgets, but it may be unlikely to expect a corrupt government to reform itself.

Instead, a possible approach may be to have NRs at large to make it easier for NRs to find 1000 paying constituents who contribute voluntarily. This way pioneering NRs can get support from family, friends, colleagues and anyone anywhere who would like democracy to work better.

An NR at large means they can be elected by anyone in their county or the world, but they will develop their primary political relationship with their local city council person, county supervisor, assemblyman and congressman. However, their ideas and political work may benefit everyone in the world economically, socially, spiritually and culturally.

The NR's job will be part-time until a full 1000 or perhaps 500 constituents are achieved. Some NRs may be able to go full time with just 500 supporters.

All signers of an NR's petition can campaign and work to get other signers until the full support is achieved. An NR can lecture at political and civic clubs and political science classes at colleges to recruit other NRs. 

We need to get one NR functioning before we can get two. And two before three, etc. Then it is only a matter of time until an NR becomes the council person, the supervisor, the assembly person and the congressperson. When there are more NRs in higher office, then the idea of Neighborhood Representatives will become normal nationally and then universally. At this point the at large concept will dissolve into clearly defined neighborhoods like voting precincts. It can become a normal part of every official election.

In order to re-humanize our society and our government, we have to have a monthly Town Meeting available to every person. Real people expressing themselves politically, socially, economically and spiritually is a beautiful thing. If you could see 1000 people meeting in free expression, you would be amazed at the beautiful people and intelligent people and the virtue and richness of such expression. We might also be amazed at the ignorance and depravity of some people. But the power of a monthly Town Meeting can educate, transform, inspire and enrich all participants.

Monthly Town Meetings can also include brief performances by the best musicians in the neighborhood. Monthly Town Meetings can be warm human experiences. They can become our favorite social activity of the month.

We just have to be intelligent enough and  responsible enough to organize them and give continuity year after year to our monthly grass roots Town Meetings. After we do this, we may also desire to have small weekly support groups of 10 or 20 persons that are devoted to sharing our ideas and feelings. This kind of community experience empowers people and tends to make them wise and loving.

When Neighborhood Representation becomes universal, we can have a House of Representatives in the United Nations and worldwide Republican Democracy will be a reality.

Heaven on Earth starts with you. You have to be an intelligent and responsible citizen. We cannot have government of the people, by the people and for the people without the people.

You are the people!

We have all the great ideas already circulating in books, in small organizations and in the minds of thousands of geniuses. Neighborhood Representation has the structure and power to get the great ideas distributed to everyone and put into action.

This simple petition can be used by any person desiring to become an NR. Anyone in the country or anywhere in the world can sign it. Signers have to renew their commitment each year until Neighborhood Representation becomes an established reality. We create 1 NR, then 2 NRs, then 10 NRs, then 100 Neighborhood Representatives. Soon it can be self-generating.

 

 

 

 

Posted on September 10, 2010
http://mayasoma.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/homo-sapien-our-time-is-over

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” (Arthur Shopenhauer)

Beware! This is not a fluffy, light, new age message! Proceed to read if you are ready for some planetary truth! My friends have always been bemused by my presence- a blend of an indigenous soul as well as a light-fairy worker, earth and sky… in this post, my earth soul has taken over to speak-

This summer has continued to give me a creepy, restless, anxious and nagging feeling. I have felt tense, irritated, exhausted, fatigued beyond belief, and, in all actuality, like a dying creature. Now I know why! I stated many moons ago that the BP oil spill had taken us into the deep end…I had no idea how deep the deep end was going to be.

The seventh sign of the Hopi prophecy says that the sea will turn black and many living things will die. Indigenous elders have continued to predict famine and war. A Mayan prophet proclaimed if humanity did not unite in natural, earth time, that biospheric destruction would be our fate. The new age writers claim that we are creating our future, be it cataclysmic or benevolent. I have always been a strong believer in reaping what you sow, the simple law of cause and effect. “We are now within the purification of all things. Non-Natives call this the “Apocalypse”. The Native call this the “Purification”. Lee Brown, Cherokee Prophecy

A fact, we, as a race, have spun out of control. We, most people, live disharmoniously with nature. We, modern-day citizens of the world, count time in an unnatural sequence. We, almost everyone, has insatiable wants and desires. We, exempt the indigenous souls who know better, have led unhealthy lives and created a very polluted world. Another fact, according to the Mayan Calendar, we have very little time left in these ugly patterns. Last fact, the masses have no idea how to make deep, sustainable and life-lasting changes.

Have you ever asked yourself, what would it take to awaken all humanity? What would it require to jolt everyone into a new harmonious world? What event would need to occur to remind us of our interdependence as species to all of the natural world? Would an ice age arrival awaken your neighbors? Would mass extinctions of planetary life crack open hearts? Would crop failure and famine finally lead humans to a path of sharing? Would oxygen depletion from the oceans with no chance of survival humble humanity to our knees praying for solutions?

Believe it or not (most people will not, as they choose to remain in the safety cocoon of the denial and other deep rooted belief systems) all these possibilities and more are our current predicaments on Planet Earth. Scientists are just beginning to discover that the North Atlantic Drift and the Norway Current have died due to the oil spill and use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico by BP. The Thermohaline Circulation System, which is the oceans conveyor belt controlling temperatures and weather, is in danger of dying everywhere. Without the Caribbean warm waters drifting into the northern hemisphere this year, all residents of those geographic areas can brace themselves for an early and severely icy winter as our next Ice Age begins to descend. As the rest of the currents die, the world can brace itself for the deep unknown. Crop failure has already begun to occur in many places resulting in increased food prices and embargos on shipments. Forest fires, flooding, drought, heat waves, famine… etc. will be the daily events and news on our planet from here on out as the forces of nature bring home to roost hundreds of years of imbalances on Mother Earth. The game is over for everyone.

“And so they say there’s going to be a Third Shaking of the Earth. It’s not going to be a good thing to see but we will survive it. We will survive it.” Lee Brown Cherokee Prophecy

So many people are going to want to blame BP or President Obama. If you insist on playing the blame game, then go ahead and blame yourself for participating in the madness of the western world. There is no time for blame. We must collectively use our energy to find solutions and if the problems are beyond our modern technology, then we must bow down our heads to our forthcoming predicament and at least learn to live out our dying days as a peaceful species. Maybe then and only then will our galactic neighbors choose to intervene.

Ascension can be reached through death or ascension can be reached through consciously partaking in these times. The choice is yours. Most people, I am afraid, have already, consciously or unconsciously chosen the death option. Those of us who have chosen the other path, our lives are going to be full of burial, grieving, crying, releasing, purifying and living 100% in the moment with the power and glory of our respective paths. Afterall, this is a closing age known as “The Age of Purification”.

In my world, I can no longer think of investments, mortgages, bills, creating business, vacation, clothes, etc. and the whatnot. It’s all steam forward to the rainforest, to a clean stream of water, to an organic farm, to sustainable energy sources and to co-creating this reality with like-minded individuals who have chosen to stay to master the new fifth world. Spirit has released me from keeping a writing schedule for this blog of information. I have written diligently for over one year on the Mayan Calendar, ascension, evolution and other spiritual matters. Now, I will retreat, with very few posts hereon, as I secure a future for my family, friends, and newly founded friends who will be joining my path.

Lee Brown Cherokee Prophecy, “In the cycle of time, from the beginning to the end, this time we are in now will change the purification of all things. They say this is the hardest time to live, but it is also the greatest honor to be alive and see this.”

When the last waves of the Mayan Calendar have completed itself, the Earth will be a lot less populated. I had hoped we would have chosen another route. Those of us remaining will have evolved to homo-pacem as the intensity of the times will demand nothing less. Those of us surviving will be living from our hearts as we would have learned that nothing else ever really mattered. Its do or die my readers, make your move now or forever hold your peace!

I send you blessings even in this last hour as I continue to pray for miraculous solutions.
Navajo

Last Drop of Oil, Last Grasp of Air
by Zaccai Free

Nonstop the gushing
healing so necessary
why waste time on the blame game
One finger at you three back at me,
lets turn these fingers into a helping hand and set the captives free
Mr BP CEO you messed up so how can we come together in full responsibility
cause you’re only sucking the planets blood to feed my insatiability

Last drop of oil, Last gasp of air
not even enough for a prayer
searching for Nemo in BP’s oily inferno
as above so below
there must be a (chakra) leak internal
energy flows with no end in sight
buttons pushed lead to bad nights
youth on the street express love as a fight
we stuff emotions to work in a box
we profess free while holding tight to all we’ve got
as above so below there’s no separation
the Gulf gusher simply models our multinational/internal/external/ desperation

How many species must die so my car can go?
how many wetlands turned to oily wastelands for the sake of convenient transportation?
In a nation built on slavery and genocide who feels a pinch when filling up the ride?
So separate from cause and effect we wonder if we need to slow down after the wreck
Business as usual, profits at all costs
discounting 7 generations or more, smiling on the way to the mega-store
constantly extracting with no way to give back
no intent to return what’s been taken from the ground and burned
no reciprocity to the support of our humanity
lost in the insanity of unlimited growth fueled by vanity
What are we without fresh water, fertile earth & clean air?
If we can’t sustain life here it’s hubris to think we’ll do better elsewhere

there’s no security in oil more disasters than we care to admit
the corporation is the gun, greed the bullet
we the people squeeze the trigger making decisions oblivious of consequences
the dead children of Operation Iraqi Liberation (oil)
afghani-pipeline-istan, Nigerian fields awash with crude hued blood
strange fruits from Alberta tar sands, oil mixed with mud
We have found the enemy and he is me
i must embrace the other, make the criminal my brother
unconditional love like the fully engaged mother
then we transform pain into joy
blame into opportunity
our oily reality into a sun-drenched, wind blown future of sustainability