Sacred Economics

This is the only way forward for humanity… an economics that restores to wholeness our fractured communities, relationships, cultures, ecosystems, and planet.

If there is ONLY one book that you should read, in the year 2012…this IS it!

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

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Charles Eisenstein

Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.”

Look what happens with a love like that, It lights the Whole Sky. – Hafiz

The converging crises of our time all arise from a common root that we might call Separation. Taking many forms — the human/nature split, the disintegration of community, the division of reality into material and spiritual realms — Separation is woven into every aspect of our civilization. It is also unsustainable: it generates great and growing crises that are propelling us into a new era, an Age of Reunion…

…Money is a key element of the story of Separation that defines our civilization.

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Excerpts from Chapter1:

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In the beginning was the Gift.

We are born helpless infants, creatures of pure need with little resource to give, yet we are fed, we are protected, we are clothed and held and soothed, without having done anything to deserve it, without offering anything in exchange. This experience, common to everyone who has made it past childhood, informs some of our deepest spiritual intuitions. Our lives are given us; therefore, our default state is gratitude. It is the truth of our existence.

Even if your childhood was horrific, if you are reading this right now, at least you were given enough to sustain you to adulthood. For the first years of life, none of this was anything you earned or produced. It was all a gift. Imagine walking out the door right now and finding yourself plunged into an alien world in which you were completely helpless, unable to feed or clothe yourself, unable to use your limbs, unable even to distinguish where your body ends and the world begins. Then huge beings come and hold you, feed you, take care of you, love you. Wouldn‘t you feel grateful?

In moments of clarity, perhaps after a narrow brush with death, or upon accompanying a loved one through the death process, we know that life itself is a gift. We experience an overwhelming gratitude at being alive. We walk in wonderment at the riches, undeserved and freely available, that come with life: the joy of breathing, the delights of color and sound, the pleasure of drinking water to quench thirst, the sweetness of a loved one‘s face. This sense of mixed awe and gratitude is a clear sign of the presence of the sacred. 

…While I believe in the fundamental divinity of human beings, I also recognize that we have embarked on a long sojourn of separation from that divinity, and created a world in which ruthless sociopaths rise to wealth and power.

Today‘s economic system rewards selfishness and greed.

Circulation is a better word.

…While gifts can be reciprocal, just as often they flow in circles. I give to you, you give to someone else … and eventually someone gives back to me. A famous example is the kula system of the Trobriand Islanders, in which precious necklaces circulate in one direction from island to island, and bracelets in the other direction. First described in depth by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, kula, which literally means ―circle,‖ is the lynchpin of a vast system of gifts and other economic exchanges. Marcel Mauss describes it as follows:

The system of gift-through-exchange permeates all the economic, tribal, and moral life of the Trobriand people. It is  ― impregnated‖ with it, as Malinowski very neatly expressed it. It is a constant ―give and take.‖ The process is marked by a continuous flow in all directions of presents given, accepted, and reciprocated. [2]

While the pinnacle of the kula system is the highly ritualized exchange of ceremonial bracelets and necklaces by chiefs, the gift network surrounding it extends to all kinds of utilitarian items, food, boats, labor, and so forth. Outright barter, according to Mauss, is unusual. In any event, ―Generally, even what has been received and comes into one‘s possession in this way—in whatever manner—is not kept for oneself, unless one cannot do without it.‖3 In other words, gifts flow continuously, only stopping in their circulation when they meet a real, present need. Here is Lewis Hyde‘s poetic description of this principle of the gift:

The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum. [4]

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… Unlike a modern money transaction, which is closed and leaves no obligation, a gift transaction is open-ended, creating an ongoing tie between the participants. Another way of looking at it is that the gift partakes of the giver, and that when we give a gift, we give something of ourselves.

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…gifts expand the circle of self to include the entire community. Whereas money today embodies the principle, “More for me is less for you,” in a gift economy, more for you is also more for me because those who have give to those who need. Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself which, yet, is not separate from oneself. The axioms of rational self- interest change because the self has expanded to include something of the other.

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…It is ironic indeed that money, originally a means of connecting gifts with needs, originally an outgrowth of a sacred gift economy, is now precisely what blocks the blossoming of our desire to give, keeping us in deadening jobs out of economic necessity, and forestalling our most generous impulses with the words, ― “I can‘t afford to do that.” We live in an omnipresent anxiety, borne of the scarcity of the money which we depend on for life—witness the phrase ― “the cost of living.” Our purpose for being, the development and full expression of our gifts, is mortgaged to the demands of money, to making a living, to surviving. Yet no one, no matter how wealthy, secure, or comfortable, can ever feel fulfilled in a life where those gifts remain latent. Even the best-paid job, if it does not engage our gifts, soon feels deadening, and we think, ― “I was not put here on earth to do this.

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Even when a job does engage our gifts, if the purpose is something we don‘t believe in, the same deadening feeling of futility arises again, the feeling that we are not living our own lives, but only the lives we are paid to live. ―”Challenging” and ― “interesting” are not good enough, because our gifts are sacred, and therefore meant for a sacred purpose.

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That we are indeed here on earth to do something is essentially a religious concept, for conventional biology teaches that we have evolved to be able to survive, that any effort toward something outside of survival and reproduction goes against our genetic programming. However, one can make a cogent neo-Lamarckian case that the view of biology as consisting of myriad discrete, separate competing selves—organisms or “selfish genes”—is more a projection of our own present-day culture than it is an accurate understanding of nature.[13] There are other ways of understanding nature that, while not ignoring its obvious competition, give primacy to cooperation, symbiosis, and the merging of organisms into larger wholes. This new understanding is actually quite ancient, echoing the indigenous understanding of nature as a web of gifts.

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Each organism and each species makes a vital contribution to the totality of life on earth, and this contribution, contrary to the expectations of standard evolutionary biology, need not have any direct benefit for the organism itself. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria don‘t directly benefit from doing so, except that the nitrogen they give to the soil grows plants that grow roots that grow fungi, which ultimately provide nutrients to the bacteria. Pioneer species pave the way for keystone species, which provide microniches for other species, which feed yet other species in a web of gifts that, eventually, circle back to benefit the pioneer species. Trees bring up water to water other plants, and algae make oxygen so that animals can breathe. Remove any being, and the health of all becomes more precarious…

Read the book online >

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The Revolution Is Love (2011) – short film by Ian MacKenzie, a teaser on the ideas of Charles Eisenstein and the return of the gift.

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To Build Community, an Economy of Gifts

For a multitude of reasons, we need to need each other.

Listen to:

•  Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.
•  An interview with Integral philosopher Terry Patten on his Beyond Awakening broadcast

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The Day The Elites Lose

US rejects Keystone XL Canada oil sands pipeline

The US state department has formally recommended the rejection of a controversial crude oil pipeline.

The state department denied a permit for the 1,600-mile (2,700km) Keystone XL pipeline, saying it had insufficient time to review the plans.

The project has been delayed amid objections by environmental groups and the US state of Nebraska.

At the end of 2011, Republicans forced a final decision on the plan within 60 days during a legislative standoff.

US President Barack Obama said he was disappointed that the deadline set by Republicans in Congress had caused the state department to reject the project before a full study could be undertaken.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the state department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.”

But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke to Mr Obama and expressed his “profound disappointment” with the decision, a spokesman said. Read more >

 

• Victory For The People

OILCHANGE International

Dear friends,

Great news today, as you’ve likely heard.  Despite strong political threats aimed at President Obama by Big Oil,  the President said no to Big Oil and rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

Not delayed.  Rejected.  It’s a rare day that the many beats the money in Washington.

This is a big victory for all of you who have fought for years against this project, against the tar sands, against Big Oil, and for our climate and clean energy future all over the world.

We fully expect the oil industry’s corrupt, paid puppets on Capitol Hill to try to resurrect this pipeline.  Let them try.  The louder they complain, the more obvious it is that Big Oil is the one pulling their strings.  And its clear that although the President did the right thing today, he wrapped it in some nonsense language about “new ways to partner with the oil and gas industry” in the future. That’s the same industry that is about to uncap a gusher of dirty energy money to defeat the President and most of his allies, while defending most of his opponents.

That’s why we’ll join 350.org and others on Capitol Hill next Tuesday to Blow the Whistle on Dirty Energy Money. Join us!  And that’s why we’ll all continue to fight for a Separation of Oil and State.

The notion that America can drill its way to energy independence is simply a scam.  The U.S. began the long but critical process of reducing its dependence on oil in 2008, and this Keystone XL rejection is another important step towards the real energy security that will only come with a reduced dependence on all oil.

And so, a toast:  To all of you, all of us, who helped to create this historic and fragile victory.  Celebrate tonight. And get up tomorrow ready to go all in.

Onwards.

Peace,

Steve

PS – Before all of this happened today, we released a new report jointly with the Natural Resources Defense Council that shows how Keystone’s oil would have been exported and how the pipeline would have actually incresaed the price of oil in the Midwest.  Check it out.

Steve Kretzmann
Executive Director
Oil Change International
www.priceofoil.org
www.dirtyenergymoney.com
www.shiftthesubsidies.org

• Friends Of The Earth

I couldn’t be more elated to share this breaking news.

This afternoon President Obama rejected the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. After years of campaigning, we’ve won.

Please take a moment to send a message of thanks to President Obama for taking this stand for people’s health and livelihoods and for a safe climate.

The president earned our thanks today. But this victory belongs to all of us who took action to pave the way for him to make the right call, beginning more than two years ago when the odds, frankly, looked nearly insurmountable.

It’s taken a lot of heart, a lot of hard work and a lot of hope to take on one of the most profitable and most unscrupulous industries on the planet — Big Oil — and defeat one of its marquee projects. TransCanada swung for the fences in employing a former high-level aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Paul Elliott, to shill for its dirty pipeline in the halls of power. And 234 members of Congress took a total of $42 million in dirty energy campaign cash before voting to rush the Keystone XL decision.

But our people power — driven by committed grassroots activism and nonviolent civil disobedience — was stronger.

Victory belongs to the indigenous communities who first sounded the alarm on the dangers of tar sands extraction. To the Nebraskan farmers and Texan ranchers who withstood TransCanada’s bullying to protect their land and water. To the 1,253 people, from college students to grandmothers (including a number of Friends of the Earth members, staff and activists), who were arrested on President Obama’s doorstep urging him to say no.

And it belongs to all of you who contributed in other ways big and small – by sending letter after letter to the president, by calling the White House and by encircling it with your hands, by drawing attention to the corruption in the State Department’s review process, by urging your members of Congress to speak out, and by donating to Friends of the Earth to give our campaigners the strength they needed at key moments.

I wish I could jump out of your computer screen and give you a giant hug right now.

I can’t do that — but I do hope you will join me in giving President Obama the giant collective hug of thanks that he deserves for saying no to the Keystone XL and to more dirty, climate-wrecking tar sands oil.

Big Oil companies and their cronies in Congress will not take this defeat easily — and they will surely not cease in their push to wring profits from the tar sands at the expense of the common good — so it’s critical that we show the president that we have his back when he takes bold action for the health of communities and our climate.

I’ll say it one more time: THANK YOU. WE DID IT.

In solidarity,
Kim and all of our #noKXL team at Friends of the Earth

THANK YOU President Obama

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Internet Strike – STOP SOPA

STOP SOPA!

Strike Against SOPA & PIPA

UPDATE

Sopa: US backers end support for anti-piracy bill

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The End of Competition in Business

January 8, 2012

Waking Times

Where Revolution and Evolution Collide

http://humanworldorder.org/2012/01/08/the-end-of-competition-in-business/

Wiki Image

Giving Is All We Have

For over decades the idea has been that markets are characterized by competition. Leading business thinkers up to this very moment still stress the importance of competitive spirit. But this business paradigm may render irrelevant in our 21st Century.

Business strategy: survival of the fittest?

The general belief is that this source of competitiveness is required to maintain a healthy market structure. You simply increase entry barriers to prevent newcomers entering your market and try to push out your existing rivals out of business.

It’s like Darwin’s survival of the fittest. But in business this time. Only our most competitive businesses will survive, so is the idea.

But what if we realize the world we live in is a world that belongs to all of us? What if we live in a world that is dominated by abundance instead of scarcity? And what if our businesses collaborate instead of compete with each other?

From Competition to Collaboration

In a world of scarcity, competition thrives and could very well lead to a healthy market structure. Yet in a world of ideals that characterized by abundance & giving, a competitive mindset is rendered irrelevant. Just think about it: how could companies ever compete for shared ideals? There’s no scarcity in ideals?

Business Evolution: Consciousness

But the paradigm of competitive spirit lingers on in our thinking. Even within the abundance of shared ideals. Companies preferably affiliate with charitable organisations to support specific ideals. And although charities do good work, what they do is filling up the void that is created by government & free markets. Supporting charities will thus continue the way we do things around here with all its consequences and challenges we are currently faced with.’

Structural change will thus have to stem from either government or the way we do business. The shift in business consciousness where companies will work together based on shared ideals will happen within a decade or so. It only takes some time for us and our businesses to unlearn our learning and replace it by something new.

21st Century Conscious Companies

Conscious Companies are popping up all over the world. They show that profitability perfectly goes hand in hand with a higher purpose. These beacons of hope build their business based on giving, growth and connection. They are the ones who are changing the face of business, and the world while they’re at it.

A New Global Economic Restructuring

The Feds Have Sued for Peace and Detailed Settlement Negotiations Have Begun

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When Expectations and Reality Collide

1-8-12

2012 has entered with a loud, very harsh discordant wham of dissociative energies colliding with so many peoples’ hopes, dreams and aspirations. It has dealt a telling blow to the emotional and Spiritual equilibrium of people all across this world, regardless of what their beliefs are. Although this is precisely what we ourselves have been expecting to see happen, even though we had warned many people about this, it appears our warnings have been in vain, for the most part. Ironically this rollercoaster of sweeping energies began only a few hours before New Year’s Day. Since that day we have been hearing from people all over the planet whose emotional barometer is in a tizzy.

Here is the first category of people:

Some people, who should know better, are angry with God because the “same old same old” situations are still occurring. The range of emotions we are hearing of range from:

Confusion

Stress without tangible reason

Unlimited anger

Feelings of violence

Vast disappointment in other people

Strange fatigue

Disjointed thoughts

Disappointment with Divinity

And the list goes on and on. And these are the good people! Yes, this also includes the ridiculous notions that so many of these people had that they would be “lifted up, they would ascend” and guess what? It did not happen! So much for using discernment. In peoples’ haste, their desire to leave this planet and be free of all the unforgiving and unfathomable minds of other people here, the good people FORGOT or did not know about certain things that would take place here this year. People just do not take the time to understand “matter and energy.” MOST people are aware that all matter is energy but even they do not seem to realize that ALL energy exists on vastly different frequencies. No two are the same. All energy also exists on vastly different levels. Some of these vibratory levels CAN conjoin with same levels of frequencies, while other vibratory levels can rupture the frequencies. Because the Greater Consciousness that you have been waiting for is now operating at full throttle, it was inevitable that the clash between the frequencies and vibrations would occur.

The result is in great part what you have been experiencing. A few, a very few of you are aware of this. You have not only been acting AND REACTING non-sensibly to this impact on your own thoughts, you are still not aware of what this jet-stream incorporates. What we have written below is where the disconcerting energy is originating.

Here is the second category of people:

The second category are people who have disruptive natures, live in lust, hateful minds, hateful hearts, extremely violent tendencies, very damaged psyches. Their energies are like parasites seeking new hosts. Many religious people whose beliefs and bias are bounding up and down like an uncontrolled escalator. All drug addictions and the intensity of the drugs are causing people to have more dangerous thoughts and they are beginning to act upon them. Episodes of domestic violence and suicidal tendencies are escalating more so than at any time before. More politicians are acting out in sheer lunacy more so than any previous time in history. So many youths are out of control. Thoughts of vengeance founded on desperation and hate fill the air. Weather patterns are changing and impacting upon people, especially the people who are already emotionally unstable. And you wonder what’s wrong?

People need to understand that all the emotions that are coming from category two people are living energies that are just blasting through the hearts and minds of good people. Most people who are empathic, extremely sensitive to the emotions, feel it to the highest degree. Energy aligns with LIKE energy. That is the Cosmic rule. This means that these corrosive energies can and will impact upon you IF you allow it to. For example, have you ever been in a crowded room, perhaps a crowded elevator, or on a packed bus and you were feeling really good at the time? Did you notice that all the people around you were not feeling the same way, that there was a depressed feeling about them? Then what happened to you? The point is that that type of energy carries over and contaminates happy or stable people like a virus. Unless you realize what has happened you will succumb to the same energy.

Reality checks mean you have to look outside the box. You cannot go through this life, especially this year, thinking that everything will change overnight. It will not. And you can not go through this year believing that you can not be affected by that contagion. However, knowing what the enemy is and in this case the enemy IS the contagion, is how each of you can defeat it. Yes, there is a better life for all of us, but it will not happen in a blink of an eye this year. Believe us, if we did not know that this better way of life will be here soon, we would be the first ones off the planet. But guess what, we’re still here and we’re still standing.

Category three: Are the people who just don’t care. We have nothing more to say about them.

Then there is the fourth category: These are the Shadow Riders who are making their last stand.

We know no easy way to say this so we will just be blunt. This year, your beliefs your foundation in life, your realities, your determination to succeed “against all perceived odds,” your belief in Divinity, your belief in God HimSelf and above all your belief in yourself, will be tested mightily. Whether you succeed now or not is up to you. But then it always has been.

Those who can not cope with the shock and awe factor that began sweeping through at the beginning of this year will have great difficulty in keeping their emotional and Spiritual composure intact. People are stepping outside their own “center” before they built their foundation there. That would be the same as standing in a boat that has no deck. So they can not go anywhere but down. You do not want to be around them when they fall, they may be looking at you as if you were their “life preserver.” In that case, you will all drown. Don’t become a casualty of other people’s circumstances. You are now participating in the Third World War, the final world war. The greatest war for and about the mind. It is a battle for your mind and your Soul. Whether you like it or not this is a year of great intensity, deal with it.

Great expectations will take place and become part of a new reality, but they will not happen at the speed you wish. This is the Earth you know! Far too many people are expecting other people to change forthwith. Nobody changes for the better unless they want to and then actually proceed to do it. Human nature’s tendency is to revert back to what they know best.

We wish you the best for 2012 and beyond…. Celest and David

If you have a website, please post this. If you have an email list, please send it out. This way you can be of service to others while still helping yourself.

The Time to Know is NOW – Godumentary.com

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The Feds Have Sued for Peace and Detailed Settlement Negotiations Have Begun

Benjamin Fulford: The Feds Have Sued for Peace and Detailed Settlement Negotiations Have Begun

01-09-2012

http://benjaminfulford.typepad.com/

In a very major development, the Federal Reserve Board faction that is in de-facto control of the Obama regime and Israel has approached the White Dragon Society to negotiate a way to unfreeze their funds. They have promised to use any released funds for humanitarian projects and to develop hitherto forbidden technology.

The 130-nation group that announced a new financial system through the Conscious Media Network on January 1st also contacted the White Dragon Society and said they will prove with action, and not words, that they represent extremely powerful interests. This writer initially, and apparently incorrectly, denounced the announcement as a psy-ops because this group was not identical to the 117 nation Monaco group previously reported about in this newsletter.

All of these major factions will now have to reach an agreement. There will some serious horse-trading over the coming weeks before any sort of agreement is reached or public announcement is made but it appears a solution to the financial crisis is now on the horizon.

[The] group behind the current Washington D.C. regime came to negotiate with the White Dragon Society after a serious bout of recent midnight shoot-outs and daytime arrests crippled their control network in Japan. The D.C. representative admitted “We used to pick the Japanese Prime Ministers, we would tell them: ‘this is who it is going to be,’ and that was it but now we have lost control.”

In essence the corporate Washington D.C. government is now going to have to negotiate a chapter 11 restructuring of their debt to Japan. They have offered to pay off 90% of the debt with gold stashed in the Philippines and the rest in cash. There is a problem, of course, over who has the rights to the gold there as at least three claimants have emerged.

In any case, most of the US debt will have to be written off because the fact of the matter is the US cannot afford to pay it. The US will need to make some changes, though, before that is agreed to.

The real problem is that the US nation has had a structural trade deficit with the rest of the world for the past 30-years. This problem can be solved in two ways. One is to keep using the US dollar and wait until US living standards fall to third world levels before the US is competitive again. The other is to realize that 90% of the dollars ever created are now outside of the US and the interests of those dollar holders are not the same as those of the United States. That means the US needs to issue Treasury dollars of their own and devalue them relative to the international US dollar. That will mean the Chinese stuff in Wal-Mart will suddenly become more expensive but it will also mean the US economy will be competitive once again.

The other problem is that the US military industrial complex has to transform itself into a productive and life-enhancing entity instead of being a parasitical and life-destroying entity.

The initial discussions between the Feds and the White Dragon representative revealed no major disagreement over these fundamental issues. The next step is to open formal negotiations with the once-again independent Japanese government. This should start next week.

The other big problem now to be discussed is what to do about the huge gap between the off-ledger or shadow banking system and the on the books banking system. Essentially the off-ledger stuff has got way more zeros than the on the books stuff and some very greedy and powerful people are going to have to be forced to agree to erase a lot of zeros from their bank accounts. There is simply not enough reality to justify all those numbers. The result has been the off-ledger books have been frozen out of the on-ledger system.

This is where the factions have been secretly fighting each other using midnight-shoot outs, rival code books, promised astronomical bribes, spies and computer hackers. So far, the real world of on the books banking has prevailed over the virtual world of huge numbers hidden in “grey screens,” and “black screens.”

Some secret government files signed by Queen Elizabeth on behalf of the committee of 300 have also been sent to this writer and confirmed by BIS linked sources as genuine. They will be posted on this writer’s free blog as well for everybody to see. Note the astronomical numbers and the mention of a Chinese Red Dragon. The person who sent these files is connected to former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos was one of the many prominent victims of the owners of the Fed.

What is becoming increasingly apparent after talking to many different secret agents, secret societies and other groups is that ultimately the financial system is the link between group psychology and the real world. The gold, for example, exists in the real world but it is human psychology that determines who “owns” it. What is happening now is that the small secret group that controlled “finance,” is not secret any more

 

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7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye

Our world is fast changing politically, financially, spiritually and in least mentioned and observed ways – in geophysics.

Human beings are still asleep and oblivious to the happenings. They are deeply preoccupied with filling their little lives with silly and meaningless stuffs.

Uplift of the ground is seen at the beach of Lebu on the Chilean coast. Credit: Science/AAAS.

1. A new coast

Earthquakes not only rattle the Earth, but they radically change the landscape. The Chilean earthquake that struck on Feb. 27 changed the country’s landscape by raising the ground by more than 8 feet (2.5 meters) near the coast and sinking land farther inward, ((CONLINK|203|a recent study found)).

The massive quake caused marine platforms to rise out of the ocean, thereby shifting the coastline in some places 1,640 feet (500 m) closer to the ocean. [((CONLINK|204|See images of Chile's raised coast)).]

 

Scientists captured a dramatic submarine iceberg calving at the grounded end of the Columbia Glacier on June 17, 2005. Credit: Shad O’Neel/USGS.

2. Ice conveyor belt

Glaciers — huge rivers of ice formed when snow and ice accumulate over hundreds and thousands of years — act like a big conveyor belt that pushes ice into the sea. These icy rivers move slowly over time, some eventually dumping ice chunks into the sea, a process known as calving — a leading source of additional water for the world’s oceans.

Some kinds of glaciers, however, calve as often as once an hour. These kinds of glaciers are called “grounded,” meaning they rest on the ocean floor; others float on top of the ocean waters as they run into the sea. Scientists recently observed Alaska’s Columbia Glacier undergoing a transition from grounded to floating, which dramatically slowed its calving. [((CONLINK|164|See scientists studying the glacier)).]

This is an aerial view of the Soufriere Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat in the Lesser Antilles. The photograph was shows one of the volcanic domes that grew and then collapsed into the sea since the volcano became active in 1995. However, there have been far bigger collapse events in the distant past that involve the entire volcanic edifice. Credit: NOC.

3. Volcano collapse

Massive volcanic eruptions unleash ash and pumice into the sky and can be heard thousands of miles away — and even ((CONLINK|41|seen from space)). But volcanoes can change the landscape in the blink of an eye in a way other than blowing off their tops — by triggering huge landslides.

Thousands of years ago, a large collapse of the edifice of the Soufriere Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat in the Lesser Antilles sent landslides into the ocean. Some of these landslides involved nearly 1.2 cubic miles (5 cubic kilometers) of material that ((CONLINK|17|travelled underwater)) for miles.

Volcanic dome collapses occur when dome-shaped lava mounds on top of a volcano break apart due to a gas pressure build-up. Soufriere Hills’ eruptions have produced some of the largest volcanic dome collapses ever recorded.

Landslide on Mount Elgon in Uganda. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

4. Landslides

Landslides can wipe away villages in the blink of an eye even when volcanoes aren’t involved. Heavy rains triggered landslides on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda, on March 1, 2010.

Landslides are common in the region, but these recent landslides are much larger than previous ones. The landslides buried three villages, leaving 83 dead and more than 300 missing as of March 8, reported the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Ugandan government has also stated that ((CONLINK|230|deforestation)) may have played a role in the landslides.

Waterfall created during the flood that rapidly formed Lake Canyon Gorge. Credit: Richard Sears

5. Rapid megafloods

Some of the most spectacular canyons on Earth (and Mars) were probably formed in the geologic blink of an eye, suggests a recent study that found clues to their formation deep in the heart of Texas.

As anyone living in Comal County, Texas can attest, they can form even faster. Lake Canyon Gorge, a 23-feet- (7-meter-) deep canyon was ((CONLINK|103|carved in just three days)) by a flood in 2002. The flood scoured a swath of greenery in this Texas town, leaving sand-colored bedrock rubble in its wake.

A single catastrophic flood capable of cutting into bedrock is extremely rare, but the Comal flood gave scientists a front-row ticket to an event similar to those from the planet’s distant past, geologists said.

Rapid megafloods may have formed other canyons in the distant past as glacial ice dams released trapped water. Large floods may be responsible for the formation of some Martian canyons as well, said geologists.

See more >

8 Of The World Most Endangered Places >

 

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A New Global Economic Restructuring

Published on Jan 1, 2012 by bblcsedona

James Martinez reads a statement from representatives of a new global currency that is being announced and slowly integrated into our consciousness as a way to end the tyranny of the current banking systems.

Conscious Media Network has been approached by a representative of global leaders and financiers from 130 nations to broadcast a statement about a new global economic restructuring arising in 2012.

The statement will be delivered via a video-taped interview with a layperson on behalf of the consortium that has been working behind the scenes, on the problem of the unsustainable global economy for the past 8 years. The party who drafted this statement has stated, in response to conspiracy concerns, that “The usual suspects are not the suspects” and that the Global Elite also understand that the unsecured, digital money system has failed us all, including themselves.

This announcement is to serve as the introduction of a New Global Economic Structure that will begin surfacing in 2012. Those involved in this plan are calling it the “greatest humanitarian effort” in modern history. It will be for each of us to determine over time if this is a truthful statement.

CMN is serving as a neutral party for this broadcast and its claims as the economic consortium does not wish to break this news through mainstream media at this time. Please give this your serious attention, as it may be heralding a new way of conducting commerce on the planet that will effect us all well into our future.

A portion of this plan does include a dissolution of debt in a carefully considered and planned way. The plan itself is paradigm shattering, and only hinted at in the video-taped statement.

Please distribute this far and wide.

http://www.cmn.tv/news/new-world-currency/

There IS hope for humanity!

Are you going to ascend or not?

UPDATE

This is not a hoax

 

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