Author Archives: marcia

Veniaminof Volcano Alert

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Veniaminof volcano, Alaska update – (GV – June 10 10:39 UTC)
At daylight the activity cloud can well be seen on the FAA webcam at Perryville. The image below dates from 05:22 Local time (=13:22 UTC).

FAA image

FAA image

Veniaminof volcano, Alaska alert increase – (GV – June 10 10:39 UTC)
Over the past two days, AVO has detected gradually increasing seismic tremor beneath Veniaminof. They therefore raised the Aviation Color Code to Yellow and the Volcano Alert Level to Advisory.  Clear web-camera and satellite views currently show nothing unusual at the volcano. Similar seismic activity has been associated with ash emissions at Veniaminof in the past, most recently in 2005.
Yesterday seismic tremor continues at Veniaminof. Clear web camera views showed a steam plume over the past 24 hours, though it is difficult to see in daytime views. AVO has received no other reports of activity.
Update at the time of writing : Activity continues like we can see on the webcam images below. A smoke plume (steam and/or ash is difficult to see) is visible on these webcam picture (Perryville NW).
The seismogram shows a serious earthquake a little after 8 UTC. This is a far out in the sea earthquake which has nothing to do with the volcano. This was the earthquake which is viewable on the seismogram.

Some history : The volcano was the site of a colossal (VEI 6) eruption around 1750 BC. This eruption left a large caldera. In modern times the volcano has had numerous small eruptions (over ten of them since 1930); these are located at a cinder cone in the middle of the caldera.
Veniaminof has one of the highest elevations of Alaskan volcanoes. Partly for this reason, it is covered by a glacier that fills most of the caldera. Because of the glacier and the caldera walls, there is the possibility of a major flood from a future glacier run.

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The volcano during another activity period in 1984

The volcano during another activity period in 1984

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/05/27/wordwide-volcano-activity-copahue-volcano-chile-alert-raised-to-red/

The View for the Week

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June 9-16

The theme this week is twins and twinning.  Things that happen once will happen again, and while there are certain things that you cannot control, there are other things you can.

 

Overall Color for the Week:    Apricot Orange

This week marks a transition on all levels, so it is best to be ready for anything.  You can find some shake-ups and mix-ups in relationships, jobs, emotional levels, etc.  It is a good idea to have back-up plans.  Furthermore, you must be ready for just about anything, so take stuff in stride and do not allow yourself to get overly excited about the unexpected that falls into your path.  Your perspectives are changing and trying to see new stuff with old vision is not going to work.  It can leave you confused and angry.  This is not a week for attempting to place a round peg in a square hole.  This is a week for being present in what you do, making no judgments, and getting rid of a lot of those preconceived notions.  There can be some emotional upsets as some people are showing themselves unable o deal with the energetic changes and they are choosing ways to deal with them that perhaps you would not condone.  You cannot make up other’s minds for them.  This is a week for knowing that allowing is the proper mode of response.  You can be WHO you are in everything while at the same time honoring the choices others make.  This is important to remember.  Take care in traffic and in dealings with strangers.  There is a lot of fire in the air right now, and people can overreact.  It is important to be at one with your choices and to know that you have a deep inner wisdom.  Connect with the deep inner knowing of your heart center.  Stay within your core, ground and align every morning before taking on the day. It is also well to be alert to the messages you are receiving from your body.  This is a good time to make sure that you have stocked up on things like candles, batteries, bottled water, and non-perishable foods.  There is a degree of uncertainty in the electric grid right now and for some time to come.  If you couple that with some of the solar storms that are beginning and will continue for the next few months, there can be challenges to your usual lifestyle as well as to your electronics.

 

On the larger scale the transitions continue.  There are angry people in power who can no longer ‘keep a lid on it’.  You will be seeing the results of this as the week progresses.  There are going to be a number of things thrown, like a net, upon people in general, upon the grassroots, but they have not take into account that people are fed up.  They have had enough.  Like in Turkey, these kinds of grassroots movements are growing, are spreading.  It should be interesting to see what this all brings forth. Women especially in countries in which they have been oppressed, even though the media might tell you they are not oppressed, will be making their power felt.  India is in the balance.  Interesting, one of the oldest civilizations, with a story mired and secreted.  Things are boiling up from beneath.  There will be a general movement in consort with the Earth energies that will bring forth many unexpected results.  The weather is wafting, wafting, and will hit here and there without program, without prediction. This can lead to craziness in meteorological areas.  There is something brewing in the Gulf.  It is a dark night.  It can make itself felt this week, but may not materialize for some time.   There is something coming onto the scene.  It is not yet formed.  Also look to the skies.  There is some kind of movement happening within the galactic plane.

Government Surveillance Timeline

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The Domestic Surveillance Boom, From Bush to Obama

Timeline: PRISM, Total Information Awareness, and other moments in electronic eavesdropping after 9/11.

—By , , and

| Fri Jun. 7, 2013 3:56 AM PDT

Recent reports have detailed how the National Security Agency (NSA) has been vacuuming up millions of Americans’ phone data, online communications and files, and credit card transaction details. How did we get here?

2001 September 11: Nearly 3,000 people are killed when terrorists fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and crash another in Pennsylvania. Soon afterward, the NSA begins a “special collection program” to track the communications of Al Qaeda leaders and suspected terrorists.

George W. Bush speaks at the NSA in 2002. NSA

October 4: President George W. Bush secretly authorizes the NSA to track suspected terrorists by monitoring domestic communications without a warrant. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prohibits the government from eavesdropping inside the United States without first getting a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also known as the FISA court.

October 26: Bush signs the Patriot Act. The law expands the government’s electronic surveillance powers. “The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including emails, the internet, and cellphones,” Bush declares.
2002

TIA logo WikiMedia Commons

February 13: The New York Times reports that the Information Awareness Office, a new Pentagon agency headed by retired vice admiral and Iran-Contra figure John Poindexter, “is developing technologies to give federal officials instant access to vast new surveillance and information-analysis systems.”

November 9: Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, “a vast electronic dragnet” that could sweep up electronic and voice communications as well as financial data, is revealed in the Times.
2003 September 25: Congress shuts down the Information Awareness Office over fears that TIA could violate Americans’ privacy.
2004 March 10: Deputy Attorney General James Comey prevents White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card from trying to persuade Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized, to reauthorize the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. The progam is modified in 2004 due to objections from the Justice Department and a FISA judge.
2005 December 16: The New York Times unmasks the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Bush says the program was regularly reviewed and that he had reauthorized it more than 30 times.
2006

NSA’s National Security Operations Center NSA

March 6: The Patriot Act is renewed and signed by Bush.

May 11: USA Today reports that the NSA has been tracking tens of millions of Americans’ phone calls using data provided by AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth.

May 25: Former AT&T technician Mark Klein says that in 2002 the company let the NSA install a device in one of its San Francisco facilities that allowed the government to monitor internet and phone traffic.

June 21: Salon reports that other former AT&T workers say the company’s internet traffic routed through St. Louis may be tapped by a government agency, likely the NSA.
2007 August 1: Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) says the Bush administration “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.”September 11: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Microsoft, according to official documents recently published by the Guardian. The program’s existence is not revealed until June 2013.
2008 March 12: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Yahoo, according to official documents.July 10: Bush signs the FISA Amendments Act, which gives the federal government the power to compel telecoms to provide access to emails, phone calls, and text messages if one party is “reasonably believed” to be overseas. The law also gives legal immunity to the phone companies that had participated in the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Obama opposes extending immunity to the phone companies, but votes for what he calls “an improved but imperfect bill.”

August: In a secret decision, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review rules that telecoms must cooperate with federal requests to monitor the international communications of Americans suspected of being terrorists.
2009

NSA headquarters NSA

January 4: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Google, according to official documents.

April 15: Intelligence officials tell the New York Times about the “overcollection” of domestic communication by the NSA despite the new limits set in 2008.

June 3: A federal judge affirms the constitutionality of retroactive immunity for the companies that participated in the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping program. (An appeals court upholds the ruling in December 2011.) On the same day, the NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Facebook, according to official documents.

December 7: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from PalTalk, according to official documents.
2010 March 10: A federal judge rules that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program started during the Bush administration is illegal.April 15: Federal authorities charge Thomas Drake, an NSA employee passed information about the agency’s activities to reporters, under the Espionage Act. He accepts a plea deal on a lesser charge in 2011.

September 24: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from YouTube, according to official documents.
2011 January: NSA begins construction of a massive, 1 million square foot, $2 billion data center in Utah. “Just as we defend our lands, America also needs to also defend our cyberspace,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says at the groundbreaking ceremony. It is scheduled to be completed in September 2013.February 6: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Skype, according to official documents.

March 31: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from AOL, according to official documents.

May 7: The Patriot Act is renewed and signed by President Barack Obama.

May 26: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) say that the Department of Justice has been misapplying the Patriot Act to allow expanded domestic surveillance. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” says Wyden.
2012 June 15: The inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it “would itself violate the privacy of US persons” to reveal how many people the NSA had tracked inside the country.July 20: In a letter to Wyden, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concedes that some of the surveillance conducted under the 2008 FISA amendment has “sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law” and that one occasion a FISA judge found such “collection” to violate the Fourth Amendment.

October: The NSA’s PRISM program begins getting data from Apple, according to official documents.

December 30: Obama signs a five-year extension of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Amendments to provide more oversight of untargeted mass wiretapping are defeated in the Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says the surveillance of foreigners’ communications in the United States “produced and continues to produce significant information that is vital to defend the nation against international terrorism and other threats.”
2013

PRISM documents NSA/The Guardian

March 12: During an intelligence committee hearing, Sen. Wyden asks Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s reply: “No sir.”

June 5: The Guardian reports that the NSA has been collecting millions of Verizon customers’ call data. The FISA court approved the surveillance in April.

June 6: The Washington Post and the Guardian reveal the existence of PRISM, a top-secret NSA program that has access to emails, documents, audio, video, photographs, and connection logs from nine internet firms. The program, started in 2007, mines user data from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The Wall Street Journal reports that the NSA also has been accessing AT&T and Sprint Nextel customer data as well as credit card transaction data.

June 7: “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about,” Obama says at a speech in Silicon Valley. “But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.” He adds, “”You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”

 

from:    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/timeline-nsa-domestic-surveillance-bush-obama

Justice Department Blocking Release of Spy Info

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Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance

Government lawyers are trying to keep buried a classified court finding that a domestic spying program went too far.

—By

| Fri Jun. 7, 2013

In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week’s disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:

* On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

* I believe that the government’s implementation of Section 702 of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.

For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. The FISA court Wyden referred to oversees the surveillance programs run by the government, authorizing requests for various surveillance activities related to national security, and it does this behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Wyden’s statements led to an obvious conclusion: He had seen a secret FISA court opinion that ruled that one surveillance program was unconstitutional and violated the spirit of the law. But, yet again, Wyden could not publicly identify this program.

“When the government hides court opinions describing unconstitutional government action, America’s national security is harmed,” argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Enter the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest group focused on digital rights. It quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department for any written opinion or order of the FISA court that held government surveillance was improper or unconstitutional. The Justice Department did not respond, and EFF was forced to file a lawsuit a month later.

It took the Justice Department four months to reply. The government’s lawyers noted that they had located records responsive to the request, including a FISA court opinion. But the department was withholding the opinion because it was classified.

EFF pushed ahead with its lawsuit, and in a filing in April, the Justice Department acknowledged that the document in question was an 86-page opinion the FISA court had issued on October 3, 2011. Again, there was no reference to the specific surveillance activity that the court had found improper or unconstitutional. And now the department argued that the opinion was controlled by the FISA court and could only be released by that body, not by the Justice Department or through an order of a federal district court. In other words, leave us alone and take this case to the secret FISA court itself.

This was puzzling to EFF, according to David Sobel, a lawyer for the group. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union had asked the FISA court to release an opinion, and the court had informed the ACLU to take the matter up with the Justice Department and work through a district court, if necessary.

So there was a contradiction within the government. “It’s a bizarre catch-22,” Sobel says. On its website, EFF compared this situation to a Kafka plot: “A public trapped between conflicting rules and a secret judicial body, with little transparency or public oversight, seems like a page ripped from The Trial.”

Before EFF could get a ruling on whether this opinion can be declassified and released, it had to first sort out this Alice in Wonderland situation. Consequently, last month, it filed a motion with the FISA court to resolve this aspect of the case. “We want the FISA court to say that if the district court says the opinion should be released, there is noting in its rules that prevents that,” Sobel says. Then EFF can resume its battle with the Justice Department in federal district court for the release of the opinion. The Justice Department was ordered by the FISA court to respond by June 7 to the motion EFF submitted to the FISA court.

Currently, given the conflicting positions of the Justice Department and the FISA court, Sobel notes, “there is no court you can go to to challenge the secrecy” protecting an opinion noting that the government acted unconstitutionally. On its website, EFF observes, “Granted, it’s likely that some of the information contained within FISC opinions should be kept secret; but, when the government hides court opinions describing unconstitutional government action, America’s national security is harmed: not by disclosure of our intelligence capabilities, but through the erosion of our commitment to the rule of law.”

As news reports emerge about the massive phone records and internet surveillance programs—each of which began during the Bush administration and were carried out under congressional oversight and FISA court review—critics on the left and right have accused the government of going too far in sweeping up data, including information related to Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. There’s no telling if the 86-page FISA court opinion EFF seeks is directly related to either of these two programs, but EFF’s pursuit of this document shows just how difficult it is—perhaps impossible—for the public to pry from the government information about domestic surveillance gone wrong.

from:     http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion

Jeff Masters on Record Floods in Europe

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A historic multi-billion dollar flood disaster has killed at least eighteen people in Central Europe after record flooding unprecedented since the Middle Ages hit major rivers in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia over the past two weeks. The Danube River in Passau, Germany hit the highest level since 1501, and the Saale River in Halle, Germany was the highest in its 400-year period of record. Numerous cities recorded their highest flood waters in more than a century, although in some locations the great flood of 2002 was higher. The Danube is expected to crest in Hungary’s capital city of Budapest on June 10 at the highest flood level on record, 35 cm higher than the record set in 2006. The flooding was caused by torrential rains that fell on already wet soils. In a 2-day period from May 30 – June 1, portions of Austria received the amount of rain that normally falls in two-and-half months: 150 to 200 mm (5.9 to 7.9″), with isolated regions experiencing 250 mm (9.8″). This two-day rain event had a greater than 1-in-100 year recurrence interval, according to the Austrian Meteorological Agency, ZAMG. Prior to the late May rains, Austria had its seventh wettest spring in 150 years, which had resulted in the ground in the region becoming saturated, leading to greater runoff when the rains began.


Figure 1. Aerial view of the flooded Danube River in Deggendorf, Germany on Friday, June 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Armin Wegel)


Figure 2. The Danube River in Mainz, Germany was barely kept in check by a floodwall built by IBS Engineering. Image credit: IBS Engineering.

Floods caused by a blocking high pressure system
The primary cause of the torrential rains over Central Europe during late May and early June was large loop in the jet stream that developed over Europe and got stuck in place. A “blocking high” set up over Northern Europe, forcing two low pressure systems, “Frederik” and “Günther”, to avoid Northern Europe and instead track over Central Europe. The extreme kink in the jet stream ushered in a strong southerly flow of moisture-laden air from the Mediterranean Sea over Central Europe, which met up with colder air flowing from the north due to the stuck jet stream pattern, allowing “Frederik” and “Günther” to dump 1-in-100 year rains. The stuck jet stream pattern also caused record May heat in northern Finland and surrounding regions of Russia and Sweden, where temperatures averaged an astonishing 12°C (21°F) above average for a week at the end of May. All-time May heat records–as high as 87°F–were set at stations north of the Arctic Circle in Finland.


Figure 3. Nine-day rainfall amounts in portions of Southern Germany and Western Austria exceeded 12″ (305 mm.) Image credit: ZAMG.

If it seems like getting two 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year floods in eleven years is a bit suspicious–well, it is. Those recurrence intervals are based on weather statistics from Earth’s former climate. We are now in a new climate regime with more heat and moisture in the atmosphere, combined with altered jet stream patterns, which makes major flooding disasters more likely in certain parts of the world, like Central Europe. As I discussed in a March 2013 post, “Are atmospheric flow patterns favorable for summer extreme weather increasing?”, research published this year by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in German found that extreme summertime jet stream patterns had become twice as common during 2001 – 2012 compared to the previous 22 years. One of these extreme patterns occurred in August 2002, during Central Europe’s last 1-in-100 to 1-in-500 year flood. When the jet stream goes into one of these extreme configurations, it freezes in its tracks for weeks, resulting in an extended period of extreme heat or flooding, depending upon where the high-amplitude part of the jet stream lies. The scientists found that because human-caused global warming is causing the Arctic to heat up more than twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet, a unique resonance pattern capable of causing this behavior was resulting. According to German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, “Planetary wave [jet stream] amplitudes have been very high in the last few weeks; we think this plays a role in the current German flooding event.” More rains are in store for the flood area through Monday, then the blocking pattern responsible for the great 2013 Central European flood is expected to disintegrate, resulting in a return to more typical June weather for the next two weeks.


Figure 4. The northward wind speed (negative values, blue on the map, indicate southward flow) at an altitude of 300 mb in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during July 1980, July 2011, and the last twelve days of May 2013. July of 2011 featured an unusually intense and long-lasting heat wave in the U.S. (the 4th warmest month in U.S. history), and the normally weak and irregular waves (like observed during the relatively normal July of 1980) were replaced by a strong and regular wave pattern. Late May 2013 was also very extreme, resulting the great Central European floods of 2013. Image credit: Vladimir Petoukhov and Stefan Rahmstorf.

Links
Stefan Rahmstorf’s blog (translated from German) on the unusual jet stream patterns that caused the Central European floods of 2013.

NASA has high-resolution MODIS satellite images showing the flooding of the Elbe River in Germany.

My April 2013 post, “Unusually cold spring in Europe and the Southeast U.S. due to the Arctic Oscillation”, has a good summary of recent unusual jet stream patterns and the science behind them.

Video 1. Climate, Ice, and Weather Whiplash: In this June 3, 2013 video by the Yale Climate Forum’s Peter Sinclair, Rutgers’ Jennifer Francis and Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters explore the ‘Why?’ of two years of mirror images of weather across North America.

I’m in Granby, Colorado this week for the American Geophysical Union’s Chapman Conference on Climate Change Communication. Many of the talks will be webcast live; you can see a list of the talks (times in MDT) here. My talk, “The Weather Underground Experience,” is scheduled for Monday at 3 pm MDT. I’ll give a 15-minute overview of the history of wunderground, and what I’ve learned about communicating weather and climate change information along the way. My blog updates this week may be somewhat random as a result of the conference, but I’m not seeing anything in the tropics worthy of discussion at this point

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

Australia Earthquake

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Very Strong earthquake in a nearly unpopulated region of Australia

Last update: June 9, 2013 at 3:35 pm by By

Update : The earthquake was reasonably close to Yulara (about 100 km) – which had damage through an earthquake in 1989.

Update : These earthquakes are not uncommon in Northern Territory and South Australia with a similar earthquake occurring last year. Click here for more information about historic damaging quakes in Australia (CATDAT).

Update : USGS expects a very strong shaking close to the epicenter as a result of the very shallow depth of only 3,9 km. Luckily, there is no settlement with more than 1000 inhabitants.

A very strong earthquake with Magnitude 5.6 occured in the desert region near the border of South Australia and Northern Territory. This area is nearly unpopulated, so we do not expect any larger damage from this quake.
ShakeMap Australia

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 5.5

Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-09 23:52:13

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-06-09 14:22:13

Depth (Hypocenter)  : 10 km

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/09/very-strong-earthquake-northern-territory-australia-on-june-9-2013/

Sunday, 06/09 Chromoscope

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Sunday, June 9:    Periwinkle Blue

It is time to get going on all those projects that assist you in WHO you are.  If you are a crystal worker, then it is time to reintroduce yourself to those crystals and listen for their voices to tell you what it is that needs to be done.  If you work with Nature, then spend some time out there.  Pay attention, honor, and open.  If you are a body worker, open to the healing energies of the Universe.  If you are a psychic, then know that things are shifting, and that a whole new layer of communication is there for you to tap.  All light-workers, however you express your talents, it is time today to honor all that you know, how far you have come, the wonder of you, and be open to receive more light and expansion from All That Is.  This week makers a transition and the energies are starting to awaken those elements that have been marinating for so long.  There is serendipity and synchronicity in the air today.  Open and receive.  You can find some of the joy returning.

On Ascension

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Being Ascended

Kara Schallock
a message from Kara Schallock
Thursday, 6 June, 2013

For this past week I have been sharing how many of us have risen to the next level of Ascension on my Facebook Community Page. What is most important now is to realize and know this by checking within and then stepping up in that Awareness and Truth. Many, however, will continue to play in the old duality. Why? Because it’s what they’re used to, so they keep perpetuating it by continuing to react to circumstances and continuing to act from their old beliefs and patterns. So go beneath the surface to see where you really reside. When you focus on the New, on being Love, on Peace and Unity, etc.  the outer world will eventually reflect that. If you focus on duality, on what’s wrong in life, you hold the old paradigm in place. So, it still is about choice. Gaia is a free will zone, so things don’t just automatically happen; you create everything. That is what is meant by being a spiritually sovereign being; we’re not puppets any longer. The Wizard is us. The Wizard is Divine; we are of Source; there is no separation between us and the Divine.

Those that know the Truth and live from that knowing continue to rise and anchor the New. The next step then is to live it in everyday life. In this way, the energy of Who we are emanates out in waves of high dimensional Christ Consciousness that touches the Earth and all others, creating a rise in people waking up and helps Gaia transform into Her rightful place as a high dimensional planet of Love. We don’t have to rescue, save, or preach to others; all we have to do is Be All That We Are…and that is Love. Love is our essence and from that knowing, we love and are more loving. Love is a noun; and from this, the verb of loving comes forth.

From being ascended comes much Freedom. One does not take things personally, ceases to control their life and others, realizes that we’re all connected as One, is unconditionally loving with boundaries if needed, trusts their Guidance and follows it, puts no-one on a pedestal, even Guides and Angels, has an inner Joy and Peace no matter what is going on, is able to flow with life’s challenges and changes, lets go of trying to figure things out and feels their way through life, rather than analyzing and seeking answers elsewhere. These, of course, are just some of the ways to know that you’ve moved up in your Ascension Path. And, of course, this isn’t an either/or; most are somewhere in the middle, gently letting go of the old and embracing the New and often at the same time.

Know too that your purpose is not necessarily your career. Purpose is essence and is expressed in everything you do. The form of purpose shifts as your consciousness shifts. It is important to drop categories, for that is just creating another box and that is not how energy works; energy flows and expands. In other words, you might consider not labeling yourself in this way: “I am a Lightworker,” “I am a massage therapist,” “I am a Reiki master,” etc. When you do that you stay stuck in that form. Rather, perhaps state, “I AM Love,” “I AM Peace,” “I AM expressing my highest self,” etc. As you shift, so does your consciousness and so does your purpose. By the way, putting I AM before anything empowers it and is a Divine statement of intention in that Moment.

While ascended, you do not cease having challenges or having old energies surface. How you deal with them does change however. Your ascended/New perception sees challenge as opportunity; the opportunity to ascend and expand more into God Consciousness. We don’t just ascend and stop. Ascension is ceaseless and many have ascended over and over throughout lifetimes. This time, however, it’s different. In the past upon ascending, we left the planet. This time we stay in the physical helping others and Gaia ascend as well.

Ascension is not a place; it is a consciousness; an Awareness. Many may be fully integrated as an ascended master, shining their humble Light for others without attachment to whether others ascend or not. In fact, detachment to outcome is a hallmark of an ascended master. Being ascended is not without ego. Ego in the ascended master is the mental, emotional and physical expression of Soul. One of the purposes of Ascension is to have the ego dissolve into the Soul and express the Soul’s desires through the mental, emotional and physical bodies. The best way to have this happen is through meditation and merging consciously with Soul. Of course, the Soul’s only desire is to create Heaven on Earth in Oneness, Love, Joy, Peace and all the Soul Essences which are felt within and expressed outwardly; and then all of life is reflected in this Truth. This is being cohesive mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually; all our parts flow as One. The Soul is perfect, Divine, and is whole. There is no hurting the Soul, as there is no hurting Source.

Many, of course, are somewhere in transit, still releasing and yet, still aware that they are completely different than they were even a month ago. There are others who are ascended, but don’t have that Awareness, still acting as if they are in duality. And then others are asleep or resisting the changes that would move them up in consciousness and may still enjoy complaining, drama, chaos and the old 3D world view. They do not realize that if they let go of these 3D aspects, life could be so beautiful. Just know that wherever you are is perfect for your evolution. Life will certainly reflect back to you what your consciousness is within.

We are making all kinds of choices in life. Those choices made from your Heart will flow and bring to you many rewards, even if they don’t seem like it at the time. They will indeed raise you in consciousness. Choices made from the head are all based on the past and most likely on fear. They hold you back in the old. Of course, if that’s where you want to stay, then for sure make choices based on past experiences. There is no judgment in that. Know that when you have to know why, when, where, how and what, you are engaged in the intellect. There is no movement in this. However, if you feel first with your Heart and express it through your intellect, you will have activated your Higher Heart-Higher Mind. You can then express your Heart-feelings through communication, whether writing or speaking or any other expression of communication. Of course, there is no right or wrong way to do anything, we are learning as we go.

When you listen to your Heart’s knowing; your Soul’s Guidance; you continue to move along your Path and whatever that brings into your experience is always to raise you higher. And in that, you become aware, which leads you to more choices based on your more expanded consciousness. When something doesn’t feel right, you may choose to leave it behind. When you feel expanded and energized, it is showing you that you are flowing in the more open direction for your evolution. If it feels wrong or constricted, you have an opportunity to make a different choice. Whatever you choose always takes you in a particular direction.

So, as you continue to ascend, it is always best to keep your vibration high, make Heartfelt, guided choices all the while continuing to release the old fears, shoulds, should nots, and supposed-to’s that are all a part of the old paradigm. Do realize too that we don’t want to create another paradigm, for that is too limiting for us. Rather, be free to expand unfettered and only grounded to your Soul, Source and Gaia’s Crystal Cluster (Her Heart and Soul).

When you feel the old tugging at you, remind yourself that it is done and it is an illusion. It is during these times when surely you are ready for another step in your Ascension. So gracefully let go of the old, release it in the Sacred Rose, if you are guided, and stay focused on Who you are: an ascended and ascending Being of Love.

Continue to know Who you are, follow your Heart and know that We are creating a New Reality and New Earth. Stay balanced and grounded and know you are guided, loved and safe.

Copyright: Feel free to share any portion of the Ascension Notes. I would appreciate being credited.http://www.soulsticerising.com

from:    http://spiritlibrary.com/kara-schallock/being-ascended

Center for All Sorts of Data in Utah

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Behold the NSA’s Dark Star: the Utah Data Center

by

It’s the ultimate machine of what’s become our Paranoid State. Clive Irving on the Orwellian mass-surveillance data center rising in the Utah desert.

Remember the Stasi, the secret police who operated in East Germany when it was a communist state? When the Berlin Wall came down, East Germans discovered they had been living in a society so rotted by paranoia that at least one in three of its adult citizens were spying on the other two.

NSA Phone Records
NSA’s Utah Data Center shown June 6, in Bluffdale, Utah. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

In the case of East Germany, this ended up producing warehouses stuffed with bulging files containing the minutely observed details of the everyday, humdrum lives of millions. The product was both banal and, in its range and results, terrifying (a world caught beautifully in the film The Lives of Others).

In the case of the U.S., the apotheosis of the same mind-set lies in a sprawling complex at Camp Williams, Utah, due to start operating this fall. Billions of dollars have gone into creating this cyberintelligence facility for the National Security Agency.

There’s no official explanation of the Utah Data Center’s real mission, except that it’s the largest of a network of data farms including sites in Colorado, Georgia, and Maryland. But it’s obviously been built to vastly increase the agency’s capacity to suck in, digest, analyze, and store whatever the intelligence community decides to collect. As of this week, we know a lot more about the kind of data that includes.

Of course, the U.S. is still far from being the police state that East Germany was. But I do think we need to better understand how this technological juggernaut works, what its scope really is—and particularly we need to appreciate how our political acceptance of this scale of surveillance is shaping the kind of society we are.

The national-security industrial complex is now of the size, power, and influence of the military-industrial complex of the Cold War, which President Eisenhower first defined and warned of. As then, this complex uses the national interest as a reason for having to operate in secrecy, and invokes patriotism—literally in the PATRIOT Act—to create a political consensus.

Nineteen terrorists with minimal technology—box cutters—have enabled the counterterrorism industry to enjoy unbounded reach. White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest used the familiar argument to defend the newly disclosed surveillance: it was, he said, “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terror activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”

NSA Phone Records
The Utah Data Center is part of “a network of data farms” in the U.S. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

Where is it absolutely essential to violate privacy and where not?

That’s actually a simplification. Surveillance has two fundamental purposes: to track the known and discover the unknown. It’s hard to comprehend the science involved. How, for example, do you cull billions of bytes of data a second in a way that discriminates between the useless and the essential? Only one thing is for sure, and that is that the policy driving the velocity of the NSA’s ever-expanding sweeps is first to make those sweeps as global and indiscriminate as possible and then to apply algorithms able to instantly see the significant from the insignificant. If only it were that simple.

It is patently easy to defend the resources devoted to intelligence gathering by saying that many attacks have been thwarted, without saying what and where they were. Neither the Boston Marathon atrocity nor the London assassination of a British soldier were detected in advance, even though intelligence services in both countries had the perpetrators on their radar.

There is a certain kind of intellectual depravity in trying to have us accept that all surveillance is good for us. Politicians of both parties who now say there is nothing new in what has been revealed, that this was all authorized and kosher, are captives of this depravity, because they don’t really know any more than we do where to draw the line. Where is it absolutely essential to violate privacy and where not?

This is made even worse by the cover of enormous technical complexity. At least the Stasi’s low-tech methods could be seen for what they were, part of a cumbersome and gross bureaucratic machine, essentially human in its systems, allowing culpability to be clearly assigned.

In our case there is the Dark Star factor, like the Utah operation, working on robotic principles, not dependent on putting bugs in chandeliers, leaving no fingerprints, and capable of awesome penetration. We have the ultimate machine of the Paranoid State, an Orwellian apparatus that intoxicates its operators with its efficiency, enthralls its masters with its omniscience, and emasculates its political overseers with its promise of efficacy.

from:    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/08/behold-the-nsa-s-dark-star-the-utah-data-center.html

A State of North Colorado

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Colorado secede? Counties weigh exit plan to form state of ‘North Colorado’

Colorado secede? It sounds implausible, but the idea of counties withdrawing from one state to form a new one isn’t impossible. But some big hurdles – like the US Constitution – make it very difficult.

By , Staff writer / June 8, 2013

Colorado state flag. Some rural counties in the state want to secede, forming a new state of ‘North Colorado.’

The idea is rooted in the political rift that many Coloradans – especially rural ones – feel with a Denver-based state legislature that has taken a liberal turn in recent years.

A new state, if it formed, might be called North Colorado.

Would that mean that the rest of the current state would need to become South Colorado? How would the US flag look with 51 stars? Would this give similar ideas to politically restive sections of other states?

It may be too early to ask such questions. The road to forming a new state is a difficult one.

The move would require not just a secession vote showing the counties’ desire to depart. It would also require votes of approval by Colorado’s Legislature and by the US Congress, according to Article 4 of the US Constitution.

“No new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress,” the Constitution says.

According to the National Constitution Center, an organization based in Philadelphia, this process “has been used successfully to create five states: Vermont (from New York, in 1791); Kentucky (from Virginia, in 1792); Tennessee (from North Carolina, in 1796); Maine (from Massachusetts, in 1820); and West Virginia (from Virginia, in 1863).”

So it can be done. And in Colorado, the idea is on the table.

In a Thursday news article, the Coloradan website said the state’s Democrat-controlled Legislature has recently passed laws for stricter gun control, greater reliance on renewable energy in rural areas, and restraints on what was perceived as cruel treatment of livestock.

“Our vision and our morals are no longer represented by the state [Legislature] and the current [governor’s] administration, and we think it’s time that we do take seriously what our options are,” said Douglas Rademacher, a Weld County Commissioner. “This is just one of our options, but we will be moving forward with it.”

In addition to Weld County, other counties weighing the new-state idea are Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma, and Kit Carson.

A state of North Colorado containing those counties would not be the smallest US state, in land area, but it would have the smallest population.

Similar ideas have sprung up in other US states. But again, since 1863, secession to form a new state hasn’t actually happened.

from:    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0608/Colorado-secede-Counties-weigh-exit-plan-to-form-state-of-North-Colorado