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On Prana, Chakras, & Meditation

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Navel Gazing 101 - a Mini-Meditation Seminar

Navel Gazing 101 – a Mini-Meditation Seminar

Story by: Norma Gentile with Archangel Michael

The Navel Chakra – a quick primer
The primary way that the body generates its own prana (energy or chi) is through the navel chakra and your breath.  As you breathe in there are two vortexes located at your physical navel; one in front and in back. With each breath prana is drawn through the back and front vortexes of the navel chakra into the core of your body.  To the extent that the navel chakra (both front and back vortexes) are tuned to your soul and body accurately you generate prana that is usable by your body now.

Just like any of the multitude of major and minor chakras in our body, our navel chakra is probably somewhat out of tune with our soul’s journey in our body. One of the most common causes of not having enough ‘get up and go’ or ‘seeing it through to the end’ is having the navel chakra not tuned to your body, to your soul, or tuned into this moment in time.  Too often our navel chakra still reflects the umbilical cord connection to our mother or our family.  It can also be tuned to generate energy for our body as it existed during another period of our life.  Or even be tuned to generate life force for a spouse or other person we deem more needful or more important than our self.

As the navel vortexes, both in back and in front, are tuned to your body and soul in this moment now, energy is generated that is usable by your entire chakra system. This energy is often referred to as prana or chi. Great Masters of various spiritual traditions have the ability to generate large amounts of prana within their body.  This amassing of prana allows them to relate to the physical world without being bound by all of the physical world’s rules.  They can, at times, choose to use this prana as a means of moving outside of the rules dictated by our physical universe.

Prana exists all around us.  Our personal prana, tuned specifically to our bodies, exists within the pranic tube (running up and down in the center of our bodies) and in pranic spheres located in and around our body. We have the ability to store prana that our body can use within pranic spheres located in our head, heart, and navel. There appear to be other spheres of pranic energy above and below the physical body as well.  At the present moment I am seeing the three pranic spheres within the body as being the most active.
The pranic sphere related to the body center lies deep within the body at or just under the navel chakra.  Its center point varies from person to person. I see it either directly behind the physical navel or hovering an inch or two lower in the body. This lower position is the most common; where the upper part of the pranic sphere intersects with center of the navel chakra.
photo NavelPranicTube_zpsb300a328.jpg
The pranic sphere located at your navel is the equivalent of your magic ball. It is the basis of the prana within your pranic tube and hence the entire chakra system.  It is from this sphere that prana (energy, chi) is distributed to every major chakra in your body through the pranic tube.  Sometimes a depletion of energy in your life or body stems from an inability to generate sufficient prana at the navel chakra.

Each of the major chakras has its center within the pranic tube.  Each chakra is supplied with prana from the central channel or pranic tube.  Each chakra then collects its own appropriate energies by drawing additional energy or prana from the outside into the core of the chakra through the webbing of the vortex that make up each chakra. The prana provided in the pranic tube mixes with the prana drawn in and tuned by the vortex of the chakra. This prana, unique to each chakra, is then dispersed from the chakra’s core into the pranic tube to other chakras and to layers of the aura surrounding and interpenetrating the physical body.  In this fashion the prana generated at the navel chakra becomes the basis of all prana available to your body.

If there is a lack of this most basic navel prana, the entire process of creating energies for the body to use at each of the chakras is greatly diminished. In my private practice I am routinely finding that it is not individual chakra issues we are addressing now, but overall issues related to simply not generating enough navel chakra prana in our daily living.

As a singer I am fortunate because I can set aside time to sing each day.  As I sing I naturally breathe deeply and generate prana.  When I do yoga or swim I am also generating prana.  But how often do we give ourselves permission to do something that has us actively engaged in conscious breathing?  For most people the answer is never.

Breathing Practice to Build Prana
Let’s change that with a simple conscious breathing practice you can do on your own.  This is especially good to do when needing to move out of boredom or stagnation.  Don’t do this while driving as it might make you light-headed or distract you.  Do try this while seated and in a location where you feel comfortable.

Find your navel chakra.  You may need to put your hand on your body to do this.  Now imagine or feel where your navel’s pranic sphere might be.  You don’t have to know this exactly or even be sure of it.  Just let yourself explore the possibility that there is a sphere of energy within your body at or slightly below your physical navel.

Breathe out all the way.  Feel the muscles of your abdomen and lower torso move inward.  You may feel the upper abdomen directly below your ribs move inward and also upward a bit.  This is the diaphragm moving upward and expelling air out from your lungs.

Now relax and allow the air to move back into all of the areas of your body that it just moved out of.  While our intake of air is of course limited to our lungs, the process of breathing can involve almost every muscle of our body.  For now, let’s focus on our torso, and allowing all the areas that want to move with the breath to be free to move.

Start with a slow count of two.

One – Two breathe out.

One – Two breathe in.

Repeat four times

Now go to a count of three.

One – Two –Three breathe out.

One – Two – Three breathe in.

Repeat four times

Now do the same on a count of four.

One – Two –Three – Four breathe out.

One – Two – Three – Four breathe in.

Repeat four times.  You may continue this pattern of breathing as long as you feel you want to, up to ten minutes.

If at any time you feel you are getting out of breath and need to breathe more quickly do so, and start the breathing pattern over again at One – Two. As you practice this you will find that you can slow down the counting more and more.  This type of breathing, inhaling and exhaling at the same speed and amount, generates a lovely quality of balance in the overall energy field of your body. It creates prana that is tuned to your own body’s balance. This breathing pattern done daily will help to supply your body with its own source of well refined prana.

After you finish breathing, or even during the process, you may notice that the pranic sphere appears to be growing larger or brighter. For those who do not see energies, your body may feel fuller or warmer around your navel. This indicates you are successfully generating more of your own prana as you breathe.

You may also notice discomfort in your body or a sense of unease.  As you are filling the navel sphere and your pranic tube with your own prana there is less space for energies that are not in tune with your body and soul.  As a result these energies are pushed up into your conscious.  They are often interpreted as odd or repeating thoughts, relatively sudden emotions or emotionally charged memories, heaviness or quickly arising body aches.  These are all interpretations  made by your body, mind and heart of energies that no longer fit you and your life.

Ask each thought, emotion, memory and body ache if it is really yours.  Is it really yours now, in this moment?  I find it best to keep as much of your attention as possible on the breathing process and ask the questions silently as the sensations arise. These questions coming from your consciousness indicate to the energy behind the thought, emotion or physical sensation that you are ready to release it onto its own journey now.  There is no need to follow it as it leaves, and most of the time there is no need to know what it is.

If there is something more you need to know please trust that you will get it from within spontaneously or from the Universe at a later point in time.  This process of breathing is meant to bring you out of your head and into your body…so stay in the body with the process as much as possible.

Why Build Prana Consciously?  

To hear your Spiritual Helpers more clearly.
As you breathe you generate more and more energy that perfectly supports your body.  This pranic energy acts as a medium that fills the space between your body, your guides and angels, and your soul.  The more this space is filled with your pranic energy, the easier it is for you to hear the messages that are coming to you from your soul, your guides and your angels.

I am sure you have had the experience of being faced with a decision.  And as you are presented with the possibilities, one jumps out immediately as being the appropriate choice for you.  It feels like a fit to you, and often there is a sense of relaxation or expansion when you are presented with this option.  As you build more prana throughout your lifetime your soul’s connection into your body is enhanced.  The sensation of what fits and what doesn’t fit is magnified by the presence of this prana, tuned to your body.

What doesn’t fit for you eventually doesn’t fit literally within your body or your aura.  For myself, I experience options that don’t fit me as a twisting sensation in my gut.  Those situations and choices that do fit me feel comfortable, even though they might appear to be physically difficult to undertake.  There is an innate expansion in my auric field when I consider a choice that is appropriate to my soul and body. Acting upon this choice results in my creating more of this same quality of prana to fill my aura.

When we are considering different choices, it is our navel chakra that experiences each of the options first.  The pattern of each choice is tested within the navel chakra, and our body tells us the resulting ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  We can do this while being presented with the choices (by someone speaking to us, for example “Do you want to go see a movie tonight?”), as well as while we are in a meditative state and holding each option within our mind as a thought or mind’s eye as a picture.  For most people feeling their navel chakra and body response to different choices is at first a very subtle art, best done in meditation.

Ideally when we sit quietly and breathe we are generating prana which is accurately tuned to our bodies.  Then, as we are faced with a decision, enough prana is present in the various layers of our energy field so that we can feel which option fits best.  Without sufficient prana, a means to generate it, and an ability to sit quietly, there is no medium to carry the communication between our body, our guides and angels, and our soul.

Sitting in deep stillness and focusing on our breath is one of the ways we build prana.  While it seems to be the simplest, the art of meditating on the breath is quite vast.

In our culture we are seldom exhorted to enter into meditation or a conscious state of deep stillness. We are seldom expected to notice how our buttocks are interacting with the chair or surface upon which we are sitting.  In fact, we are seldom praised for being consciously within our bodies much at all, especially that part of ourselves below our waists!

As you breathe while consciously aware of stillness, your heart chakras open more.  As your upper thymus gland and traditional heart chakras both open, each breath generates prana, tuned to your soul’s journey, which in turn allows a greater ability for you to be connected from your heart with all that surrounds you.

With this meditation you have linked your heart to your body center.  You are beginning to regain the conscious awareness of your body that you had as an infant.  This awareness of the physical body ceased as you lived within your culture, but it can be regained.  As you do regain it you open into numerous possibilities of sensing and feeling connections to others and to all that surrounds you, both in form and not in form.

Validate the changes you have made…this process will continue!

This essay comes out of thoughts and meditations shared during a recent live channeling. The meditative channeling itself is available as a free podcast #37 Breathing Stillness, Generating  at Norma’s podcast page www.healingchants.com/podcasts

Norma Gentile with Archangel Michael Norma Gentile
Sound shaman, is a natural intuitive and channel for Mary, Archangel Michael and the Hathors. She trained as both a professional singer and energy worker.

from:    http://spiritofmaat.com/magazine/june-2013-midsummer-solstice-issue/navel-gazing-101-a-mini-meditation-seminar/

Nepal Landslide

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First monsoon landslide in Nepal leaves 12 dead

Last update: June 8, 2013 at 1:07 pm by By Armand Vervaeck

Nepal landslide Update (June 8 -08:42 UTC)

The death toll of the Taplejung landslide in Nepal has risen to 12. Besides the already 9 reported dead the day before yesterday, the police has stopped searching for the 3 missing which brings the total fatalities to 12.
This is the first major incident after the start of the monsoon. Monsoon rains are triggering many deadly landslides each year in the Himalayas.

Nepal landslide kills 9 people (June 6 -15:42 UTC)
Nine people including eight members of one family were perished in a landslide at Thukima VDC-6 in Taplejungdistrict on Wednesday night. Three others have gone missing. According to DSP Govinda Acharya, the landslide triggered by incessant rainfall buried their houses killing Asta Bahadur Siwa, 60, his wife, son Salman Siwa, 40, daughter-in-law Manmaya Siwa, 34, and grandchildren Naniran, 14, Naina Ram and Khagendra 12 and ten-year-old Nina of Tej Bahadur Siwa. One Sukumaya was rescued from the mudslide but she breathed her last as she was brought to the district headquarters for treatment.

from:     http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/01/worldwide-landslide-report/

Rains on the East Coast

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Tropical Storm Andrea is rapidly losing its tropical characteristics as it barrels northeastwards at 27 mph up the U.S. East Coast, but it still has plenty of tropical moisture that is feeding very heavy rains. Rains of 2 – 4″ are expected along a swath from South Carolina to New England from Andrea over the next two days. Pine Ridge, NC has received 6.5″ of rain from Andrea, and New River MCAS, North Carolina picked up 2″ of rain as of 9 am EDT this morning, along with a wind gust of 47 mph at 3:18 am. The same band of heavy thunderstorms spawned a possible tornado near Hubert, North Carolina at 4:45 am EDT. Andrea has spawned a preliminary count of eleven tornadoes, which is a respectable number for a landfalling June tropical storm, but not a record. According to TWC’s severe weather expert Dr. Greg Forbes, there have been two other June tropical storms since the year 2000 that spawned far more tornadoes–Tropical Storm Bill during June 29 – July 3, 2003 (32 tornadoes in FL, GA, LA, AL, MS, SC, NC, NJ), and Tropical Storm Allison of June 7 – 17 2001 (28 tornadoes in FL, AL, GA, LA, MS, SC, VA, MA, ME.) Only one of Andrea’s tornadoes caused an injury, a tornado that hit The Acreage in Palm Beach County at 6:45 am EDT. The highest storm surge from Andrea was 4.55′ at Cedar Key, Florida.


Figure 1. Yummy’s cafe in Gulfport, Florida was hit Thursday morning by a waterspout that moved ashore and became a tornado.(LAUREN CARROLL/Tampa Bay Times)


Figure 2. Predicted rainfall for the 48-hour period from 8 am EDT Friday, June 7, to 8 am EDT Sunday, June 8, 2013. Image credit: NOAA.

Video 1. NASA animation of Andrea satellite images. More cool NASA images of Andrea are here.

The Atlantic hurricane season is getting longer
Andrea’s formation in June continues a pattern of an unusually large number of early-season Atlantic named storms we’ve seen in recent years. Climatologically, June is the second quietest month of the Atlantic hurricane season, behind November. During the period 1870 – 2012, we averaged one named storm every two years in June, and 0.7 named storms per year during May and June. In the nineteen years since the current active hurricane period began in 1995, there have been fifteen June named storms (if we include 2013’s Tropical Storm Andrea.) June activity has nearly doubled since 1995, and May activity has more than doubled (there were seventeen May storms in the 75-year period 1870 – 1994, compared to 6 in the 19-year period 1995 – 2013.) Some of this difference can be attributed to observation gaps, due to the lack of satellite data before 1966. However, even during the satellite era, we have seen an increase in both early season (May – June) and late season (November – December) Atlantic tropical storms. Dr. Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin looked at the reasons for this in a 2008 paper titled, “Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?” He concluded that there is a “apparent tendency toward more common early- and late-season storms that correlates with warming Sea Surface Temperature but the uncertainty in these relationships is high.” He found that hurricane season for both the period 1950-2007 and 1980-2007 got longer by 5 to 10 days per decade (see my blog post on the paper.)

Invest 92L in the Central Atlantic no threat to develop
Satellite images show that disorganized tropical wave is in the Central Atlantic, about a two-day journey from the Lesser Antilles Islands. NHC designated this system 92L Thursday afternoon. High wind shear of 30 – 40 knots is ripping up the thunderstorms in 92L as they form, and wind shear is predicted to remain 30 – 40 knots for the next five days, making development unlikely. The wave will likely bring heavy rain showers and gusty winds to the northern Lesser Antilles Islands beginning on Sunday night. None of the reliable computer models is showing development of a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic over the next seven days.

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

Chromoscope – Saturday, 06/08

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Saturday, June 8:     Hazy Green

So you have not gotten the message you expected.  So you have not heard from the one you thought was going to get in touch.  Perhaps the message is that they have other important issues to deal with.  SO it did not come through, and you were so, sop, so sure this time……  Where does that leave you?  Well, it gives you the opportunity to truly be WHO you are.  To let go of all the stuff around you that you needed to affirm you, to hold you up, to go over in you mind to let you know that it was something after all.  This is a day, this is an energy that tells you to go forth in your power, in your truth, in your beauty, and to know that all those other things are fine for what they are, but what is most important is what  and WHO you are.  There can be some tears.  There can be some revelations.  And it is all good.   You are, after all, becoming, and becoming involves letting go of some of some old stuff.    And, as Nighthawk reminded us, “Walk in steps of light.”  Then everything becomes so much clearer.

Ver-SPY-zon

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(NaturalNews) The USA is reeling today from the explosive discovery that the Obama administration has been spying on all Verizon phone customers by surveilling their phone usage on a daily basis for the last several years. This is a wholesale, routine spy surveillance program that has “Big Brother” written all over it. It was first exposed by The Guardian which has published the secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all phone call data on an “ongoing, daily basis.”

As the Guardian writes:

Under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

As background, please note that websites like Natural News and www.InfoWars.com have been warning people for years that the NSA was secretly listening to their phone calls and surveilling their bank accounts, emails and web surfing behavior. Giggling deniers in the liberal media have routinely referred to all this as a “conspiracy theory” while deriding those who warned about all this as “tin foil hat” wearing people or even promoters of “hate speech.”

As it turns out, we were once again right all along: the government really is spying on all your phone calls, emails and other records. The NSA routinely records everything you do even though such actions are blatantly illegal under federal law. Every time the NSA taps your mobile phone (which happens every day, we now know), they are committing a felony crime. But no one is stopping them. And why? Because the government itself has become a lawless criminal operation that answers to no one.

Obama admits it’s all true

Today Obama himself admitted the wholesale surveillance of Verizon phone users is, indeed, taking place. Yes, the NSA is vacuuming up all phone records on an ongoing, daily basis, completely outside of law. But it’s a good thing, Obama insists.

So what was Obama’s justification for all this? The secret NSA surveillance is “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” he now says, almost as if the ghost of George W were speaking through Obama’s lips.

“From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming,” said It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents,” said Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies.”

Exactly what data is being surveilled by the NSA?

According to the secret surveillance order that has now been exposed, Verizon is handing over all the following information to the NSA for every phone call being made from a Verizon device:

• The phone number of both people on the call
• The geographic location of the Verizon phone user (whoa!)
• Call duration
• Unique identifiers (i.e. phone ID, allowing that phone to be tracked)

According to the Guardian, this information can then be used by the NSA to reveal:

• Your name
• Your home address
• Your social security number
• Your driver’s license number
• Your credit history
• Your place of employment
• Your criminal history

Yes, just from surveilling your phone, the NSA can acquire all this information about you. And this is just fine with Obama, who actually defends the program even though it is wildly illegal to conduct such surveillance domestically, against the American people.

Oh, and by the way, the government’s surveillance order specifically forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the secret order to anyone else. So while the government is secretly surveilling all Verizon phone users, the company itself would face criminal charges if it warned its own users about the surveillance. How’s that for freedom in a “free society?”

It’s not just Verizon, folks

Don’t ditch your Verizon phone out of fear of being tracked, however. The fact is the NSA has similar surveillance orders in place with all mobile phone companies.

Every American who uses a mobile phone is being tracked on a daily basis by their own government. It’s being done routinely, and the NSA is building a massive data center in Utah in order to be able to analyze, in real time, the actual voice content of all phone calls.

Those phone calls are already being recorded and archived, by the way. That’s been admitted by the FBI. But in the near future, the government will be able to analyze every phone call happening in real time, then flag “suspicious” conversations for possible action against the offending phone users.

This is your America, folks: A runaway criminal police state where the routine government spying on your private conversations is openly admitted and even justified by the President.

Oh, but giggling control freaks like Rachel Maddow have always insisted this was nothing but loony conspiracy theory talk. You can trust your government, she says. Because government would never do anything bad… like tapping all your phone calls. That’s hate speech to even suggest such a thing!

Wake up, people! The U.S. government is a criminal operation. Just in the last few months, we’ve learned that the Department of Justice secretly taps the phones of reporters and journalists. The IRS secretly intimidates and terrorizes selected groups based on their political speech. And now we learn the NSA has been routinely spying on us all through a super-secret surveillance program that means none of our electronic communications are private from the government.

At what point do you realize just how onerous, dangerous and out of control this has all become?

As Mark Rumold, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a Guardian story: “This is confirmation of what we’ve long feared, that the NSA has been tracking the calling patterns of the entire country. We hope more than anything else that the government will allow a judge to decide whether this is constitutional, and we can finally put an end to this practice.”

Good luck with that. The abuses of government are already so far out of control that it’s questionable whether we can reign in this criminal government with anything less than a full-fledged citizens revolt.

Little Green Men Spreading Monsanto GE Wheat?

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(NaturalNews) There is a grand conspiracy theory at work to destroy the value of U.S. wheat crops, Monsanto recently told mainstream media reporters in a telephone conference. The contaminated GE wheat recently discovered in Oregon didn’t get there by escaping Monsanto’s open-air GMO experiments, the company claims. Instead, they say it might have been put there by a conspiracy of crop criminals who somehow acquired GE wheat from Monsanto’s field trials way back in 2005, then somehow saved it in a way that kept it genetically viable for eight years, then supposedly drove around Oregon for the sole purpose of releasing the GMOs in some farmer’s field that they just hoped the USDA might be someday be testing for GMO contamination.

That’s the far-fetched conspiracy theory now being pushed by Monsanto to explain how commercial wheat crops in Oregon got contaminated with GMOs. It was put forth by Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley, a Monsanto executive, in a phone call with reporters.

“It seems likely to be a random, isolated occurrence more consistent with the accidental or purposeful mixing of a small amount of seed during the planting, harvesting or during the fallow cycle in an individual field,” Fraley said on the call, making him the first Monsanto executive to publicly admit he is a conspiracy theorist. He goes on to confirm that the company is investigating the possibility of “sabotage” to explain the wheat field contamination.

Did little green men spread Monsanto’s GMO seeds?

There’s only one problem with this bizarre conspiracy theory: No one knew in advance the USDA would be testing that farmer’s wheat field in Oregon. In fact, testing fields for GMO contamination is such a rare thing that the odds of a band of “conspiracy activists” correctly guessing which field was going to be tested by the USDA are at least 10,000 to 1.

To successful pull off this wild conspiracy theory being pushed by Monsanto, activists would have had to contaminate nearly ALL commercial wheat fields with genetically modified seed, and this would have involved a nationwide logistics effort of such magnitude that it would have been impossible to keep it secret. Is Monsanto really suggesting there exists a secret group of hundreds or thousands of activists driving around the country in unmarked vans, flinging Monsanto’s own wheat seeds into commercial wheat fields right at the beginning of planting season?

Or maybe it was pulled off by little green men from outer space, working in cahoots with Bigfoot, Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster, who all had a planning meeting in a secret underground base on the moon before deciding to focus all their efforts on embarrassing Monsanto by flinging GE wheat seeds everywhere. When they were finished, they then mutilated a few cattle and ran around conducting anal probes on some farmers just to have a little fun.

Yep, little green men did it. Because aliens hate Monsanto.

I mean, I know JFK wasn’t shot by a lone assassin. The Oklahoma City bombing was a federal operation (www.ANobleLie.com) and 9/11 was engineered and allowed to happen so that America could be stripped of its liberties and placed under a police state surveillance grid. But all those so-called “conspiracy theories” pale in comparison to the far-fetched loony bin theory of Monsanto which claims some underground group of activists has somehow been storing thousands of pounds of Monsanto’s GE wheat seeds since 1995 and has now suddenly started covertly dropping them into farm fields all across the nation. Does Monsanto not get it that anti-GMO activists do NOT want GMO seeds to grow? Planting those seeds in fields all across the country would be the very last thing they’d ever try to do, even if they did have the budgets to bank thousands of pounds of Monsanto seeds in large refrigerators for the last eight years.

The far more likely explanation in all this is that Monsanto’s open-field experiments went awry and GE wheat seeds escaped the fields in ways that Monsanto scientists didn’t anticipate (or didn’t want to anticipate).

Perhaps Monsanto would characterize that as a “conspiracy of Mother Nature.” Maybe insects are conspiring against Monsanto to spread the seeds. Maybe the wind, water and other forces of nature are “co-conspirators,” according to Monsanto.

The real conspiracy is that Monsanto is trying to dominate the global food supply

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually Monsanto that’s engaged in a massive conspiracy to try to dominate the global food supply by making sure its seeds genetically contaminate all commercial crop fields across America, allowing the company to sue farmers for the “theft” of intellectual property.

They’ve already done that to a multitude of farmers, by the way, so this isn’t some wild theory… it’s something that Monsanto has already been involved in.

Yep, there is a conspiracy afoot in all this, but it’s not the conspiracy Monsanto wants you to think it is. While the company claims “sabotage” in the Oregon GE wheat fields — possibly by little green men from outer space — the greater truth is that Monsanto is itself a corporation of global sabotage that destroys agriculture, contaminates the planet with genetic pollution, threatens farmers with lawsuits for planting common seeds, and then blames activists when its own dangerous experiments go haywire.

Robotic Raven

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It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s … Robo Raven!

Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 04:24 PM
robo-raven
 A hawk attacks the Robo Raven, a remarkably lifelike robotic bird.
CREDIT: YouTube screen grab from Maryland Robotics Center

Hawks and other birds of prey are famous for their keen eyesight.

But researchers have created a robotic bird so lifelike that it’s even fooled hawks, which swoop down and attack it the way they would any other pigeonlike bird.

Developed at the Maryland Robotics Center, the robot — dubbed Robo Raven — is made of carbon fiber; 3D-printed, lightweight, thermal-resistant plastic; foam; and silvery Mylar foil (for its wings and tail), Military.com reports

obo Raven is almost 2 feet long (60 cm) and weighs less than a can of soda. Its original design was developed in 2007 by University of Maryland professors S. K. Gupta and Hugh Bruck, who carried the battery-powered bird through several evolutions before arriving at the current model.

The long lead time was necessary because, during the trial-and-error process needed to improve the robotic bird, any error would lead to a crash. This would sometimes destroy the robot, so each step in the design process was painstakingly slow.

What makes the current model so realistic is its ability to move each wing independently of the other, just as real birds do. This enables the Robo Raven to swoop, soar, dive and flap its wings in a much more aerobatic way than older models, whose wings could only move simultaneously.

“Our new robot, Robo Raven, is based on a fundamentally new design concept,” Gupta said in a news release. “It uses two programmable motors that can be synchronized electronically to coordinate motion between the wings.”

Some of the design improvements to the Robo Raven were inspired by designs found in nature. For example, the robot uses a hollow framework to provide a stiff, lightweight structure; real birds use a hollow skeletal system for the same task.

The robot is guided by a handheld radio that controls its flight. Some of the funding for the Robo Raven was provided by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which is investigating the Robo Raven’s possible uses for surveillance and other missions.

The Robo Raven “attracts attention from birds in the area,” John Gerdes, an engineer at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, told Military.com.

Whereas seagulls and other birds try to fly in formation with the Robo Raven, raptors like hawks have tried to attack the bird as quarry.

“Generally, we don’t see them coming,” Gerdes said. “They will dive and attack by hitting the bird from above with their talons; then, they typically fly away.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/37251-robo-raven-robotic-bird-fools-hawks.html

Seafloor Trash Disaster

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Trash Litters Deep Seafloor, Mostly Recyclables

Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 04:11 PM ET
ocean garbage, ocean pollution, ocean trash
 Deep-sea currents wrapped this plastic bag around a gorgonian coral almost 7,000 feet (2,115 m) below the ocean surface in Astoria Canyon, off the coast of Oregon.
CREDIT: © 2006 MBARI.

The mention of ocean pollution usually triggers searing images of birds and turtles choked by bags, fasteners and other debris floating at the ocean surface. But thousands of feet below, garbage also clutters the seafloor, with as yet unknown consequences for marine life, a new study finds.

“It’s completely changing the natural environment, in a way that we don’t know what it’s going to do,” said Susan von Thun, a study co-author and senior research technician at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Monterey, Calif.

For the past 22 years, MBARI researchers have explored the deep ocean seafloor from California to Canada and offshore of Hawaii. Video researchers tagged every piece of trash seen during the deep-sea dives, cataloguing more than 1,500 items in all. Sparked by a recent study on trash offshore of Southern California, scientists at MBARI decided to analyze the database of ocean debris they had gathered. The results were published May 28 in the journal Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers.

After reviewing every video clip that showed debris, and compiling where and when the debris was found, the researchers discovered plastics were the most common seafloor trash. [Video: Deep Sea Trash Litters the Ocean Floor]

“Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t so surprised,” said von Thun, who works in the MBARI video lab. “I’ve seen plenty of trash as I’ve been annotating video.”

More than half of the plastic items were bags. A deep-sea coral living nearly 7,000 feet (2,115 meters) off the Oregon Coast had a black plastic bag wrapped around its base, which will eventually kill the organism, von Thun said.

The second biggest source of ocean trash was metal — soda and food cans. Other common types of debris included rope from fishing equipment, glass bottles, cardboard, wood and clothing.

Because most of the ocean pollution came from single-use plastic bottles and cans, von Thun and her co-authors hope the research will inspire more people to reduce, reuse and recycle.

“The main way to combat this problem is to prevent all this stuff from getting into the ocean to begin with,” von Thun told OurAmazingPlanet. “We really have to properly dispose of items, reduce our use of single-use items and recycle.”

Changing seascape

ocean garbage, ocean pollution, ocean trash
 A discarded tire sits on a ledge 2,850 feet (868 m) below the ocean surface in Monterey Canyon off the central California coast.
CREDIT: © 2009 MBARI.

The arrival of shoes, tires and fishing gear in the deep sea is a big change for deep-sea marine life. Their environment is mostly soft mud, so hard surfaces are rare, and sea creatures colonize the trash, von Thun said. For example, MBARI is following the effects wrought by a shipping container that fell overboard into Monterey Canyon in 2004. But even a discarded tire can make a home for certain sea creatures at 2,850 feet (868 meters) below the ocean surface.

In Monterey Canyon, a deep, winding gorge offshore of Central California, trash collects in the canyon’s outer bends or in topographic highs or lows, just like in rivers on land, von Thun said. Currents also trap trash behind obstacles, such as dead whale carcasses.

“We think the canyon dynamics and the currents are actually helping to distribute the plastic and metal to deeper areas,” von Thun said.

With only 0.24 percent of Monterey Canyon explored in the past two decades by MBARI, there could be more trash hidden in the canyon’s depths, the researchers said.

from:     http://www.livescience.com/37250-trash-found-deep-ocean.html

Chromoscope 6/07

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Friday, June 7:     Crazy Blue

So, once again, you have let yourself get involved with some things that you had thought you had given up.  Take time today to see what that means for you and to take action to get rid of all of that.  You have/you are moving beyond so many things right now.  To fall into someone else’s agenda and someone else’s plan is not going to benefit you.  This is a tough one, and there can be some equally tough moments today.  It is hard to make a change.  It is scary to move out of a comfort zone.  It is hell to give up the blanket, but you know, you know it has to be done.  Do it or not.  That is the question.  Today present \s you with choice, challenges and opportunities   it is up to you to see what you will do with all that.

06/05 Chromoscope

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Thursday, June 6:     Dark Blue

This is a day for seeing through things.  There have been a lot of scenarios that you have built up recently, and it is time to see them for what they are.  They seem wonderful, doable, interesting, extraordinary, but deep down beneath it all, they are not you.  Today’s energies call you to connect with WHO you are.  That can be tough because right now there are so many demands being placed upon you by outside forces, and willy-nilly, you do feel the need to be nice.  Underneath it all of course, is the reality that you do not want to be nice at all, rather you would be WHO you are and do what is most positive fort yourself.  Well, you have the power.  You have the strength.  Are you brave enough?  That is always a big question.  It is time to speak you truth loudly and strongly.  You are not on this turn of the wheel for others.  It is all about you.  Take time today to know that and to know that it is okay, even better than okay to do-be, do-be, do-be, do all that is you.