Native Americans and Northern Europeans more closely related than previously thought

From Sott.net - Nov 30: 2012

By Science Codex

Bethesda, MD - November 30, 2012 -- Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern European populations - including British, Scandinavians, French, and some Eastern Europeans - descend from a mixture of two very different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans.

This discovery helps fill gaps in scientific understanding of both Native American and Northern European ancestry, while providing an explanation for some genetic similarities among what would otherwise seem to be very divergent groups. This research was published in the November 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal GENETICS.

According to Nick Patterson, first author of the report, "There is a genetic link between the paleolithic population of Europe and modern Native Americans. The evidence is that the population that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago was likely related to the ancient population of Europe."

To make this discovery, Patterson worked with Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics David Reich and other colleagues to study DNA diversity, and found that one of these ancestral populations was the first farming population of Europe, whose DNA lives on today in relatively unmixed form in Sardinians and the people of the Basque Country, and in at least the Druze population in the Middle East. The other ancestral population is likely to have been the initial hunter-gathering population of Europe. These two populations were very different when they met. Today the hunter-gathering ancestral population of Europe appears to have its closest affinity to people in far Northeastern Siberia and Native Americans.

The statistical tools for analyzing population mixture were developed by Patterson and presented in a systematic way in the report. These tools are the same ones used in previous discoveries showing that Indian populations are admixed between two highly diverged ancestral populations and showing that Neanderthals contributed one to four percent of the ancestry of present-day Europeans. In addition, the paper releases a major new dataset that characterizes genetic diversity in 934 samples from 53 diverse worldwide populations.

"The human genome holds numerous secrets. Not only does it unlock important clues to cure human disease, it also reveal clues to our prehistoric past," said Mark Johnston, Editor-in-Chief of the journal GENETICS. "This relationship between humans separated by the Atlantic Ocean reveals surprising features of the migration patterns of our ancestors, and reinforces the truth that all humans are closely related."

Source: Genetics Society of America

Reincarnation - Alan Watts

From OneWorldWithinProd at YouTube - Nov 24: 2012



Alan Watts was one of the first from the west to bring the wisdom of the east back into the consciousness of the modern era. The label-less master often referred to himself as a "spiritual entertainer" that is exhibited in the fluidity of his humor mixed with wisdom. For more information on the great man please visit http://www.alanwatts.org

30 years of breast screening: 1.3 million wrongly treated

© GreenMedInfo

From Sott.net - Nov 22: 2012

By Sayer Ji / GreenMedInfo

 The breast cancer industry's holy grail (that mammography is the primary weapon in the war against breast cancer) has been disproved. In fact, mammography appears to have CREATED 1.3 million cases of breast cancer in the U.S. population that were not there.

A disturbing new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is bringing mainstream attention to the possibility that mammography has caused far more harm than good in the millions of women who have employed it over the past 30 years as their primary strategy in the fight against breast cancer.[i]

Titled "Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence," researchers estimated that among women younger than 40 years of age, breast cancer was overdiagnosed, i.e. "tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms," in 1.3 million U.S. women over the past 30 years. In 2008, alone, "breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed."

As we revealed in a previous article,[ii] the primary form of mammography-detected breast cancer is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as 'stage zero' or 'non-invasive breast cancer.' Unlike truly invasive cancer, which expands outward like the crab after which it was named (Greek: Cancer = Crab), ductal carcinoma is in situ, i.e. situated, non-moving - an obvious contradiction in terms.

Also, DCIS presents without symptoms in the majority of women within which it is detected, and if left untreated will (usually) not progress to cause harm to women. Indeed, without x-ray diagnostic technologies, many if not most of the women diagnosed with it would never have known they had it in the first place. The journal Lancet Oncology, in fact, published a cohort study last year finding that even clinically verified "invasive" cancers appear to regress with time if left untreated:

[We] believe many invasive breast cancers detected by repeated mammography screening do not persist to be detected by screening at the end of 6 years, suggesting that the natural course of many of the screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.[iii]

The new study authors point out "The introduction of screening mammography in the United States has been associated with a doubling in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer that are detected each year." And yet, they noted, only 6.5% of these early-stage breast cancer cases were expected to progress to advanced disease. DCIS and related 'abnormal breast findings,' in other words, may represent natural, benign variations in breast morphology. Preemptive treatment strategies, however, are still employed today as the standard of care, with mastectomy rates actually increasing since 2004.[iv]

The adverse health effects associated with overdiagnosis and overtreatment with lumpectomy, radiation, chemotherapy and hormone-suppressive treatments cannot be underestimated, especially when one considers the profound psychological trauma that follows each stage of diagnosis and treatment, and the additional physiological burdens such psychic injuries lead to, including up-regulation of multidrug resistance genes within cancer as a result of the increased adrenaline associated with the 'flight-or-fight' stress response.[v]

Also, it is now coming to light that chemotherapy and radiation actually increase the proportion of the highly malignant cancer stem cells to the relatively non-malignant daughter cells within the tumor colony. Much in the same way that conventional antibiotic agents will drive multidrug resistance within the subpopulation of surviving post-antibiotic bacteria, ensuring recurrence, conventional treatments also drive the surviving stem-cell enriched tumor populations into greater resistance and metastatic potential when it does inevitably recur. Or worse, radiation therapy may actually increase the 'stemness' of breast cancer cells making them 30 times more malignant (capable of forming new tumors).

If it is indeed true that DCIS, other abnormal breast findings, as well as clinically confirmed invasive breast cancer, either remain benign or regress when left untreated, the entire breast cancer industry, which is already deeply mired in cause-marketing conflicts of interest, must radically reform itself, or face massive financial and ethical liabilities vis-à-vis outdated and no longer "evidence-based" practices.

Another serious problem with mammography (and there are dozens of them) not addressed in this latest research finding concerns the unique carcinogenicity of the x-rays the technology employs. We now know that the 30 kVp radiation, colloquially known as "low energy" x-rays, are between 300-400% more carcinogenic than the "higher energy" radiation given off by atomic bomb blasts (200 kVp or higher).[vi] Present day radiation risk models used to assess the known breast cancer risk associated with mammography against the purported benefits do not take into this profound discrepancy. In fact, these models were developed before DNA was even discovered.

Also, considering that breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1/BRCA2, interfere with the DNA self-repair mechanisms needed to reduce the carcinogenicity associated with radiation exposure within those who carry these genetic variations, the harms associated with mammography may be exponentially higher than the conventional medical community presently understands and communicates to their patients. Indeed, it is likely that x-ray based mammography screenings have been planting the seeds of future radiation-induced breast cancer within exposed populations.

With top-tier biomedical journals now publishing research diametrically opposed to the policies and recommendations of both governmental, non-governmental and industry-sponsored health organizations, the time is ripe for us to critically evaluate conventional medicine's conventional standard of care and to educate ourselves further to the true causes of cancer, and how to go about preventing and/or removing them.

For more alternative information on breast cancer, and related women's health issues, visit our health guides on GreenMedInfo.com.

• Health Guide: Breast Cancer
• Women's Health
• Health Guide: Bone Health

Also, view the free webinar titled "The Problem with Pink" hosted by the co-authors of Cancer Killers: The Cause is the Cure below:



 Resources

• [i] New England Journal of Medicine, Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence

• [ii] GreenMedInfo.com, Mammograms Linked To An Epidemic of Misdiagnosed Cancers, Oct. 5^th, 2012

• [iii] Per-Henrik Zahl, Peter C Gøtzsche, Jan Mæhlen . Natural history of breast cancers detected in the Swedish mammography screening programme: a cohort study. Lancet Oncol. 2011 Nov ;12(12):1118-24. Epub 2011 Oct 11. PMID: 21996169

• [iv] GreenMedInfo.com, Mastectomy Research

• [v] GreenMedInfo.com, Stress Hormones Found To Make Cancer Resistant To Treatment

• [vi] GreenMedInfo.com, Low Dose Ionizing Radiation

Our unconscious minds can perform complex operations

© Bevan Von Weichardt / Shutterstock

From Sott.net - Nov 15: 2012

By Alan McStravick / RedOrbit

Who would have ever thought we could solve math equations in our sleep? Well, maybe our level of unconsciousness might have to be a bit more elevated but researchers from the Psychology Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have found that we can actually read words and phrases or even solve multi-step mathematical problems without our having been consciously aware of them.

The team, headed by Dr. Ran Hassin, along with Dr. Anat Maril and graduate students Asael Sklar, Ariel Goldstein, Nir Levy and Roi Mandel, concluded that people can read and do math non-consciously. Their findings fly in the face of existing theories regarding unconscious processes. These previous theories state that reading and solving math problems, which are two prime examples of complex, rule-based operations, do, in fact, require consciousness.

The team was able to present sentences and equations unconsciously to their subject group of 270 university students. The technique they employed was Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) which leaves one eye of the participant exposed to a series of rapidly changing images while the other eye is simultaneously exposed to a constant image. The rapidity of images to one eye dominates the consciousness of the participant. This allows the constant image to not be experienced consciously.

The first set of experiments to use CFS asked the participants to pronounce a number that appeared on a computer screen. The unconscious constant image was an arithmetic equation. What the team determined from this experiment was that participants could pronounce more quickly the conscious number if it had been the answer to the unconscious equation. As an example, when the non-conscious equation of 9 minus 5 minus 1 was shown, participants were able to pronounce 3 faster than 4, even though they had not consciously seen the equation.

A second set of experiments focused on verbal non-consciousness. In it, participants were non-consciously exposed to short verbal expressions that remained on screen until participants could acknowledge that they had seen them. The other eye was exposed to rapidly flashing images. Their results found that negative verbal expressions, like 'human trafficking', or unusual phrases, like 'the bench ate the zebra' were acknowledged faster than more positive expressions, like 'ironed shirt' or less unusual phrasing, like 'the lion ate the zebra'. The team claims this indicates a definite recognition by the unconscious of things that are more negative or out of the ordinary.

"These results show that the humans can perform complex, rule-based operations unconsciously, contrary to existing models of consciousness and the unconscious," say the researchers.

"Therefore," said Dr. Hassin, "current theories of the unconscious processes and human consciousness need to be revised. These revisions would bring us closer to solving one of the biggest scientific mysteries of the 21st century: What are the functions of human consciousness."

Dr. Hassin and his team at Hebrew University have published their findings this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Alan Watts: This Is IT: Become What You Are

From Jason Lesko at Youtube - Dec 12: 2011



Alan Watts put forward a worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic self playing hide-and-seek (Lila), hiding from itself (Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe, forgetting what it really is; the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise. In this worldview, Watts asserts that our conception of ourselves as an "ego in a bag of skin" is a myth; the entities we call the separate "things" are merely processes of the whole. You're IT.

The Hegemony of Celebrity: Iron Fist in a Diamante Glove

From Global Research - Nov 15: 2012

By Colin Todhunter

Today, we live in a world that turns people into almost instant global brand identities for mass marketing and lavishes them with untold fame and riches. Celebrities lead lives that most ordinary folk could not even begin to imagine. The outcome, however, has sinister implications not only for those coping with fame and playing out the illusion, but also for those who buy into celebrity worship and the aspirant mindset that surrounds the phenomenon.

Craving fame and wealth has become the blind faith of the age. TV programmes like ‘X Factor’ and ‘Indian Idol’ are based on the falsehood that this is what the masses should aspire to become, as they drool over a fast food smorgasbord of here-today-gone-tomorrow commodity forms (of which ‘celebrity’ is but one) to be glorified then spat out when considered obsolete. It’s an obsession built on crazes that have little resilience in a world of media-induced, corporate-backed fabrications and fickle idolisation.

While acquiring celebrity status may be a somewhat liberating experience for those who emerge into the limelight from lives of poverty and hardship, the crass fetishisation of wealth and wannabe celebritydom coupled with a pervasive cult of excessive individualism is socially divisive.

Such a culture eats away at a sense of communality, solidarity and camaraderie by encouraging folk to seek unlimited material wealth and self-gratification and to set themselves apart from everyone else around them. It also fuels a certain arrogance, which can lead people to regard themselves as being above and beyond society’s standards of accountability – a gateway into the world of corruption and deceit that wealth and unaccountable power afford in general.

You didn’t have to read about some movie star in India a few years back who was involved in a vehicle that ran into people sleeping on a Mumbai pavement and who then walked away free, in order to have an inkling of the type of sickening conceit that fame can bestow and the corrosive influence it has. Nor do you have to watch that person bounce in and out of court, lodge numerous appeals and serve mere days in prison for crimes that ordinary folk would be banged up years for.

But fame begets privilege, and its influence is everywhere in today’s world of multi-channel 24- hour TV, powerful public relations agencies, gossip columns and instantly accessible social media.

The whole issue of aspiring to be different, to be famous, to be unimaginably wealthy is part of a power play. It was Michael Foucault (1) who suggested that our taken for granted knowledge about the world in general and how we regard ourselves may seem benign and neutral, but must be viewed within the context of power. Today, fame and individualism have increasingly become an accepted form of ‘truth’, of reality, and of how people view themselves and evaluate those around them. Endless glossy commercials and TV shows that wallow in the filthy veneration of money, celebrity and narcissism convey the message that greed is good, fame is the epitome of success and the individual is king.

This is, of course, based on a false assumption, on a lingering lie of consumerism. And part of that lie is the joining of fame and failure at the hip. Notions of failure are implicit in the messages surrounding individualism, money and fame. If you are not famous or do not stand out from the crowd, you are somehow a failure. If you don’t buy this product, wear that item or apply some whitening skin cream (in India, this is a big fad), you somehow don’t cut it.

It’s a culture that preys on insecurities, which the media, ad agencies and product makers manipulate at will. In true Foucauldian style, it’s part of a discourse that is concerned with redefining who people are or what they should be. Fame and a notion of ‘the self’ in terms of individualism, not the collective, dovetail neatly with ‘free’ market ideology and an easily manageable population divided from each other with a weakened compulsion to act collectively against the increasingly not so hidden oppressive hand of the forces of  ‘liberal democracy’.

In a world where elected governments have abdicated their financially redistributive roles concerning their respective populations, it’s become a case of each one for his/herself, whereby the carrot of celebrity status or the hope of ‘making it big’ provide the perfect antidote for a lifetime of ever decreasing benefits, diminishing rights, low pay and poverty and of generally being surplus to requirements. A craving for (not the actual acquirement of) fame and fortune is the promised-land, the American Dream exported, the ultimate opiate for modern man and woman. The message is that you too can be a winner: from David Beckham in the UK to Kareena Kapoor in India, the product-endorsing who gets wheeled on to TV and splashed across the tabloids to try to fool the downtrodden into believing just how wonderful the system is.

But before we get too carried away, by themselves wealth and fame are very narrow measurements of success anyhow. As a concept, ‘success’ is much more encompassing. Humans are social animals and a sense of personal well-being derives from our relations with one another and with the general social environment around us, as Emile Durkheim (2) once indicated and as ‘happiness’ and well-being surveys tell us this time and again.

It may bring material riches, but, by its very nature, fame, particularly the near instant variety, can be anti-social and ultimately ‘anti-happy’. It can catapult a person into a turbulent stratosphere, where lives and relationships can be thrown into turmoil. From Hendrix to Cobain, personal isolation, alienation or self-destruction has blighted the lives of countless celebrities. If the core value of society becomes ‘the self’, what future society? Indeed, what future the individual?

While some crave fame, others do not. Amy Winehouse is once reported to have said that all she wanted to be was a singer. Perhaps some never set out to acquire fame. But, unfortunately for such types, it comes knocking, regardless. Although a lot cave in to the pressures, a few have the good sense to shun fame or get out early in the knowledge that it isn’t for them. Fame and happiness can be uneasy bedfellows. For many who died early, they were perfect strangers.

While there may be little wrong with the notion of fame in itself, especially when set within the context of a fair and just society, is there any benefit to be derived by society from today’s acute obsession with celebrity and individualism? Not much. The media overly focuses on the lives and deaths of privileged, well-known individuals (whose often lack of unique talent proved to be no barrier to acquiring fame), while scant regard is paid to hundreds of millions who are left to live and die in poverty. And, ultimately, that’s the role the worship of celebrity increasingly plays. It acts as a device to legitimise inequality, to bind the masses to the system, to divide people from one another based on the clamour to be ‘individual’ and to divert attention away from the functioning of illegitimate systems of governance.

Notes

1) Foucault, M. 1998, The Will to Knowledge, The History of Sexuality Volume 1, Hurley, R., trans., Penguin Books,Great Britain.

2) Durkheim, Emile (1997) [1951]. Suicide : a study in sociology. The Free Press.

Comment: This article has encouraged me to add a category modus operandi for the mutation of Kama. In this case, the "god of love," is also mode (god), and work (love) to represent mathematics as a model that overrides physics. Imagine in the word "Hollywood," you have the inertial frame as justified, then you may begin to [sense] our relative deceptions where the lingusitic sutra has no recognition, rather it is more aphoristic. A more accurate description of this phenomena is the word "modus vivendi," meaning "mode + to live," which describes the true nature of chrestomathy and the anthology of the art of language. This will require a cleaning on the list.

Why We See Jesus' Face in Toast

A Martian surface feature that one man
says looks like the profile of Mahatma Gandhi.
CREDIT: Matteo Ianneo/ESA/Google Maps/Before It's News

From Live Science - Nov 15: 2012

By Megan Gannon

Humans spend so much time looking at each other that it's perhaps no surprise we see faces where they're not — on trees, clouds, the surface of Mars and, of course, toast. But some people tend to see faces more than others and a strong belief in religion or the supernatural may be the culprit, a new small study suggests.

Researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland studied how 47 adults saw faces in dozens of pictures of lifeless objects and landscapes, such as a rock wall or tools arranged on a table. Some pictures had distinct facelike characteristics, with eyes and a mouth at the minimum, while others had no clear facelike features.

After the experiments, the participants filled out a questionnaire to measure their religiosity as well as their belief in the paranormal. For example, the subjects were asked whether they believed in God, thought people could move objects with their mind or believed individuals could use astrology to accurately predict the future.

The religious people and those who believed in paranormal phenomena saw faces more often than the non-religious and the skeptics, the researchers found. The believers also were more prone to false alarms, picking out faces in an image that lacked clear facelike features. In one part of the test, the subjects had rated the face-likeness and emotional expression of the faces they saw. The set of supernatural believers was more likely than the skeptics to rate the illusory features as very facelike and emotional. (The same pattern was observed in the religious vs. non-religious groups, but the difference was not significant, the researchers said.)

Scientists who study religion have suggested that anthropomorphism — the assignment of uniquely human properties to nonhuman phenomena — helps explain a tendency to believe in gods. The results of the new study seem to strengthen these ties, as illusory face detection, sometimes known as pareidolia, could be loosely considered a form of anthropomorphism. The results also might explain why every so often, a piece of toast, pancake or potato chip with the face of Jesus turns up on the news or for sale on eBay.

And perhaps they are also behind our otherworldly anthropomorphism, including the many faces seen on Mars — a 2011 spotting came from Google Mars maps, with a man claiming to see a profile of Mahatma Gandhi gracing the Red Planet's surface.

The study was detailed online last month in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

The Little Government that Could

From Farm Wars - Nov 14: 2012

The poor American government just wanted to grow up to be big and strong like the governments in Europe, but his mean Fathers wouldn’t let him. Follow this happy tale of how a little government made his dreams come true…

How The Anti-Bullying Movement Is Setting Up Kids For Failure In Life and Their Evolution of Consciousness

From Prevent Disease - Nov 15: 2012

By Marco Torres

The anti-bullying movement now so pervasive in all segments of society from schools, to community institutions and even the desks of lawmakers has penetrated almost every aspect of our lives that involves social interaction. It is no longer confined to children as it is well integrated within the human resources policies of most corporations alongside anti-harassment positions. The intentions although benevolent, will fail millions of children and society in general as we ingrain ourselves deeper into government laws and distance ourselves further from our innate wisdom.

When I see the same recurring theme being promoted across what appears to be multiple unrelated shows, documentaries and general news media, there is a little light that turns on inside my head to remind me how effective neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is among our media outlets.

Our unconscious mind records and stores every piece of data we observe while discarding information we have interpreted as irrelevant and focusing our attention to the relevant. Unfortunately, through the process of repetition, NLP is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion, especially for those not conscious to its effect on the mind.

This is what psychologists call the illusion of truth effect and it arises at least partly because familiarity breeds liking. As we are exposed to a message again and again, it becomes more familiar. Because of the way our minds work, what is familiar is also true. Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease unconsciously signals truth (this is called cognitive fluency).

This is the foundation of what is currently underway with the media's mass persuasion to worldwide populations that anti-bullying policies and legislation will lead to a better society. It will not and let me explain why.

Earth is simply not a utopian planet and likely will not be any time in the near future. Humanity is riddled with incivility, intolerance, disagreements and yes, dirty looks are part of human culture. We are getting there, but most of us are not yet in spiritual unity, having the utmost compassion for others.

Would you like to empower children with the wisdom to be responsible for their own actions based on solid moral principles and empathy, or would you prefer teaching all kids to fit into a behavioral template and abide by certain rules to create a completely safe utopian environment in which everyone is always nice to each other by default, without moral responsibility and the wisdom to know the difference? You can't have both.

Haven’t we noticed that children continue suffering despite over a decade of anti-bullying warfare. Year after year children are bombarded with anti-bullying programs, lessons, posters, movies, books, songs and bracelets. They have signed pledges stating they won’t engage in bullying and will stand up for victims. They have been informed of the punishments they will receive if they violate anti-bullying policies. They have heard their favorite celebrities rally against bullying. Yet bullying continues.

The great irony is that the solution is simple and has been known for thousands of years. The solution is not government but wisdom. It is about knowing how to be a victor rather than a victim. When kids acquire this simple wisdom, no one can bully them and any thoughts of committing violence against themselves or others evaporates.

Shouldn’t social scientists be considering the possibility that the endless barrage of anti-bullying messages may be making children even more vulnerable and desperate? How should bullied kids feel when they are constantly exposed to the lie of "Bully-Free Zone" posters in school corridors? How can they let insults slide off their backs when the adult authorities teach them that "the sticks and stones slogan is a lie" and "words can scar them forever"? How can they feel empowered when they are informed that they are powerless to handle bullying on their own and need the help of everyone around them? How should they feel when they follow the instructions to inform adults on bullies only to find the hostilities against them intensifying and their peers calling them "snitches"? How can they be optimistic when celebrities declare, "It gets better," but meanwhile it’s only getting worse? Is it any wonder that children despair and take their own lives in growing numbers?

Why is the world’s crusade to eradicate bullying failing? Very simple. It is disempowering children. It is depriving them of their own power and influence to affect how others treat them. Instead, it is creating a nanny system where the very tools needed to eradicate the problem are removed because we don't think children can handle the problem themselves. But they can and they need to.

In fact, bullying often strengthens the character for many teens who then grow into very successful adults because they have mastered conflict resolution their way.

One athlete comes to mind by the name of Georges St Pierre better known as GSP in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He is now one of the most loved and respected mixed martial artists in the world who grew up being bullied and tormented as a child in Quebec, Canada. He also happens to be a a very gifted world champion. His story is fascinating and he credits much of who he is today to his experiences being bullied as a child. One might argue he would not be the person he is today, nor the professional athlete he has evolved into without these experiences, however unpleasant they were perceived at the time. As many have stated, GSP is now a man of wisdom and this clearly comes through in his interviews when he discusses his life, his training and even his opponents.

Many celebrities were bullied as children and are now very successful thespians. Unfortunately, many of them also hop on the anti-bullying bandwagon convinced by their agents to speak out on their childhood experiences to crusade against bullying, which only further regresses the issue.

The anti-bullying philosophy Olweus has spawned can be summed up as follows:
"You are entitled to live in a world without mean people. If people repeatedly treat you badly, please don't think it has anything to do with you, your attitudes or your behavior; it is only because of them. You are not strong or smart enough to make them stop, nor is it your responsibility to do so. Just inform the authorities when people upset you, and the authorities will make them stop."

Under pressure from anti-bullying activists, state governments have been mandating that schools adopt the Olweus paradigm of bullying. As a result, schools are becoming mini-police states in which everything students say and do is under the surveillance of the school staff, now required to do double-duty as correctional officers.

Anti-bullying laws are a Catch-22, for the harder schools try to comply with them, the worse the bullying becomes. They turn children against children, parents against parents, and parents and administrators against each other. And if the schools fail to satisfy both sets of parents, the disgruntled parents may sue the school district, wasting humongous sums of money while further escalating hostilities. Tension has reached an unprecedented level in schools courtesy of anti-bullying laws.

There is no serious school of psychology, philosophy or religion that teaches this self-defeating approach to life. Yet this is the new anti-bully philosophy eagerly embraced throughout the world and it has to stop.

Aristotle said, "One thing no government can do, no matter how good it is, is to make its citizens morally virtuous." If laws could force people to be saints, every government would have created Utopia long ago.

Children who continuously feel like victims will remain victims if they are not taught how to break the cycle. For consciousness to evolve among our children they must be instilled with the wisdom and principles of how they create their own realities. What we think about, we become. What we feel we become. If we think and feel we are being protected by others as a safety net for our inability to confront our problems, we will only face more of those problems in the future as the issues become more complex and involved in our reality. The matrix will only become our slave if we know how to become its master, otherwise we are hopelessly confined to a reality that controls us instead of the other way around.

No one wants schools to function as correctional facilities. They are educational institutions created to prepare children for the challenges of life, not to provide them with a false hope of a life without challenges. Bullying goes on in all arenas of life. Just as children deserve to be taught the three "R"s, they deserve to be taught the simple wisdom for dealing with bullying. Not only is this wisdom freely available, it will increase academic achievement while preventing future tragedies.

We don't need more laws controlling children. We need more children controlling their own destiny, who are empowered members of our society and skillful creators of what they perceive as reality.

There's an old saying, usually attributed to Confucius, that goes "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a life." Let's stop giving children all the false idealism attributed by the anti-bullying movement and nanny mentality. Let's start teaching them about moral responsibility, wisdom and how to think for themselves while creating a reality that flows with their intention, instead of letting others think it up for them.

Marco Torres is a research specialist, writer and consumer advocate for healthy lifestyles. He holds degrees in Public Health and Environmental Science and is a professional speaker on topics such as disease prevention, environmental toxins and health policy.

Yoga's dark side

From Sott.net - Oct 16: 2012

By Erin Motzenbecker / Huffington Post

There's a giant pink elephant on the yoga mat, and I'm just gonna come out and say it. How come when I go to any new-to-me yoga studio, or hang out with a group of "yoga people," I feel more judged there than anywhere else? At least half the time these yogi cliques are way too cool and I feel more like I just crashed the party at the Mean Girls lunch table, not like I'm about to spend a relaxing hour in stretch and meditation.

Yoga has begun attracting a crowd that promotes exclusivity and division. I'd like to underline the point that people in the yoga community can be some of the harshest and meanest critics out there. Once I suggested egg whites as a reasonable, light snack to have a couple hours before a yoga class, and was sternly (and seriously) asked by a fellow yogi if I'd taken my "stupid pills" that day. He was flabbergasted that I, as an instructor, could endorse the consumption of animal products despite my efforts to go out of my way to always buy organic, local, and humanely-raised meat and dairy.

This is just one very small incident that happened to me, but this is definitely not the only one of its kind. This is what's happening: In my own experience -- and in tons of others' I've spoken with about this -- judgment and what seems like genuine aggression toward yoga teachers and practitioners who don't fit the yoga stereotype.

Not too long ago, the picture of a yogi was drawn out something like this: friendly, inclusive, open-minded, and warm. They had a little bit of the "hippie" spirit in them, wanting to ensure everyone felt good in the space they practiced in. Now, in many places, the picture looks much different. Studios are full of people who can barely be bothered to make eye contact, let alone build any kind of friendship. The laid-back attitude of the yoga community has been diluted to one full of self-righteous egos that are decked out in $150 mala beads, outfits that cost a car payment, and mats with a matching price tag. They can put together a great outfit, but there's no authenticity. I'm not saying that any of this stuff is inherently bad, and my argument is not against having nice things, including fancy mats and malas -- I'm the first to admit to spending too much on some of these myself! My argument is that we've introduced a lot of frivolous stuff into the picture and it's clouding what the real meaning of yoga is: union of body, mind, and spirit.

It's about continuing to built on the concept of following a path of low resistance and embracing people of different ideas, cultures, communities, and diets! Why be insulted that someone hates the taste of green smoothies and enjoys a burger on the weekends? Why throw out insults to someone else's style of teaching because you think your own is superior? We already live in a world that forces you to constantly have your guard up, and it's nice to go to a place where you can not care what you're wearing or how your hair is or whether your Warrior is low enough. That's what yoga is really about and that's why I love teaching it, too. I get to create that environment for others, where they can let go of all the stresses we carry around all day in the "real" world.

Whether you're a teacher or a student of yoga, remember that it's OK to celebrate differences and remember why you started practicing. At the end of the day, we're all made up of the exact same "stuff." That's what yoga is to me.

Comment: The Law of Accident may be part of the assumption of personality, a characteristic that is contrary to essence, and is considered from many sources: everything learned; everything this reflects; everything from the outside; all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in sensations; all words and movements that have been learned; all feelings created by imitation; and all of this not actualy owned by the entity and increasingly buffered as personality which may be claimed falsely. This short piece was a great example of this manifestation and its seemingly prevalence. It was  Dr. Jeremy Dunning Davies who said "Math isn't Physics". No kidding. To understand the Law of Accident, one must be able to distinguish between many natural given influences, and those of esoteric nature, such as propaganda. Eventually, and upon discrimination, he or she may begin to remember these esoteric influences and they begin to form within themselves a magnetic center. G. I. Gurdjieff describes what he calls "the way," at this juncture in his teachings.

Once Again—Death of the Liberal Class

Alexis Gravel (CC-BY-ND)

From Truthdig.com - Nov 12: 2012

By Chris Hedges

The presidential election exposed the liberal class as a corpse. It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved into an instrument of personal vanity, burnishing the hollow morality of its adherents. Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves—the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. The liberal class clung desperately during the long nightmare of this political campaign to one or two issues, such as protecting a woman’s right to choose and gender equality, to justify its complicity in a monstrous evil. This moral fragmentation—using an isolated act of justice to define one’s self while ignoring the vast corporate assault on the nation and the ecosystem along with the pre-emptive violence of the imperial state—is moral and political capitulation. It fails to confront the evil we have become.

“The American Dream has run out of gas,” wrote the novelist J.G. Ballard. “The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now. …”

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Surviving the Apocalypses of Desire

© N/A

From Dissident Voice - Nov 10: 2012

By Christy Rogers

There’s a lot going on these days, isn’t there? Crisis after crisis, storm after storm. Meanwhile, like rubberneckers at a slow motion car crash, we’ve been fixated on a months-long national orgy of skank, deceit and vituperation that basically served to reconfirm an ineffectual status quo with tweaks. (Thank god that’s over. Now what?) But do we know what it all means? We’ve all got opinions; we’re all shouting them at the top of our lungs. Nobody seems willing to admit there might be a major interpretation deficit in the culture.

How do we decide on the meaning of our reality? It’s not a new dilemma. In fact it’s quite possibly coeval with the emergence of a brain that could form images of things that weren’t actually there. It could “see” animals running on an open plain inside a lightless cave. It could “see” living beings after they had died, and dead things as if they still lived. From a bone or a track it could visualize a whole creature.

Other animals don’t need help interpreting reality. But when the brain is lighting up all the time with so many signals that can’t be dismissed or ignored, and yet much of what they convey is absent to the senses, so that even the reality of what is present becomes questionable, interpretation is required. The nascent mind might have collapsed into stupor from the psychic weight of all this information. But interpreters emerged, in our little wandering forage-groups. They were the ones who took on the full madness of reception: information streaming from both the present and absent world—and returned from their immersion in it with a vision of the meaning it had for the group.

That was a long time ago, but it kept working for us. Time took us (some of us) from shamans to prophets to poets, but they are all on a continuum. They invoke a reality larger than one time, one place, and certainly larger than one person. They invoke the whole reality of culture, with its bonds among people, to nature, across time. Their main mechanism is metaphor, which links disparate things, uniting them, taking you from the known to the unknown in a graceful leap of language or performance. We can all think this way, but our interpreters did it best.

But what about now? What about us, here today, our virtual tribes huddled around electronic campfires bathing us endlessly in data-glow? The poets have been sidelined; they are mumbling in the corners, haunting little book-lined cubicles in university basements or pretend-shouting on the crazy streets. The poets are not on TV, or getting over ten million hits on YouTube. Maybe we thought the rock stars could step in—but no, that didn’t work, because they grew rich, and they spoke only to children, who then aged, but did not grow.

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Taoism and Lucid Dreaming

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From Waking Times - Nov 9: 2012

By You-Sheng Li,

When I was a child, my father was a family physician. Occasionally he talked about dreams with his patients or neighbouring peasants. Having overheard their chat, I joined in one day, saying, “I dreamed of walking on the street but I was aware that I was dreaming. So I was looking for some kind of bed to go back to sleeping. It was a frustrating experience trying to find a bed in the streets of a village. I finally came to a large dark stone with a smoothly polished flat surface. I fell asleep or out of the dream even before my body touched the stone.” They were all surprised by my dream, since lucid dreams are much less common for adults than children.

In a lucid dream, the dreamer is aware of the dreaming status. He or she therefore participates in or even manipulates the outcome of the dream. In my case, I wanted to end the dream, and eventually I did. A false awakening, in which the dreamer dreamed of getting up to work or to go to the washroom, is likely a lucid dream. A daydream may also be a lucid dream, if the dreamer goes far away from his waking state of mind and is unaware of his physical and social environments.

Since a lucid dreamer can often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment, lucid dreams can seem extremely real and vivid, depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream. Recently, various techniques have been developed to induce lucid dreams. Such techniques apparently reduce the frequency and severity of nightmares.

Both Buddhism and Taoism have long been known to introduce lucid dream experiences in order to calm down the believer’s mind. One sect of Buddhism goes further to classify the human mind or consciousness into seven levels of awareness. There are degrees of wakefulness or awareness, and both lucid dreaming and normal waking experiences lie somewhere towards the middle of this continuum (or hierarchy) of awareness. In this context as the Buddhist believes,  there are therefore states of wakefulness that are superior to normal waking awareness, such as Nirvana, which Buddhists pursue in their religious practice. In such superior awareness, the reality of our ordinary world becomes illusory. Buddhism holds the view that life on earth is bitter in nature.

Closing his famous essay All Things Being Equal, Chuang Tzu says, “Chuang Tzu once dreamed that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there, going wherever he pleased. He was totally unaware of Chuang Tzu. A sudden awakening left nothing else but Chuang Tzu himself, who did not know anything about his being a bufferfly. It is therefore unknown whether it is Chuang Tzu who dreamed of being a bufferfly or if it is a butterfly who dreamed of being Chuang Tzu. The butterfly and Chuang Tzu are completely different entities, and it is called transformation when an entity becomes another.”

The same essay starts with a master who leaned on his armrest while sitting lost himself in meditation. Like Buddhists, Chuang Tzu and his followers apparently mastered the techniques of lucid dreams. In the essay, Joyful Free Wandering, Chuang Tzu starts with a legendary bird, Peng, which has a body and wings that cover hundreds of miles. It can fly three thousand miles high. Even this gigantic bird has to rely on air or wind to fly. It is far away from Chuang Tzu’s joyful free wandering, in which one goes to a vivid lucid dream at will, and relying on nothing else but himself. The dreamer can go anywhere he pleases. His dreaming experience is so vivid and real that lucid dreams are not different at all from reality as far as personal experiences are concerned. Buddhism pursues a superior ideal realm, Nirvana, which lies far beyond reality. Taoism holds the view that life on earth is so wonderful that it has to be prolonged to eternity. Taoists use lucid dreams to extend their enjoyment of life beyond the limits of reality.

Children slip into lucid dreams more easily than adults. Similarly prehistoric or primititve people have more lucid dreams. Further, Erika Bourguignon, from her study of almost 500 societies has shown that the frequency, accessibility and quality of religious experiences, correlate inversely with the complexity of social structure. In the simplest and most egalitarian societies, ritual trance states tend to be voluntary, conscious and accessible to most people who desire them. Scientifically “trance” is often termed as a transformed state of mind. It describes lucid dreams and different levels of awareness in Buddhist terms.

Levy-Bruhl’s book “Primitive Mentality” was influential for Julian Jaynes, an American psychologist, who believes that all humans lived in a hallucinatory state more than three thousand years ago. Levy-Bruhl writes: “In comparison to modern society, a greater number of individuals in primitive societies experiences hallucinations, experiences them more frequently, and the hallucinations play an important role in their day-to-day lives.” Levy-Bruhl states: “To them the things which are unseen cannot be distinguished from the things which are seen. The beings of the unseen world are no less directly present than those of the other; they are more active and more formidable. Consequently that world occupies their minds more entirely than this one, and it diverts their minds from reflecting, even to a slight extent, upon the data which we call objective.”

Both Levy-Bruhl and Erika Bourguignon indicated that hallucination was more common in ancient primitive people. But it only employed part of the idle mind in the primary society while it became the divine voice, in Julian Jaynes’ bicameralism, to dictate that the people should obey their rulers in a secondary society. When rational thinking reflecting on objective data establishes itself in modern society, hallucination or bicameralism remains only in psychotic patients.

 Buddhism represents a religious tradition based on secondary societies, and so it teaches people how to retreat from the traumatizing reality by lucid dreams. Taoism is a religious tradition based on the primary society, and so it teaches people how to enjoy life more without any efforts by lucid dreams.

About the Author  

You-Sheng Li is a practicing Taoist and author of the website, 21st Century Taoism.

Hopi Elders Statement – We Are the Ones

Waking Times

 From Waking Times - Nov 7: 2012

The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona Hopi

You have been telling people that this is the eleventh hour.
Now you must go back and tell people that this is the hour!
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your Garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to yourself.
And not look outside of yourself for a leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing very fast.
It is so great and fast that there are those who will be afraid.
They will hold on to the shore.
They will feel that they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say that we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open,
and our heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time we are to take nothing personally,
least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
our spiritual growth comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones that we have been waiting for.

This statement from the Hopi Elders was originally posted on www.harmonicplanet.org.

Regular Exercise Reduces Risk of Dementia in Older People

From Psych Central - Nov 2: 2012

By Janice Wood

 Regular exercise may help older people reduce their chances of getting dementia, according to a new study.

Researchers found that older, non-disabled people who regularly engaged in physical activity reduced their risk of vascular-related dementia by 40 percent and cognitive impairment from any cause by 60 percent.

The researchers noted that the protective effect of regular physical activity remained regardless of age, education, changes in the brain’s white matter, and a previous history of stroke or diabetes.

“We strongly suggest physical activity of moderate intensity at least 30 minutes three times a week to prevent cognitive impairment,” said Ana Verdelho, M.D., lead author of the study and a neuroscience researcher at the University of Lisbon, Santa Maria Hospital in Portugal.

“This is particularly important for people with vascular risk factors such as hypertension, stroke or diabetes.”

The findings are based on an analysis of a multinational European study that included yearly cognitive assessments for three years. The analysis included 639 people in their 60s and 70s.

According to the researchers, 55 percent were women and almost 64 percent said they were active at least 30 minutes a day three times a week. Activities included gym classes, walking and biking.

Researchers performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests at the beginning and end of the study to gauge white matter changes in the brain, an indicator of possible cognitive decline.

“Damage of the cerebral white matter is implicated in cognitive problems, including depression, walking difficulties and urinary complaints,” Verdelho said. “White matter changes are very common in older people and mainly associated with vascular risk factors like hypertension and stroke.”

Throughout the study, researchers asked participants in phone interviews and clinical visits about depression, quality of life and performing everyday activities.

At the end of the study, 90 patients had dementia, including 54 with vascular dementia in which impaired blood flow to the brain causes cognitive decline, while 34 patients met the criteria for Alzheimer’s disease.

Another 147 patients developed cognitive impairment, but not dementia, according to the researchers.
The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Source: American Heart Association