---BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION ---ALTERNATIVE HISTORY---NEW BUSINESS MODELS--- ROCK & ROLL 'S STRANGE BEGINNINGS---SERIAL KILLERS---YEA AND THAT BAD WORD "CONSPIRACY"--- AMERICANS DON'T EXPLORE ANYTHING ANYMORE.WE JUST CONSUME AND DIE.---
Forty-five years ago on Tuesday, peace activists broke into an
FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and unearthed documents exposing the
government’s expansive COINTELPRO operations, which aimed to surveil,
disrupt, and “neutralize” lawful activist groups, including war
protesters, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American
Indian Movement, and the National Lawyers Guild. Though the COINTELPRO revelations stirred widespread outrage and led
to the eventual passage of reform legislation, such as the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, such abuse of activists’ First Amendment
rights continues to this day. More than 60 national and local groups on Tuesday sent a letter (pdf)
to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees expressing
concern over the FBI’s and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s
“abuse of counterterrorism resources to monitor Americans’ First
Amendment protected activity.” The groups, which include Center for Constitutional Rights, Council
on American-Islamic Relations, Government Accountability Project,
Greenpeace USA, National Lawyers Guild, School of the Americas Watch
(SOAW), and Veterans for Peace, among others, are urging the Committees
to conduct a full investigation, not unlike the Church Committee, “to determine the extent of FBI and DHS spying in the past decade.” “The FBI in particular has a well-documented history of abuse of
First Amendment rights,” the letter states—referring specifically to the
COINTELPRO operations—and such activities have continued, including
“sending undercover agents and informants to infiltrate peaceful social
justice groups, as well as surveillance of, documenting, and reporting
on lawful political activity.”
Some of the groups targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO. (Source: Zinn Ed Project)
Groups recently targeted by the FBI include SOAW, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Keystone XL Pipeline activists.
Meanwhile DHS and local fusion centers, which operate as local sources
of “counter-terrorism” intelligence gathering and sharing,monitored the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements as well. What’s more, the groups note,
“documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the
FBI continuously invokes counterterrorism authorities to monitor groups
it admits are peaceful and nonviolent.” “Labeling activism as terrorism criminalizes political dissent,” the
letter states. “Given the current political climate and draconian laws
concerning terrorism, individuals may be deterred from participating in
completely lawful speech, such as a protest march, by this stigma.” “That the FBI cannot discern between activism and terrorism shows us that they think dissent is still the enemy,” said Chip Gibbons, legal fellow with Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Defending Dissent Foundation, which organized the letter.
“There have been multiple attempts at reform but after
each and every one we see the same thing happening again. The FBI claims
to no longer investigate groups for their political beliefs, but look
at who the FBI investigates under its counterterrorism authority—peace
groups, racial justice groups, economic justice groups—the very same
types of organizations that were targeted during the heyday of J. Edgar
Hoover.”
The original source of this article is Common Dreams
Posted by George Freund on March 8, 2016 ~hehe that "covert" war spill~in "out" inta the "OPEN"
Bangladesh’s
central bank said on Monday its account with the US Federal Reserve
Bank of New York had been hacked and money had been stolen from it, but
that it had recovered some of the funds. The theft occurred February
5th, but officials are just now making public the size of the theft.
Bangladesh
Bank said it had traced some of the money to the Philippines and was
working with anti-money laundering authorities there.
However, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York denied that its payments systems were breached:
“To
date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve
systems in connection with the payments in question, and there is no
evidence that any Fed systems were compromised,” said New York Fed
spokeswoman Andrea Priest in response to queries about the claim.
Bangladesh
Bank released a statement to the media on Monday, saying its Financial
Intelligence Unit is working with the Anti-Money Laundering Council
(AMLC) of the Philippines to recover the rest of the funds.
But the central bank did not say how much money has been recovered.
To questions by reporters on the matter, General Manager AFM Asaduzzaman said,
“Whatever has been said in the media statement is the version of
Bangladesh Bank for the time being. Nothing more can be said in the
interest of a fair investigation.”
According to media
reports, AMLC is investigating a money laundering case involving $100
million reportedly stolen by hackers mostly from the accounts of a
Bangladeshi bank.
A report by the Philippines’ Daily
Inquirer said “funds had been brought into the Philippines’ banking
system, sold to a black market foreign exchange broker, transferred to
at least three large local casinos, sold back to the money broker and
moved out to overseas accounts – all in a matter of days”.
According
to reports of other media outlets, Chinese hackers stole money from the
Bangladesh Bank account with the Federal Reserve in New York.
Of
the funds, $75 million was transferred to a bank in the Philippines and
the rest to a Sri Lankan bank, the reporters suggested.
The
central bank said the AMLC had filed a case over the laundering of
money and taken measures to freeze the bank accounts in question.
It
said the World Bank, supported by its ‘forensic investigative team’
which is manned by a cyber expert, is also working with Bangladesh Bank
to trace and recover the money.
Two Bangladesh Bank
officials have already visited the Philippines and held meetings with
officials of the country’s central bank –the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
(BSP) – for the recovery of the money.
According to the
statement, the central bank will move to court once the AMLC completes
its investigation and will tap the World Bank’s Stolen Assets Recovery
Initiative (StAR), if necessary, to get the money back.
Finance minister was in dark
Finance
Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith says he was unaware of the central bank
losing money to hackers. He told reporters on Monday,
“Like you, I have come to know of the matter from the media. Bangladesh Bank did not inform me of anything.”
The minister described the incident as ‘unusual’ but declined further comment on it. He
faced questions on the matter when he talked to reporters after holding
a meeting with the World Bank’s new Resident Representative Qimiao Fan.
~hehe drip ,Drip,DRIP as "they" slowly "release/reveal" "stuff" 2 the pube~lic ...folks a 100 yrs from NOW ...we wont even rec~in~nize OUR ....world fuck! just "think" of the "shit" 'they' got in the black, Black ,BLACK .... world ?
Captain Kirk and crew may have teleported on the USS Enterprise, but
the technology doesn’t exist yet to do so. However, scientists have
demonstrated that the concept of teleportation doesn’t only exist in the
world of quantum particles but also in the classical world, a tiny
first step.
USS Starship Enterprise
In a new study, physicists at the University of Jena,
Germany have been successful in teleporting (beaming up) the properties
of particles, unfortunately not the solid particles themselves. They
used a special form of laser beams in their experiment and encoded some
information in a particular polarization direction of the laser light.
This information was transmitted in the shape of a laser beam using
teleportation. In other words, the information was transmitted fully and
instantly without any loss of time.
Beam Us Up … Star Trek
Telelportation is the transfer of matter or energy from one place to
another without traveling the physical space between them, or in the
Star Trek sense, making an object or person disintegrate in one place
while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. Dr. Alexander Szameit, junior professor of diamond-carbon-based optical systems at the university writes:
Teleportation describes the transmission of information
without transport of neither matter nor energy. For many years, however,
it has been implicitly assumed that this scheme is of inherently
nonlocal in nature, and therefore to quantum systems. Here, we
experimentally demonstrate that the concept of teleportation can be
readily generalized beyond the quantum realm. We present an optical
implementation of the teleportation protocol solely based on classical
entanglement between spatial and model degrees of freedom, entirely
independent of nonlocality.
Quantum entanglement is the moving of one quantum object to another
in a distant location without transporting the actual object. This is
sort of how fax machines operate.
Teleportation
Mr. Spock would truly understand the logic behind this study. The
results may be used as an interesting option in telecommunications. Dr. Szameit adds,
Our findings could enable novel methods for distributing
information between different transmission channels and may provide the
means to leverage the advantages of both quantum and classical systems
to create a robust hybrid communication infrastructure.
Though the teleportation of humans is a long way off, some of the
concepts used on the USS Starship Enterprise have become real: Doors
that open automatically, video telephones and flip phones. Scientists are going where no man has gone before.
Another superpower once found only in graphic novels and movies has
been demonstrated in real life. Named for the X-Men character Magneto, a
genetically-altered iron-containing protein has been injected into the
brains of mice, putting them under the control of magnetic manipulators
who made them magnetically happy. Biomedical researchers led by Ali Güler at the University of
Virginia looked at magnets as a way to control brain circuits without
requiring light signals or drugs. According to their study published in Nature Neuroscience,
they started with ion channels, which are proteins that play a role in
sending electrical signals around the brain. They selected a channel
called TRPV4 and genetically combined it with ferritin, a protein found
in the liver and spleen that binds to iron in the body. Ferritin is also
capable of being influenced, albeit slightly, by external magnets. The result of this genetic engineering was an iron-rich protein that
the researchers christened Magneto, hoping the name would bring them
luck. After placing Magneto in a cell, they approached it with a magnet,
which caused Magneto to move, open the ion channel and bring in ions
that could alter brain signals.
The other Magneto
At that point, Magneto was ready for a real brain. The team started
with zebrafish. Putting Magneto in an area of the brain used for sensing
touch, they were able to magnetically manipulate it to make the
zebrafish move its tail as if it was touched. Moving on to bigger brains, they put Magneto in the brains of mice in
the area that responds to dopamine and generates a pleasure response.
This caused the mice to move to areas where a magnetic field was present
in order to feel good. So the Magneto protein can allow brains to be manipulated into
pleasure responses like a magnetic Doctor Feelgood. Before you go down
to the hardware store for the biggest nail magnet money can buy and
start drinking liver-and-spinach smoothies, note that these were simple
tests and the goal is to use Magneto and “magneto-genetic” therapies to
treat brain disorders. Also, too many iron-rich smoothies makes it dangerous to walk by a refrigerator full of magnets.
The other magnetic mice
Poisoned and Marginalised? The Role of Agroecology in Resisting the Corporate Stranglehold on Food and Agriculture
It is becoming increasingly apparent
that food and agriculture across the world is in crisis. Food is
becoming denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets
are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect
diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded,
water tables polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to
global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of
farming. A minority of the global population has access to so much food
than it can afford to waste much of it, while food poverty and
inequality have become a fact of life for hundreds of millions.
This
crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures
that serve the interests of the powerful agribusiness corporations in
the Western countries, especially the US. Over the last 60 years or so,
Washington’s plan has been to restructure indigenous agriculture across
the world. And this plan has been geopolitical in nature: subjugating
nations by getting them to rely more on US imports rather and grow less
of their own food. What happened in Mexico under the banner of ‘free
trade’ is outlined further on in this article.
Agriculture and food production and
distribution have become globalised and tied to an international system
of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production
for the international market, indebtedness to international financial
institutions (IMF/World Bank) and the need for nations to boost foreign
exchange (US dollar) reserves to repay debt (which neatly boosts demand
for the dollar, the lynch pin of US global dominance). This has resulted
in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become
dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food
deficits in the global South mirror food surpluses in the West.
Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes related to debt repayment, as occurred in Africa, bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture.
Integral to all of this has been the
imposition of the green revolution. Farmers were encouraged to purchase
seeds from corporations that were dependent on petrochemical fertilisers
and pesticides to boost yields. They required loans to purchase these
corporate inputs and governments borrowed to finance irrigation and dam
building projects for what was a water-intensive model.
While the green revolution was sold to
governments and farmers on the basis it would increase productivity and
earnings and would be more efficient, we are now in a position to see
that it served to incorporate nations and farmers into a system of
international capitalism based on dependency, deregulated and manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity.
As
part of a wider ‘development’ plan for the global South, millions of
farmers have been forced out of agriculture to become cheap factory
labour (for outsourced units from the West) or, as is increasingly the case,
unemployed or underemployed slum dwellers. And many of those who remain
in agriculture find themselves being steadily squeezed out as farming
becomes increasingly financially non-viable due to falling incomes, the
impact cheap subsidised imports and policies deliberately designed to run down smallholder agriculture.
Aside from the geopolitical shift in favour of the Western nations resulting from the programmed destruction of
traditional agriculture, the corporate-controlled, chemical-laden green
revolution has adversely impacted the nature of food, soil, human
health and the environment. Sold on the promise of increased yields,
this has been overstated. And the often stated ‘humanitarian’ intent and outcome (‘millions of lives saved’) has had more to do with PR rather than the reality of cold commercial interest.
Moreover, if internationally farmers
found themselves beholden to a US centric system of trade and
agriculture, at home they were also having to cater to the needs of a
distant and expanding urban population whose food needs were different
to local rural-based communities. In addition to a focus on export
oriented farming, crops were being grown for the urban market,
regardless of farmers’ needs or the dietary requirements of local rural
markets.
Impacts of the green revolution on the farm
In an open letter written
in 2006 to policy makers in India, farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save
summarised some of the impacts of green revolution farming in India. He
argued that the actual reason for pushing the green revolution was the
much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively
less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured
by the government and a few industries at the expense of a more diverse
and nutrient-sufficient agriculture, which rural folk – who make up the
bulk of India’s population – had long benefited from.
Before,
Indian farmers had been largely self-sufficient and even produced
surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items.
These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets.
And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated
monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than
their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.
Tall, indigenous varieties of grain
provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected
against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains, but these very replaced
with dwarf varieties, which led to more vigorous growth of weeds and
were able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for
sunlight. As a result, the farmer had to spend more labour and money in
weeding, or spraying herbicides. Moreover, straw growth with the dwarf
grain crops fell and much less organic matter was locally available to
recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for
externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more
chemicals and soil degradation and erosion set in.
The exotic varieties, grown with
chemical fertilisers, were more susceptible to ‘pests and diseases’,
leading to yet more chemicals being poured. But the attacked insect
species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their
predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and
controlled their populations were exterminated. So were many beneficial
species like the earthworms and bees.
Save
noted that India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall
in the world. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, the soil is
alive and porous and at least half of the rain is soaked and stored in
the soil and sub-soil strata. A good amount then percolates deeper to
recharge aquifers or groundwater tables. The living soil and its
underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs. Half a
century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all year round,
long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests, and
the capacity of the earth to soak the rain, drops drastically. Streams
and wells run dry.
While
the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has
been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater
each day than it did in 1950. But most of India’s people – living on
hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages, and practising only
rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per
person, as they did generations ago.
More than 80% of India’s water
consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by
chemically cultivated cash crops. For example, one acre of chemically
grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of
jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities.
From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs two to
three tonnes of water. Save argued this could be used to grow, by the
traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or
bajra (native millets).
The colonisation of Mexico by US agribusiness
If Bhaskar Save helped open people’s eyes to what has happened on the farm and to ecology as a result of the green revolution, a2015 report by
GRAIN provides a wider overview of how US agribusiness has hijacked an
entire nation’s food and agriculture under the banner of ‘free trade’ to
the detriment of the environment, health and farmers.
In 2012, Mexico’s National Institute for
Public Health released the results of a national survey of food
security and nutrition. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of
overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35%
and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to
37%. Some 29% of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were
found to be overweight, as were 35% of the youngsters between 11 and 19,
while one in 10 school age children suffered from anaemia. The Mexican
Diabetes Federation says that more than 7% of the Mexican population has
diabetes. Diabetes is now the third most common cause of death in
Mexico, directly or indirectly.
The various free trade agreements that
Mexico has signed over the past two decades have had a profound impact
on the country’s food system and people’s health. After his mission to
Mexico in 2012, the then Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
Olivier De Schutter, concluded that the trade policies in place favour
greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long
shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable
foods, particularly fruit and vegetables.
He added that the overweight and obesity
emergency that Mexico is facing could have been avoided, or largely
mitigated, if the health concerns linked to shifting diets had been
integrated into the design of those policies.
The North America Free Trade Agreement
led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in the
retail structure (notably the advent of supermarkets and convenience
stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and
transnational food companies in Mexico. The country has witnessed an
explosive growth of chain supermarkets, discounters and convenience
stores. Local small-scale vendors have been replaced by corporate
retailers that offer the processed food companies greater opportunities
for sales and profits. Oxxo (owned by Coca-cola subsidiary Femsa)
tripled its stores to 3,500 between 1999 and 2004. It was scheduled to
open its 14 thousandth store sometime during 2015.
De Schutter believes a programme that
deals effectively with hunger and malnutrition has to focus on Mexico’s
small farmers and peasants. They constitute a substantial percentage of
the country’s poor and are the ones that can best supply both rural and
urban populations with nutritious foods. Mexico
could recover its self-sufficiency in food if there were to be official
support for peasant agriculture backed with amounts comparable to the
support granted to the big corporations.
The writing is on the wall for other
countries because what happened in Mexico is being played out across the
world under the banner of ‘free trade’.
GMOs a bogus techno quick-fix to further benefit global agribusiness
Transnational agribusiness has lobbied for, directed and
profited from the very policies that have caused the agrarian/food
crisis. And what we now see is these corporations (and their supporters)
espousing cynical and fake concern for
the plight of the poor and hungry (and the environment which they have
done so much to degrade), and offering more (second or third generation…
we have lost count) chemicals and corporate-patented GM wonder seeds to
supposedly ‘solve’ the problem of world hunger. GM represents the final
stranglehold of transnational agribusiness over the control of seeds
and food.
The misrepresentation of the plight of the indigenous edible oils sector in
India encapsulates the duplicity at work surrounding GM. After trade
rules and cheap imports conspired to destroy farmers and the jobs of people involved in local food processing activities for
the benefit of global agribusiness, including commodity trading and
food processer companies ADM and Cargill, the same companies are now
leading a campaign to force GM into India on the basis that Indian
agriculture is unproductive and thus the country has to rely on imports.
This conveniently ignores the fact that prior to neoliberal trade rules
in the mid-1990s, India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils.
In collusion with the Gates Foundation, these corporate interests are now seeking to secure full spectrum dominance throughout
much of Africa as well. Western seed, fertiliser and pesticide
manufacturers and dealers and food processing companies are in the
process of securing changes to legislation and are building up logistics
and infrastructure to allow them to recast food and farming in their
own images.
Today, governments continue to collude
with big agribusiness corporations, which seek to eradicate the small
farmer and subject countries to the vagaries of rigged global
markets. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government
policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations and are increasingly framing the policy/knowledge agenda by funding and determining the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes.
Bhaskar Save:
“This country has more than 150 agricultural
universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’
unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading
ecological degradation. In all the six years a student spends for an
M.Sc. in agriculture, the only goal is short-term – and narrowly
perceived – ‘productivity’. For this, the farmer is urged to do and buy a
hundred things. But not a thought is spared to what a farmer must never
do so that the land remains unharmed for future generations and other
creatures. It is time our people and government wake up to the
realisation that this industry-driven way of farming – promoted by our
institutions – is inherently criminal and suicidal!”
At the end of the above quote, Save is
referring to the near 300,000 farmer suicides that have taken place in
India over the past two decades due to economic distress resulting from debt, a shift to (GM)cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (seethis report about a peer-reviewed study, which directly links suicides to GM cotton).
The current global system of
chemical-industrial agriculture, World Trade Organisation rules and
bilateral trade agreements that agritech companies helped draw up for
their benefit are a major cause of structural hunger, poverty, illness
and environmental destruction. By its very design, the system is
parasitical.
Agroecology as a credible force for change
Across the world, we are seeing farmers
and communities continuing to resist the corporate takeover of seeds,
soils, water and food. And we are also witnessing inspiring stories
about the successes of agroecology: a model of agriculture based
on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research utilising
elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological
control of pests.
Reflecting what Bhaskar Save achieved on
his farm in Gujarat, the system combines sound ecological management,
including minimising the use of toxic inputs, by using on-farm renewable
resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and
disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods.
Agroecology is based on scientific
research grounded in the natural sciences but marries this with
farmer-generated knowledge and grass-root participation that challenges
top-down approaches to research and policy making. It can also involve
moving beyond the dynamics of the farm itself to become part of a wider
agenda, which addresses the broader political and economic issues that
impact farmers and agriculture (see this description of the various modes of thought that underpin agroecolgy).
Last year the Oakland Institute released
a report on 33 case studies which highlighted the success of
agroecological agriculture across Africa in the face of climate change,
hunger and poverty. The studies provide facts and figures on how
agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food
security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils
and the environment. The research highlight the multiple benefits of
agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost
agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and
resilience.
The report described how agroecology
uses a wide variety of techniques and practices, including plant
diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or
compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and
diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management
structures. There are many other examples of successful agroecology and
of farmers abandoning green revolution thought and practices to embrace
it (see this report about El Salvador and this from South India).
Various official reports have argued
that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions
we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agro-ecological
methods of farming and strengthen local food economies (see this report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and this (IAASTD) peer-reviewed report).
“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we
urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available.
Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods
outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production
where the hungry live especially in unfavorable environments.”
De Schutter’s report indicated that
small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in
critical regions by using ecological methods. Based on an extensive
review of the recent scientific literature, the study calls for a
fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production
and improve the situation of the poorest. The report calls on states to
implement a fundamental shift towards agroecology.
The success stories of agroecology
indicate what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the
hands of farmers themselves. The expansion of agroecological practices
can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be
sustained for future generations. This model entails policies and
activities that come from the bottom-up and which the state must invest
in and facilitate.
Proponents
of agroecology appreciate that a decentralised system of domestic food
production with access to local rural markets supported by proper roads,
storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of
exploitative international markets dominated and designed to serve the
needs of global capital. Small farms are per area more productive than large-scale industrial farms and create a more resilient, diverse food system.
If policy makers were to prioritise this sector and promote agroecology
to the extent ‘green revolution’ practices and technology have been
pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment, rising
population and urban migration could be solved.
While many argue in favour of
agroecology and regard it as a strategy for radical social change, some
are happier for it to bring certain benefits to farmers and local
communities and see nothing wrong with it being integrated within a
globalised system of capitalism that continues to centralise power and
generally serve the interests of the global seed, food processing and
retail players. And that is the danger: a model of agriculture with so
much potential being incorporated into a corrupt system designed to suit
the needs of these corporate interests.
But
there is only so much that can be achieved at grass-root level by
ordinary people, often facilitated by non-governmental agencies. As long
as politicians at national and regional levels are co-opted by the US
and its corporations, seeds will continue to be appropriated, lands
taken, water diverted, legislation enacted, research institutes funded
and policy devised to benefit global agribusiness.
The original source of this article is Global Research
If you are interested in the modern day UFO/ET phenomenon, you can click here,
this should take you to the exopolitics section of our website where
you can find all of our articles on the topic. This article, however,
will deal with a fraction of historical accounts of supposed ancient
flying machines and extraterrestrials.
We have spiritual beliefs today, but not
like the ancients. Thousands of years ago, people confronted forces
well beyond their control and understanding: hence the gods. During
ancient times, it was universally held that human civilization was a
gift of the gods. Whether in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece,
Scandinavia, Britain, India, China, Africa, the Americas or elsewhere,
most people believed the gods brought them the tools of civilization –
agriculture, writing, medicine – everything worth having. When the
monotheistic religions became dominant, the gods became a God, but the
beat continued. – Richard Dolan (1)
Antiquity is littered with stories of
beings from other worlds, materials and flying objects that, according
to modern day thinking, should not have existed. For anybody who has
studied ancient mythology, along with the reality and recent public
disclosures of the ‘Black Budget‘
world, they would know that a large amount of evidence exists today
which corroborates with these ‘mythical stories’ (as we interpret them)
into stories of possible ancient reality.
It’s also important to point out here
that even today, objects performing extraordinary and (what should be)
impossible maneuvers have been observed and tracked on radar by defence
intelligence agencies worldwide. Perhaps these unidentified flying
objects have been around longer than we think? You can read more about
what happens when the military tracks a ‘UFO’ on radar, HERE.
Here is a great example that was released by the Canadian military many years ago.
Who are we to say that these flying
objects in ancient history are mythical apparitions of the mind? Who’s
to say that they were not also documented in the past like they are
today? Thousands of years from now will our present civilization and its
encounters with UFOs be considered mythological? Something to think
about.
The mythology of the Eskimos says that
the first tribes were brought to the North by “gods” with brazen wings.
The oldest American Indian sagas mention a Thunderbird who introduced
fire and fruit to them. The Mayan legend, the Popol Vuh, tells us that
the “gods” were able to recognize everything; the universe, the four
cardinal points of the compass, and even the round shape of the Earth.
What are the Eskimos doing talking about metal birds? Why do the Indians
mention a Thunderbird? How are the ancestors of the Mayas supposed to
have known that the Earth is round?”– Erich Von Daniken, author, taken from his book Chariots of The Gods
The legends of the pre-Inca peoples say
that the stars were inhabited by the “gods” who came down to them from
the constellation of the Pleiades. Sumerian, Babylonian, Syrian and
Egyptian cuneiform inscriptions constantly present the same picture,
that “gods” came from the stars and went back to them. There is
reference to extraterrestrial life in the Qur’an and Bible, beings that
play in the realms of dark and light called Jins, Nephilim, Angles and
more. There is reference to life on other planets and flying machines in
the Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata and other ancient texts from all over
the world that spread across many different continents. Is this just a
coincidence? Are these really just mere tales?
The Vimanas of the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Samarangana Sutradhara
Much has been written about vimanas, especially on the
web. One can easily become lost amid the sites, although it soon becomes
evident that most of them simply copy each others’ statements. It is
obvious that precious few sites that discuss vimanas have any original
research – Richard Dolan
The word vimana is Sanskrit and has
multiple meanings, for the palace of an emperor or god to a vehicle.
Today, the word means aircraft.
The Ramayana is a Vedic epic that dates back to the fourth/fifth century, B.C. In
one passage, a vimana is described as a “chariot that resembles the
sun, that aerial and excellent chariot going everywhere at will,
resembling a bright cloud in the sky, and the king got in and the
excellent chariot rose up into the higher atmosphere.” (1)(2)(3)
Vimanas are also described in the
Mahabharata, another ancient text. In this case, measurements are given
for one of the vimanas. It’s described as having twelve cubits in
circumference with four strong wheels that are approximately 20 to 25
feet in circumference; about seven feet in diameter.(1)(3)
They roar like off into the sky until they appear like
comets.” The Mahabharata and various Sanskrit books describe at length
these chariots, “powered by winged lighting…it was a ship that soared
into the air, flying to both the solar and stellar regions.(2)
According to the texts, these vimanas
were used to transport the gods through the heavens. These flying
machines, according to Erich Von Daniken, navigated at great heights
with the aid of quicksilver and a great propulsive wind. The Vimanas
could cover vast distances and could travel forward, upward and
downward. They were enviably maneuverable space vehicles.
Another interesting story that comes
from the Mahabharata reveals the history of the “unmarried Kunti,” who
not only received a visit from the sun god but also had a son by him, a
son who is supposed to have been as radiant as the sun itself. This
matches stories in numerous ancient texts in several cultures and
religions, stories of ‘gods’ interbreeding with humans, like the story
Moses, or like Gilgamesh, or Aryuna in the Mahabharata, or the Nephilim
in the Bible (a few of many examples). It also eerily correlates to
abductions of modern day, forced abduction as well as friendly
extraterrestrial encounters that many people claim to have had.
Furthermore, many stories of serpent
beings with superhuman powers exist within ancient literature. While we
are focusing on texts from India right now, consider the Naga. According
to Vedic tradition, the serpent Naga instructed humanity in knowledge
of good and evil.
“It is interesting how the serpent is
seen as a symbol of wisdom or knowledge across many cultural traditions.
Cultures such as the Scandinavian, Slavic, Hebrew, Tibetan, Hopi, and
West African all depict serpent gods possessing esoteric wisdom..” –
Richard Dolan (1)(2)
The Samarangana Sutradhara is a
classical Indian architecture text written in 1000-1055 AD. In it, whole
chapters are devoted to describing airships whose tails spout fire and
quicksilver.
The world ‘fire’ in ancient texts cannot
mean burning fire, for altogether some forty different kinds of “fire,”
mainly connected with esoteric and magnetic phenomena, are enumerated. –
Erich Von Daniken (2)(4)(5)
It also describes types of machines as
automotive, one stroke engine, remote-control and driver-run machines;
keep in mind that this is 1000 years ago. It devotes one full chapter on
the building of flying machines. The book does not explain the process
of building airplanes completely and says that it has been done
purposely, for the sake of secrecy – Prabhakar Apte, MA and PhD in
Sanskrit. (4)(5)
I do not believe that we should dismiss
the old Sanskrit texts as just myths, we have a tendency to do this with
much of our ancient history.
We are not going to get any further with the old approach
which scholars unfortunately still cling to: That doesn’t exist…those
are mistakes in translation…those are fanciful exaggerations by the
author or copyists – Erich Von Daniken
The Tibetan books Tantyua and Kantyua
The Tibetan books of Tantyua and Kantyua mention ancient flying machines, which they refer to as “pearls in the sky.”In
both books, they emphasize that this knowledge is secret, and should be
kept from the masses. The Chinese believed that these pearls in the sky
were formed in the ocean. In India, dragons were often depicted
fighting for possession of this pearl, chasing it across the skies.(6)
Click here to view the Dalai Lama’s thoughts on extraterrestrials.
Again, is it impossible and incredible
that the chroniclers of the Mahabharata, the Bible, the Epic of
Gilgamesh, the texts of the Eskimos, the American Indians, the
Scandinavians, the Tibetans, and many, many other sources should all
tell the same stories of flying “gods,” and strange vehicles, by chance
without any foundation?
The Tulli Papyrus
The Tulli Papyrus are writings from
ancient Egypt, it’s the earliest known texts, from the annals of
Thutmose III, of Egypts 18th Dynasty, whose reign dates back to 3,500
years ago. These documents are named after Alberto Tulli, a director of
the Egyptian section of the Vatican museum. (1)(7)
In the year 22, of the third month of
winter, sixth hour of the day, among the scribes of the House of Life it
was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no
head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor. Its body was one rod
in length and one rod in width. It had no voice. It came toward His
Majesty’s house. Their heart became confused through it, and they fell
upon their bellies. They went to the king, to report it. His majesty
meditated on all these events which were now going on. After several
days had passed, they became more numerous in the sky than ever. They
shined in the sky more than the brightness of the sun, and extended to
the limits of the four supports of heaven. Powerful was the position of
the Fiery Disks. The army of the king looked on, with His Majesty in
their midst. It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even
higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down
from the sky; a marvel never before known since the foundation of the
country. And His Majesty caused incense to be brought to appease the
heart of Amun-Re, the god of the Two Lands. And it was ordered that the
event be recorded for His Majesty in the Annals of the house of Life to
be remembered forever (1)(8)
Modern Historical Accounts
All centuries are filled with flying
apparatus accounts. This gives further credence that all of today’s
‘modern UFOs’ are not all advanced, classified military technology
(although I believe many of them are, I also believe many of them are
extraterrestrial). In 1716, as reported in the “Boston News Letter,” there
were strange appearances of Ships in the Air, which engaged each other
for approximately thirty minutes. All of a sudden, a cloud of many
colors covered them, which presented any further sight of them.(1)(9)
An account published in the journal Philosophical Transactions, from Westiminster, England from 1742 reads as follows:
I saw a light arise from behind the Trees and houses,
which I took at first for a large sky-rocket.; but when it had risen to
the height of about 20 degrees, it took a motion nearly parallel to the
horizon, but waved in this manner. Its motion was so very slow, that I
had it above half a minute in view, and therefore enough time to
contemplate its appearance fully. There was nothing around in 1742 that
could have explained this sighting.(1)(10)
One report from 1799, describes a “luminous spot seen moving across the path of Mercury.(1)(11) Another one from the journal Philosophical Transactions, in
1847 concerned a very odd moving light. According the writer, “it
looked like a star passing over the Moon which, on the next moment’s
consideration I knew to be impossible. It was a fixed, steady light upon
the dark part of the Moon.(1)(12)
One very interesting account comes from a 1894 issue of the Astrophysical Journal about
“a light reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars seen on the 25th
of November. It was seen by Professor Pickering and others at the Lowell
Observatory, described as “a light reflecting body above an
unilluminated part of Mars.” (1)(12)
In 1845, near Sicily and Malta in the
Mediterranean Sea, three luminous bodies rising up from the sea about
half a mile from the ship were reported by the captain. It was a Royal
Navy ship.
On June 18th, at 9h 30m p.m., the brig
Victoria, from Newcastle to Malta, in lat. 36 40′ 46, long. 13 44′ 36,
was becalmed, with no appearance of bad weather, when her top-gallant
and royal masts suddenly went over the side as if carried away by a
squall. Two hours it blew very hard from the east, and whilst all hands
were aloft reefing topsails, it suddenly fell calm again, and they felt
an overpowering heat and stench of sulphur. At this moment three
luminous bodies issued from the sea, about half a mile from the vessel,
and remained visible for ten minutes. The sulphur connection is
intriguing, since many UFO accounts have been connected to the smell of
sulphur. (1)(13)
To see historical art depicting these craft, you can scroll to the bottom of this article.
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