Catalyst House

How Bitcoin Threatens the ‘Currency Monopolies’

On Wednesday, The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader over claims the monetary exchange service had falsified financial documents, as reported at Ars Technica.

Bitcoin threatens both the financial elite’s monopoly over the economy and the online web of payment systems which have been used as a tool to crack down on free speech on the Internet, Amir Taaki, a bitcoin software developer, told RT.com in this interview.

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lynnea2 The BoardLynnea Bylund is managing director of Gandhi Legacy Tours, Director of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, founder of Catalyst House and has nearly three decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. She was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. She has a degree in holistic health-nutrition from the legendary and controversial health educator and activist Dr. Kurt Donsbach, she is the founder of two not-for-profit small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.

Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands.
> Follow Lynnea on:  +LynneaBylund – Twitter – LinkedIn – FaceBook – Pinterest & YouTube


Arun Gandhi: A Peace Tartan Interview

Arun Gandhi sporting a World Peace TartanOur friend and associate, M.K. Gandhi grandson Arun Gandhi, may seem odd as a  runway model, but he recently strutted the runway wearing a kilt and ‘Peace Tartan’ for charity.

Arun was born in the apartheid South Africa. During his early teen years he lived with his Grandfather in India where he received one-on-one daily instruction from ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi on understanding violence, its causes and nature and the opposite living philosophy of nonviolence. 

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Arun is a true social activist who transverses the planet regularly, lecturing on nonviolence and introduces himself as a “Peace Farmer.”  

Arun founded and stewards the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, which champions against child labor and poverty and rescues Indian children from human traffickers. (disclosure: I am am honored to be a Board member of that organization)

Arun Peace tartan

Source: NY Times India Ink Blog – 

On Monday, Mr. Gandhi donned a World Peace tartan kilt designed by Victor Spence, a Scotsman who has created a line of tartan clothes and accessories to promote world peace at the “From Scotland With Love” fashion show at Stage 48 on the West Side. The annual charity event was started 11 years ago by the actor Sir Sean Connery and the Scottish businessman Geoffrey Scott Carroll to promote Scottish culture in the United States. This year’s theme, “The Scottish Lion Meets the Asian Dragon,” included a mix of Asian and Scottish clothing from designers around the world. Proceeds will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit group that helps injured American soldiers when they return home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Gandhi was joined on the runway by the host of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Josh Elliott, and Lt. Colonel Martha McSally, who is the first female fighter pilot in history, among others.

He spoke with India Ink before the show over tea at the Pierre Hotel, just after the fitting of his kilt, about strutting down the catwalk, lessons his famous grandfather taught him and how anyone today can join the movement for nonviolence and world peace.

(Read more…)


Google and World Brain Domination: Its the Books!

Google hits the books …

Veteran documentarian Ben Lewis travels the world speaking to futurists like Wired Magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly and scholars such as Harvard University cultural historian Robert Darnton for his mind-bending film Google and the World Brain, a fascinating look at the Google Books Project and its global implications.

From TechCrunch

“Google And The World Brain” is a new documentary about Google’s plan to scan all of the world’s books, which triggered an ongoing lawsuit being heard today. The hair-raising film sees Google import millions of copyrighted works, get sued, lose, but almost get a literature monopoly in the process. It’s scary, informative, and worth watching if you recognize its biased portrayal of Google as evil.

The film is getting wider release as Google continues to fight the Author’s Guild in court today. The organization is demanding $3 billion in damages from Google for scanning and reproducing copyrighted books. Google is asking the court to prevent the group from filing a class-action suit.

(Read more…)


Frankenapple: Not Just Another Bad Apple

The GMO Frankenapple not just another bad appleThanks to the biotech industry’s relentless quest to control our food, McDonald’s, Burger King and even school cafeterias will soon be able to serve up apples that won’t turn brown when they’re sliced or bitten into.*

*Source: Organic Consumers Association

A new, almost entirely untested genetic modification technology, called RNA interference, or double strand RNA (dsRNA), is responsible for this new food miracle. Scientists warn that this genetic manipulation poses health risks, as the manipulated RNA gets into our digestive systems and bloodstreams. The biotech industry claims otherwise.

Of course, like any non-organic apple, the new GMO Arctic® Apple will be drenched in toxic pesticide residues, untested by the U.S. Food & Drug Association (FDA) and likely unlabeled. And of course these shiny new high-tech apples will be cheap, priced considerably lower than a pesticide-free, nutrient-dense, old-fashioned organic apple that turns a little brown after you slice it up.

When the Biotech Industry Organization gathers next week in Chicago for the 2013 BIO International Convention, BIOTECanada will present its “Gold Leaf Award for Early Stage Agriculture” to Okanagan Specialty Fruits, Inc. (OSF), purveyor of the Arctic® Apple, slated for approval in the U.S. this year. We hate to upset the biotech apple cart, but a pesticide-intensive GMO apple, produced through a risky manipulation of RNA, doesn’t deserve a place on our grocery shelves, much less in the agriculture hall of fame.

That said, the Arctic “Frankenapple” is expected to be approved this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), responsible for protecting agriculture from pests and diseases. It does not require approval by the FDA, which is responsible for human food and animal feed.

(Read more…)


What is Consciousness Itself? …

… YOU are! (we are)

“You must become a person who does not need illusions to live. And if you are going to be a person who does not need illusions to live, you must become capable of eliminating, or releasing, the ‘self’ contraction and all accumulations. You must become a renunciate — not an ascetic — but a releaser, a true renunciate. Renunciation in the Reality-Way of Adidam is the capability for ‘self’ release. It is to cease to be an accumulator, or an owner, and (instead) to be a released being in the Real Condition.”   –  Adi Da Samraj

CLICK TO READ EBOOK OR DOWNLOAD PDF
You are consciousness itself

 


Bonner: The Runaway Paper Money Bubble is a Laughing Matter

US stocks are still going up. Gold is still dillydallying…

Guest post by Bill Bonner / Rogue Economist

Gold is waiting to see what happens. Japan and the US are pumping up the monetary base – fast. But collectively, their balance sheets actually contracted by $415 billion in the first quarter – led by a $370 billion decline in the ECB’s balance sheet.

Result: slightly less paper money in the developed economies… and a slightly lower gold price. Seems logical. Seems sensible.

You see, since the start of the secular bull market in gold, there has been a nearly perfect correlation between the gold price and the rate of balance sheet expansion (aka money printing) at the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan.

You can see clearly it in this chart courtesy of our friends at the Sprott Group.

Central Bank Assets Vs. Gold Bullion

According to Sprott, for every extra $1 trillion in collective balance sheet expansion by these central banks, gold has risen $210 per ounce.

Gold is the world’s alternative money. It and bitcoins. New supply of paper money is expanding rapidly. New supplies of gold and bitcoins are much more stable.

But many mainstream pundits are sure the end of the secular bull market in gold is at hand.

Who knows? Maybe they’re right.

But it seems more likely that when the Japanese get their presses running hot, the price of gold will resume its upward climb.

(Read more…)


Remembering Ingo Swann 1933-2013

Ingo Swann RememberedOne of the more memorable evenings I once spent was with my sainted friend and author Marilyn Ferguson (happy b-day Ferg!) at the New York condominium of former psychic spy and government remote viewer Ingo Swann.

Ingo Swann was a psychic, artist, and author, best known for his work as a co-creator along with Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff of the discipline of Remote Viewing, specifically the Stargate Project, writing several books on remote viewing and related topics.

Ingo was born September 14th 1933 in Colorado at the small town of Telluride. He attended Westminster College in Utah where he attained his double bachelor’s art and biology degrees. After school, Ingo joined the Army where served for 15 years, 3 of which he served in Korea and the other 12 under the U.N Secretariat. During the 12 years under UN, Ingo was also trying to build his solo career in art.

Ingo’s active participation in parapsychology research began at age 36, in the year 1969. Until he was 56, Ingo only worked in highly controlled lab environments. He worked alongside other researchers in the PSI investigations field. Ingo was highly involved in lectures pertaining psychic potentials and its faculties but had never demonstrated the abilities he had publicly. Due to his notable participation in numerous experiments and trials, he was included in various writings by renowned authors among them being Martin Elbon who referred to him in his book as “parapsychology’s most tensed guinea pig”. Some psychic news and media outlets termed Ingo as the “scientific psychic” due to his enormous involvement in the science.

Due to some evident personal potential in psychic abilities while still in his childhood, Ingo grew more and more interested in parapsychological literature as well as occult through participation in mind and psychic development type programs.

(Read more…)


Remembering Marilyn Ferguson’s Birthday

Our dear departed friend, Marilyn Ferguson’s birthday was today.  For those who haven’t heard of her … scratch that, everyone has heard of Marilyn, right?  

Marilyn was an American author, editor and public speaker, best known for her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy and its affiliation with the New Age Movement in popular culture.  (1997 video interview provided by Tom Ross / Kivastone)

A founding member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology, Ferguson published and edited the well-regarded science newsletter Brain/Mind Bulletin from 1975 to 1996. She eventually earned numerous honorary degrees, served on the board of directors of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and befriended such diverse figures of influence as inventor and theorist Buckminster Fuller, spiritual author Ram Dass, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine and billionaire Ted Turner. Ferguson’s work also influenced Vice President Al Gore, who participated in her informal network while a senator and later met with her in the White House.

The Brain Revolution by Marilyn FergusonAs a professional freelance writer of popular magazine articles in the 60s, including Cosmopolitan and Time, Ferg developed an enduring interest in what came to be known as the “human potential” movement, and particularly the latest research on the potential of the human brain, with its implications for learning, creativity and wellness. This inspired her to write The Brain Revolution: The Frontiers of Mind Research (Taplinger, 1973), a successful and broadly hailed popular summary of these discoveries.

(Read more…)


Kasturi Gandhi Diet Advice at Hindu Times

Kasturi Gandhi

Kasturi Gandhi

You’ve decided to get healthy by going on a diet. But before you empty the kitchen and your fridge of all your regular foods and replace them with low-fat alternatives, here’s some advice from Kasturi Gandhi, grandaughter of Arun Gandhi. “Plunging headfirst into a diet isn’t a good idea, you need to test the waters first.”

What  this means is that you first need to prepare your body and mind before you change your eating habits. Suddenly switching to a liquid-only diet will never work. If you do this, your stomach won’t feel satiated and you’ll remain hungry,” she says.  But gradually including semi-solid foods in your meals will attune your body and appetite for what is to follow. That will also clear the way for the good food and fibre. “They help to detoxify the body of accumulated food residue.  This is why whole fruits are recommended over fruit juices.”  So next time there’s khichdi (rice and lentils comfort food dish) for dinner, don’t cringe. It’s a great pre-diet meal.

No cold turkey

Smart dieters know that giving up your favourite foods never help. Deprivation is the worst kind of meal plan, believes consultant nutritionist Niti Desai. “Skipping meals when you’re gearing up for a healthy life lowers your metabolic rate. Which means that when you eat, even healthy food will add to those kilos,” she says.

So instead of looking longingly at that pack of Lindt, focus on burning up calories. You can still indulge yourself in moderation. Switch from a whole bar of milk chocolate to a few bites of 75-80 per cent dark chocolate. And say cheers to nursing one glass of red wine instead of a couple of pints of beer.

>> Continue reading at Hindu Times


Ahmedabad Day 1 – A Gandhi Traveler’s Journal

[Editor’s note: Stephanie Brown was a participant of this year’s tour, which I helped to organize. She has been journaling at her ShutterFly photo blog where she has posted many more images that she and her father Jerry took]

The Gandhi Legacy tour is a J-term course option at Salisbury University in Maryland.  One of our tour members, Anthony, attended as a SU graduate student last year and came back this year to bring his fiancé, Katie.  Half seriously they started talking about getting married at the Sabarmati Ashram.  Arun caught wind of it and started making the preparations including re-writing the vows that his Grandfather once used to be relevant to the times.  Anthony and Katie picked out wedding clothes during a market excursion in Kolhapur and the wedding was planned to take place shortly after we arrived at the ashram.  It was a beautiful, simple ceremony.

Aerial view of Ahmedabad on Sabarmati River

Ahmedabad Day 1

Our first train experience was an overnight ride from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to get caught up with journaling and photo edits but since we did not board until after 10pm it was lights out after we settled in.  I slept remarkably well in my very hard upper berth and was pretty well rested when we arrived just before 7am.  (Read more…)


Cal-Earth Apprentices Arrive in Kolhapur India

Whitey at Cal-Earth

Excerpt from Whitey Flagg’s ShelterSpace blog

In September I returned to Southern California to begin my long-term apprenticeship at Cal-Earth.

– See also: Amazing SuperAdobe

I learned Super-adobe and many different types of foundations, flooring, plastering, waterproofing, and much more. I have been studying Permaculture for some time but was also able to participate in a PDC course and finally receive my certificate. As a bonus, this course ended with an unexpected visit from Geoff and Nadia Lawton who gave a one day lecture on “Greening the Mojave Desert”.

While I was teaching a workshop on how to build an emergency sandbag shelter, we received a visit from Lynnea Bylund of Catalyst House, a strategic alliance  consultancy, and her guest, Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma. Lynnea and Tushar sit on the Board of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, a benefactor of the AVANI Organization, which provides child labor rescue and women’s advocacy in India. Together, the two organizations are building a residence for children and an educational facility near the town of Kolhapur.

(Read more…)


Happy New Year 2013!

The entire planet shouts in unison, “Happy New Year 2013!” We have navigated successfully into a brand new year. It is the year of realization and power-frequency-paradigm shifting, so it is incredibly essential that we purge our antiquated toxic beliefs, emotions and psych-spiritual and mental patterns and focus on what we truly wish to manifest in this new year beginning.  We are sparks of DA LIGHT but the prior years have dulled our luminosity. Many believe that this year is to be THE year that will change it all. Those of us who are in tune were acutely aware of the pattern-frequency shifts on December 20th, 21st, and 22nd. These ‘portal’ shifts were a catalyst of major changes in our DNA and consciousness. Our thoughts and emotions have been extraordinarily strong during those 3 days. It was glorious  to know that we now live in an awakened era of consciousness. Now is the time more than ever to dive head first into DA LIGHT!

Wishing you a very happy and awakened year 2013

OM SRI ADI DA!

Happy Consciousness New Year

 

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lynnea2 The BoardLynnea Bylund is managing director of Gandhi Legacy Tours, Director of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, founder of Catalyst House and has nearly three decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. She was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. She has a degree in holistic health-nutrition from the legendary and controversial health educator and activist Dr. Kurt Donsbach, she is the founder of two not-for-profit small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.

Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands.
> Follow Lynnea on:  +LynneaBylund – Twitter – LinkedIn – FaceBook – Pinterest & YouTube


Ravi Shankar Remembered by John Wubbenhorst

Celebrated bansuri flute master and friend, John Wubbenhorst has blogged a reflective and celebratory tribute to Ravi Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailShankar that includes John’s selection of 8 Shankar media resources, and his description of how Shankar played a core pivotal role in John’s own spiritual and professional path(s).

See also – ‘Godfather’ of World Music Passes

From John Wubbenhorst’s Blog

I was fortunate that my High School library had one Indian music recording “Ravi Shankar, Live at the Monterey Pop Festival”. Listening to that recording became a daily ritual. I was totally entranced by that recording and even today when I hear it, it is totally fresh. It was amazing that Ravi Shankar was even playing at a venue like the Monterey Pop festival. The story goes that it almost did not happen, when Ravi saw the “Who” destroying their instruments and Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar, apparently, Ravi was ready to leave and not be a part of it. Thankfully he stayed and played. There was no way for me to separate the music from a deep spirituality that was also very natural and human. I was amazed at how intense and relaxed at the same time the musicians were. And it was obvious that the music was improvised, but at the same time I could feel there was some deep structure going on. I had always admired how deep and profound Western classical music was, but somehow the freedom of improvisation had been lost from that music, and in Western jazz, I felt the freedom, but sometimes it lacked the depth of a profound tradition. In Indian music I seemed to find the best and highest of a musical form liquid and flowing , but reflecting a profound and ancient sacredness. Fortunately I lived in Connecticut growing up and was able to see Ravi Shankar live at the age of 15 in New york City, just an hour from my home.

So to me Ravi was a symbol of a deeper way of functioning. I also had started learning meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, learning Yoga, reading “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Yogananda and basking in the depth of sacred Indian culture. This became an important value for me, because it became clear that Ravi, as talented as he was, did not just “happen”, he himself went through a profound process in interaction with a music guru, Allaudhin Khan. So much of our Western culture is in rebellion against any form of authority, and of course this is an understandable reaction to have in relation to many of the sick parts of or industrial/military complex of fear and corporate/bank evils etc….But to often Westerners have thrown out the baby with the bath water and not discriminated to understand the profound value a guru can have. I am deeply thankful to Ravi for instilling in me at a young age,a profound respect for the guru tradition in Indian music and spiritual culture altogether.

……

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lynnea2 The BoardLynnea Bylund is managing director of Gandhi Legacy Tours, Director of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, founder of Catalyst House and has nearly three decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. She was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. She has a degree in holistic health-nutrition from the legendary and controversial health educator and activist Dr. Kurt Donsbach, she is the founder of two not-for-profit small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.

Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands.
> Follow Lynnea on:  +LynneaBylund – Twitter – LinkedIn – FaceBook – Pinterest & YouTube


Ravi Shankar ‘Godfather of World Music’ Passes

Remembering Ravi ShankarWorld-renowned sitar player Ravi Shankar, the greatest ambassador of Indian music of the millennium has died in San Diego, near his Escondido home of 30 years. He was 92.

Shankar was a recognized master of classical Indian music, an art form with roots that extend back more than 4,000 years. Through his contact with musicians of different cultures, Shankar was the first to introduce Indian music to western, mainstream audiences. Over his eight-decade career, he became a worldwide musical icon, especially through his work with the Beatles, and was labeled the “godfather of world music” by no less than George Harrison.

From Voice of America

Ravi Shankar was born in India and began his musical career in the 1930s, studying music and dance. At the age of 10, he moved to Paris to join his brother, the leader of a respected Indian dance troupe. He spent the next eight years traveling with the troupe across America, Europe and Asia. During that time, Ravi Shankar heard and met western music stars such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Cole Porter. Later, he decided to return to India and embark on a course of intensive study with a sitar master.

……

Shankar played his first U.S. concert in 1956, introducing the western audiences to ragas, a complex Indian musical form often enhanced with drums and other instruments. He explained how each raga has its own personality, whether happy, sad, erotic or devotional. Shankar believed that, to effectively play a raga, a musician must have harmony within himself, follow the musical structure, and join in harmony with others.

“The basis of the system that’s known as the raga is the melody forms — hundreds and thousands of them,” said Shankar. “They have their own ascending and descending structure. They’re pentatonic, hexatonic or using all the seven notes, and different permutations and combinations. But the question of spirituality is something else. It is being trained from the very beginning to be at peace yourself when you perform.”

(Read more…)


The Economics and Marketing of Madness

Based partly on the work of Thomas Szasz (The Manufacture of Madness*) and produced by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an anti-psychiatry group – The Marketing of Madness is the definitive documentary on the psychiatric drugging industry. Here is the real story of the high income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. (source: TopDocumentaryFilms.com)

But appearances are deceiving. How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses – and how safe are their drugs? Digging deep beneath the corporate veneer, this three-part documentary exposes the truth behind the slick marketing schemes and scientific deceit that conceal dangerous and often deadly sales campaigns.

*In his seminal work, The Manufacture of Madness, Dr. Szasz examines the similarities between the Inquisition and institutional psychiatry. His purpose is to show “that the belief in mental illness and the social actions to which it leads have the same moral implications and political consequences as had the belief in witchcraft and the social actions to which it led.”

In this film you’ll discover that… Many of the drugs side effects may actually make your ‘mental illness’ worse. Psychiatric drugs can induce aggression or depression. Some psychotropic drugs prescribed to children are more addictive than cocaine.

(Read more…)


IonField Toothbrush

Dear Catalyst House Friends,

Let  me introduce the IonField Toothbrush:

As we head into the straightaway towards the Christmas holidays, many of you will be wondering what to give as gifts to family, friends, business associates, and others whom you want to remember in this time of acknowledgement and appreciation. We have a suggestion.

The only qualifiers for the recipients of this gift is that they are still curious about new ideas, and that they still have teeth. If they pass that screening test, it is likely that they will be delighted to receive an IonField Toothbrush on any occasion.

This brush works for all ages, genders, nationalities, and professions (even dentists). And since this is probably one item that most people have never heard of and therefore never considered, we observe that no one seems disappointed when they open the package. They don’t have to think, “Oh no, not another one of these” or “But this isn’t my color” or “I don’t have time to read this” or any of the thousands of other issues which we all have but seldom express. They will just look puzzled.

ionfield tb 1…???

Then you let them read the enclosed Instruction Sheet (see below), and their faces will change. And the next time you see them, they will say, “Wow, that brush really works! THANKS!”

Here are some unedited testimonials from happy recipients:

“My own experience is that after the first brushing my teeth felt so wonderfully smooth and fresh, just like that hygienist-cleaned feeling. Two weeks later at a regular checkup, my dentist thought they were so pristine that I didn’t need any cleaning from him at all. And I normally have quite a bit of plaque.

After trying one himself for a month he ordered two more for his family. He is a particularly well-researched non-amalgam-based dentist. His understanding of the process was that the ionic charge around the toothbrush head changed the ionic charge on the tooth surface so that bacteria found it harder to stick.

D. R., New Zealand

“Holy cow, I am amazed after using the IonField toothbrush for the first time (with no toothpaste). My teeth felt cleaner than after a professional cleaning by the dentist, and I only brushed for about a minute. No more chemically-laden toothpaste or mouthwash for me!

P.S. It’s day three using the IonField Toothbrush once each day. Tea and tobacco staining have already decreased noticeably. The effect is equally apparent on my porcelain crowns as well as my own teeth. Incredible!”

Lee, British Columbia (Read more…)


Bernard von NotHaus awaits his sentencing for ‘domestic terrorism’

Zemanta Related Posts Thumbnail

Bernard von NotHaus

“The thing that fires me up the most,” von NotHaus will say, “is this is what happens: When money goes bad, people go crazy. Do you know why? Because they can’t exist without value. Value is intrinsic in man.”

His name is Bernard von NotHaus, and he is a professed “monetary architect” and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars’ worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country — so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of “domestic terrorism” for using them to undermine the government.

Of course, if you ask him what caused him to be living here in exile, waiting with the rabbits for his sentence to be rendered, he will give a different account of what occurred.

From New York Times: Prison May Be the Next Stop on a Gold Currency Journey

“This is the United States government,” he said in an interview last week. “It’s got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it’s worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!”

The story of Mr. von NotHaus, from his beginnings as a hippie, can sound at times as if Ken Kesey had been paid in marijuana to write a script on spec for Representative Ron Paul. At 68, Mr. von NotHaus faces more than 20 years in prison for his crimes, and this decisive chapter of his tale has come, coincidentally, at a moment when his obsessions of 40 years — monetary policy, dollar depreciation and the Federal Reserve Bank — have finally found their place in the national discourse.

(Read more…)


The Importance of Bitcoin, a Perspective

Neal Stephenson’s cypher-punk sci-fi novel The Diamond Age takes place in a future where encrypted currencies and e-commerce have moved most economic transactions into “darknets” beyond government’s capability of monitoring and regulation, causing tax bases around the world to implode and bringing on the collapse of most nation-states.

This recent video below from OnlineMBA explaining Bitcoin, while well made, appears to be grounded in such fears as the darknets raised in the Stephenson novel.

Encrypted currencies and darknet economies have been promoted by such thinkers as David de Ugarte and John Robb as a real-world model for resilient communities in the impending age of empire collapse. 

Jason Calacanis and his colleagues at LAUNCH describe Bitcoin as “The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen” (May 15, 2011).  Not only is it “the most dangerous open-source project ever created,” but “possibly the most dangerous technological project since the Internet itself.”  It “could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.”

(Read more…)


Seed Wars = Knowledge Wars = GMOs

Do not be fooled by all of the slick ads and expert shills propaganda – remember to vote YES on CA PROP 37 this Tuesday 11/6! As Michael Spector writes in yesterday’s New Yorker:  

prop-37On Tuesday the residents of California will vote on whether to become the first state in the nation to require labels to appear on foods that contain genetically engineered products. The proposition would also make it illegal to label any engineered or processed foods as “natural.” (For a moment, let’s put aside the fact that no meaningful definition of “natural” food exists.) The result, particularly if Proposition 37 passes, will set a precedent likely to shape the debate in other states—and in Washington, D.C.

Consumers deserve the right to know what’s in their food—and obviously most people want that choice. It’s hard to see how more knowledge about the products we eat every day can hurt us. But facts, particularly facts about science, are not what this proposition is about. The rancorous tone of the debate and the money wasted on propaganda—most of it spent by big agricultural companies in an effort to defeat the proposition—have been remarkable.

Genetically engineered seeds and crops (GMOs) = seed wars = knowledge wars. 

The only reason crops have been genetically engineered is to take patents on seeds , and collect royalties.If during colonialism the concept of Terra Nullius, empty land, allowed the take over of land and territories by the colonizer, a new concept of Bio Nullius, or “empty life,” is being used to claim “intellectual property rights” on seeds , biodiversity and lifeforms.

vandana-shiva no 37 gmo

“But life is not empty. Seeds are not an invention. They embody millions of years of biological evolution , and thousands of years of cultural evolution and farmers breeding. When corporations claim patents, they basically “pirate” traits that nature and farmers have evolved. They pirate and patent the aroma of basmati, the low gluten qualities of our native wheat, the salt tolerant, drought tolerant, flood tolerant traits of climate resilience our farmers have bred. This is, not innovation and invention, it is Biopiracy. The only traits that the corporations have introduced into plants through genetic engineering are the toxic traits of Bt toxin and herbicide resistance. Besides being toxic, these traits have not reduced chemical use as has been repeatedly claimed. Our studies in Vidharba show a 13 fold increase in pesticide use since Bt cotton was introduced.”  – Dr. Vandana Shiva

(Read more…)


Manilal Gandhi Remembered

Manilal Gandhi 1952

Manilal Gandhi 1952

 Source: ArunGandhi.net

Today was the birthday of Manilal Gandhi, Arun Gandhi’s late father and the second son of M.K. Gandhi.  Here is a brief look at Manilal’s own life and legacy drawn from a few select sources:

Listen to a 1954 interview w/ Manilal Gandhi 

Manilal Mohandas Gandhi (28 October 1892 – 4 April 1956) was the second of four sons of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. Manilal was born in Rajkot, India. In 1897 Manilal traveled to South Africa for the first time, where he spent time working at the Phoenix Ashram near Durban. After a brief visit to India, in 1917 Manilal returned to South Africa to assist in printing the Indian Opinion a Gujarati-English weekly publication, at Phoenix, Durban. By 1918, Manilal was doing most of the work for the press and took over in 1920 as editor. Like his father, Manilal was also sent to jail several times by the British colonial government after protesting against unjust laws. He remained editor until 1956, the year of his death.

(Read more…)


More missing gold ‘paranoia’?

Increasingly citizens and their representatives are becoming suspicious of where their gold reserves are being kept. Zemanta Related Posts Thumbnail

First Venezuela, then Germany, and now the Netherlands want their gold back. In the wake of this week’s ruling by the German Federal Accountability Office that Germany must repatriate and audit 150 tons of its gold reserves from the NY Fed over the next 3 years, a Netherlands citizens committee has filed a petition demanding that the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) release information ”on the quantity and storage location of the Netherlands’ physical gold, and on the extent and nature of the gold claims.”

In the words of one of the petitioners Tom Lassing: “The last years have seen a loss of trust in the financial system and we have been fooled a lot. So I say: Just let the central banks like DNB show the gold is really there.

Should the citizens committee be successful, we are confident they will discover the vast majority of the country’s gold reserves- 10th largest in the world at 612,000 kilograms, are held in the basement of the NY Fed.

As we have been saying for years ago, the rig up: Central banks and too-big-to-fail financial institutions will not be able to hide the fact that they do not hold the gold they claim to.

See more on this unfolding massive economic scandal- 

Is there really any gold left in Fort Knox?

Where’s the Gold?

A Conspiracy of Gold

GERMANY TO REPATRIATE & AUDIT 150 TONS OF GOLD RESERVES FROM NY FED

Canadian mint cannot account for missing gold

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lynnea2 The BoardLynnea Bylund is managing director of Gandhi Legacy Tours, Director of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, founder of Catalyst House and has nearly three decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. She was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. She has a degree in holistic health-nutrition from the legendary and controversial health educator and activist Dr. Kurt Donsbach, she is the founder of two not-for-profit small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.

Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands.
> Follow Lynnea on:  +LynneaBylund – Twitter – LinkedIn – FaceBook – Pinterest & YouTube


Gandhi’s Life in Color

review mahatma gandhi's life in colorRecently, and just in time for the holidays, I was gifted MAHATMA, Gandhi’s Life in Color: a wonderful new Gandhi bio-pictorial book.  The publisher, GandhiServe Foundation, operates the world’s largest repository of digitized Gandhi historical media. This is a fabulous ground-breaking photo book, impressive in its size and volume of images; many of which previously unseen by me.

This grand assemblage includes a short forward by Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, the eminent sociologist and social reformer who increasingly is becoming known in India and abroad as the “Toilet Guru” for his efforts to bring modern toilet facilities to 300 million Indians who are still forced to defecate in the open, and to utilize such facilities to generate renewable-energy bio-gas.

Gandhi’s Life in Color

frontier gandhi redshirt armyMAHATMA, Gandhi’s Life in Color, reintroduces to the world the iconic figure of Gandhi through preciously rare images and archival material. An interdisciplinary labor of love, Gandhi historians and scholars, photographic authorities and digital designers collaborated to transform black and white photographs into color images and authentic historical documents.

Painstakingly assembled and published by GandhiServe India, this uniquely imposing pictorially beautiful biography presents nearly 1,300 photographs spanning the entirety of Gandhi’s life in color, from 1869 thru his death in 1948, traversing 690 pages and weighing in at over 14 pounds, MAHATMA is the ultimate coffee table book for any student, lover, or adherent of Gandhian history and philosophy.

(Read more…)


A Quest for Peace & Nonviolence: Video by Matthew Evans

Here is an outstanding film by a teenager that Arun Gandhi met in San Luis Obispo, CA.  Matthew J. Evans takes a look at one of the most pressing issues in our modern society: violence among religions. Through discussions with Arun, and local religious leaders from the Central Coast of California, Matthew learns powerful lessons about nonviolence, acceptance, and cultural understanding. As my grandfather has said, ‘We must become the change we wish to see in our world!’ This film helps us understand how we can make these changes.

Hi Arun! Below is a link to the documentary I made featuring you called “A Quest for Peace: Nonviolence Among Religions”  I think it came out really well, and I can’t wait to hear your feedback. Thanks so much for allowing us to interview you, and give us such amazing material to work with. You did such a great job in the interview, and in your talk later the evening. I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet you.      Thanks again, Matthew


The Amazing Cal-Earth SuperAdobe Building Method

Nader Khalili invented SuperAdobe

Nader Khalili – visionary, architect, teacher extraordinaire, humanitarian, super-adobe inventor, Rumi scholar.

I have had the pleasure of three visits to the incredible Cal-Earth Institute, in Hesperia California, in recent months.  Our visits have set the stage for Cal-Earth indigenous earth-bag building techniques to be utilized by the Gandhi Worldwide / AVANI Center in Kolhapur India.  The Cal-Earth story and that of its founder’s revolutionary building techniques deserve no small mention and appreciation.

The global need for housing includes millions refugees and displaced persons – victims of natural disasters and wars. Iranian architect, author, visionary and Rumi-Scholar Nader Khalili (1936-2008) believed that this need can be addressed only by using the potential of indigenous earth construction.

Khalili SuperAdobe renderingAfter extensive research into vernacular earth building methods in Iran, followed by detailed prototyping, Khalili developed the sandbag or ‘superadobe’ system.  The basic construction technique involves filling sandbags with indigenous (to a given area) earth and laying them in courses in a circular plan. The circular courses are corbelled near the top to form a dome. Barbed wire is laid between courses (creates a ‘velcro’ effect) to prevent the sandbags from shifting and to provide earthquake resistance. Hence the materials typically found of war – sandbags and barbed wire – are used for peaceful ends, integrating traditional earth architecture with contemporary global safety requirements in an organically aesthetic fashion.

Starting in 1982, Nader Khalili developed and tested the Superadobe prototype in California. In 1991 he founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), a non-profit research and educational organization that covers everything from construction on the moon and on Mars to housing design and development for the world’s homeless for the United Nations.

(Read more…)


Samsara is Dazzling

Director and cinematographer Ron Fricke (“Baraka”) has put together the movie equivalent of one of those eye-popping National Geographic photo spreads about far-flung peoples and places. The movie is a flow of dazzling sequences presented without overt connections.

We see, at various points, Buddhist monks creating a sand mandala, stained glass windows in a cathedral, the manufacture of guns and sex dolls, people praying at the Wailing Wall, erupting volcanoes, garbage pickers, the mountains of Yosemite, an infant being baptized, gun owners, workers in a sulfur mine, meat processing factories, office employees toiling in cubicles, and on and on.

Roger Ebert writes: “Ron Fricke’s “Samsara” is a film composed of powerful images, most magnificent, some shocking, all photographed with great care in the highest possible HD resolution —Filmed over five years, in locations in 25 countries, it is the kind of experience you simply sink into.”

Enjoy this eye-popping trailer!

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lynnea2 The BoardLynnea Bylund is managing director of Gandhi Legacy Tours, Director of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, founder of Catalyst House and has nearly three decades of experience in administration, marketing and business development. She was a nationally recognized spokeswoman for the emerging alternative video and information delivery industries. She has a degree in holistic health-nutrition from the legendary and controversial health educator and activist Dr. Kurt Donsbach, she is the founder of two not-for-profit small business-based wireless trade associations and has lobbied on Capitol Hill and at the FCC where she has spoken out strongly against the cable TV monopoly, illegal spectrum warehousing and ill-conceived congressional schemes to auction our nation’s precious airwaves to the highest bidder.

Ms. Bylund is a founder and former CEO of a Washington DC telecommunications consulting and management company with holdings in several operating and developmental wireless communications systems and companies. In 1995 Lynnea became the first female in the world to be awarded a Broadband PCS operating permit – she was one of only 18 winners, along with Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the biggest cash auction in world history, raising a whopping $7.7 billion. Lynnea also spear-headed the successful effort to launch the first cable TV network in the South Pacific islands.
> Follow Lynnea on:  +LynneaBylund – Twitter – LinkedIn – FaceBook – Pinterest & YouTube


Remembering Sunanda Gandhi 1932-2007

Editor’s Note:  Sunanda Gandhi’s birthday was today, 1932.  This article originally appeared at www.GandhiForChildren.org October 10, 2010

Sunanda Gandhi (1932–2007) was an author, researcher, nurse and, along with her husband Arun Gandhi, co-founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence presently located at University of Rochester

Prior, Sunanda and Arun, along with friends, organized India’s Center for Social Unity which developed self-help, economic models for India’s rural poor, assisting in breaking the cycle of poverty and keeping children at home and in school.

Between 1985 and 1987, Sunanda helped edit The Suburban Echo, a news weekly from Bombay.

Sunanda met Arun Gandhi while he was in the hospital. As a young nurse, Sunanda cared for Arun after surgery in India; a romance bloomed and their shared domestic life and work in nonviolence began.

Sunanda Gandhi’s family were advocates of British rule and opposed to Gandhi, so the couple had many obstacles to overcome.

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God Without Religion – a forward by Arun Gandhi

Arun Gandhi

Arun Gandhi

The question “What is God?” has baffled humankind for eons and will continue to defy logical understanding as long as we live with the concept that there is a heaven up above, where God sits judging all of humanity and punishing those who misbehave. Eminent thinkers throughout history have tried to find a logical answer to this vexing question, with little success. On the other hand His Holiness Gautama, the Buddha, did tapasya (Sanskrit for asceticism) under a banyan tree and, like some others, found that God exists within every human heart in the form of love, compassion, understanding, and other positive attributes humankind is capable of but often chooses to suppress. It seems that instead of trying to assert strict logic or put a solid image to our concept of God, we ought to follow their example and devote greater energy to intuitively understanding the meaning of God.

This book, God Without Religion: Questioning Centuries of Accepted Truths by Sankara Saranam, helps us do just that. It offers a refreshing attempt to provide humankind with a modernized spiritual road-map for use in our eternal quest to comprehend God.

Since the identity of God is so inscrutable (if not the best-kept secret in the world) and the philosophy surrounding this power so impenetrable, religious leaders of various faiths have defined God in ways that raise more questions than they answer. The easiest and most accepted explanation is to see God in the shape of those who are considered God’s messengers-among Jews, Moses and the Hebrew Prophets; among Christians, Jesus; among Muslims, Muhammad; among Hindus, Krishna; and among Buddhists, Gautama.

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Welcome to the Matrix …

… and the law enforcement of “pre-crime” as fictionalized in the flick Minority Report.  Are we all under surveillance in the “matrix?”  

Image1The US army is developing methods to covertly identify and track people who plan to do ‘something bad’. Hidden sensors will be used to detect AI’s version of ‘adversarial intent’ by reading and cataloguing our emotions and health.

A report called ‘Remote Detection of Covert Tactical Adversarial Intent of Individuals in Asymmetric Operations’ (PDF) was authored by the US Army Research Laboratory in 2010; it details the requirements of researchers wishing to gain funding from the US Federal Government by developing techniques to hone in on individuals in crowds, to detect antagonistic attitudes among the “clutter” of innocents.

The prime directive to protect national security, counter ‘insurgency’, and generally ‘keep the peace’, however, means the technology that is developed will spread beyond airports and be used for wider civilian applications, such as “crowd control and in antidrug, anticrime, and immigration enforcement.” In fact, applications in the civilian economy are said to be plentiful, and also include “border security, and ensuring the security of government and private personnel and property”.

(Read more…)


Peace Day, Everybody-All-At-Once!

Be the change you wish to see in the world. – MK Gandhi

Only everybody-all-at-once can change the current chaos. – Adi Da Samraj

World Peace Day is not only about encouraging peace between nations and governments but is also about you and me and nonviolence in our homes, communities and schools, hence – “Be the change you wish to see in the world!”

Not-Two Is Peace II, 1 by Adi Da Samraj

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon: “On September 21, the United Nations will celebrate the International Day of Peace (Peace Day). Every year since 1982 this day has provided a rallying point for member states and individuals to join forces to end conflict.”

Steven Hoffer / AOL News Surge Desk today suggested a crash course on the primary ways the world has observed previous Peace Days –

1. Do something!

You don’t necessarily need to travel around the planet to meet with the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan, as International Peace Day founder Jeremy Gilley did when he created the global effort. Gilley will tell you himself:


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Dalai Lama and a Road To Peace

“If we combine our knowledge, skills and expertise with our willpower and determination, then no matter what problems we face, we can solve these problems forever” ~ HH Dalai Lama

road to peace

“We have just walked out of the first Australian test screening for “Road to Peace” and have seen this absolutely wonderful film in it’s entirety. Believe me when I say that this film will touch everyone who sees it in many amazing ways. It is truly moving, informative and inspiring, impossible to describe. “

(Read more…)


 
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