Reverse Spins

Finally: Tax-Dodging, Union-Busting, Subprime Mortgage Banker Hauled Before Congress-5/23 Breibart, by Joel B. Pollak -- The Senate will finally confront one of the architects of the subprime mortgage crisis today, hauling a tax-dodging, union-busting, bank-breaking, billionaire member of the "one percent" before the Senate Commerce Committee... to consider her confirmation as Secretary of Commerce in President Barack Obama's Cabinet. In the same week that the Senate grilled the CEO of Apple, Inc. about the low taxes it pays due to maintaining large cash deposits overseas, the Senate will roll out a warm welcome to Chicago heiress Penny Pritzker, who runs what Forbes called "one of the grandest and most successful family tax-avoidance schemes ever." Instead of being lectured about her patriotism, Pritzker is being praised to the heavens, with fellow Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) claiming that the heiress to the Hyatt hotel fortune "has broken through the glass ceiling with her extraordinary intelligence and business acumen." The enthusiasm is bipartisan; fellow Illinoisan Mark Kirk is also on board. Pritzker has a rather dubious record of public service, most recently serving on the board of the Chicago Public Schools, which just yesterday approved plans to close forty-nine failing schools. Her most notable public "contribution" has involved raising and bundling millions of dollars for President Obama's lavish political campaigns. Unions dislike Pritzker as well, and at least one has opposed Pritzker's nomination based on its many battles with the Hyatt hotel chain regarding working conditions and wages. The left grassroots is also visibly irritated by the choice, seeing Pritzker's nomination to Commerce as the pay-to-play, Chicago cronyism that it is. But the fix is in. When future generations look back at this moment and wonder how Washington failed to hold Wall Street--or itself--accountable for the subprime crisis, they will understand that Washington never really cared about anything but its own political prerogatives. With the right political friends, you can get away with anything. end

The Coming Collapse Of The Petrodollar System-5/21 Zero Hedge, by Andrew McKillop, PETRODOLLAR WAR: The theory of Petrodollar Warfare can be attributed to US analyst and author William R Clarke, and his 2005 book of that title which interpreted the US-UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He called this an "oil currency war", but the concept of the petrodollar system and petrodollar recyling dates back to the eve of the first Oil Shock in 1973-1974. The role of the petrodollar system as a driving force of US foreign policy is explained by analysts and historians as basic to maintaining the dollar's status as the world's dominant reserve currency - and the currency in which oil is priced. The term "petrodollar warfare" as used by William R. Clark says that major international war, legal or not, was seen as justified to protect the petrodollar system. Over and above the loss of human life, the combined costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars for the US are controversial like the interpretation of these wars as "oil wars", but analysts like Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes put the total combined war cost at above $4 trillion. This can be compared with - and totally dwarfs - the annual cost of US oil imports, which are now sharply declining on a year-in year-out basis as domestic shale oil output ramps up, and US oil demand stagnates. Clarke's theory, like the explanation of the role and power of the "petrodollar system" depends on two basic drivers. Most major developed countries rely on oil imports, which are purchased using dollars, so they are forced to hold large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue importing oil. In turn this also creates consistent demand for dollars, and prevents the dollar from losing its relative international monetary value, regardless of what happens to the US economy. ...

Obama’s Endgame-5/21 The Common Sense Show, by Dave Hodges - -- History demonstrates that the descent into war is preceded with a justification, real or contrived. As with all tyrants, if a legitimate justification for the impending conflict is not forthcoming, the despot, in this case Obama, will simply make one up. And the way that this objective is reached is through the creation of a false flag event. Make no mistake about it, this is coming to America. In Part Two of this series, it was demonstrated the Federal Reserve needs to seize the Iranian oil fields in order to save the Petrodollar. This means we will be at war with Russia and probably China and India who are buying Iranian oil in gold. ...

The Obama crony in charge of your medical records-5/22 Creators Syndicate, by Michelle Malkin -- Who is Judy Faulkner? Chances are, you don’t know her — but her politically connected, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company may very well know you. Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store almost half of all Americans’ health information. If the crony odor and the potential for abuse that this “epic” arrangement poses don’t chill your bones, you ain’t paying attention. As I first noted last year before the IRS witch hunts and DOJ journalist snooping scandals broke out, Obama’s federal electronic medical records (EMR) mandate is government malpractice at work. The stimulus law provided a whopping $19 billion in “incentives” (read: subsidies) to force hospitals and medical professionals into converting from paper to electronic record-keeping systems. Penalties kick in next year for any provider who fails to comply with the one-size-fits-all edict. Obamacare bureaucrats claimed the government’s EMR mandate would save money and modernize health care. As of December 2012, $4 billion had already gone out to 82,535 professionals and 1,474 hospitals; a total of $6 billion will be doled out by 2016. What have taxpayers and health care consumers received in return from this boondoggle? After hyping the alleged benefits for nearly a decade, the RAND Corporation finally admitted in January that its cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year — used repeatedly to support the Obama EMR mandate — were, um, grossly overstated. ...

The Autocrat Accountants-5/18 NRO, By Mark Steyn -- Once government is ensnared in every aspect of life, a bureaucracy grows increasingly capricious. -- Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up. But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press. There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated, like Beyoncé Knowles and Admiral Sir Charles Knowles. One golfs, reads the prompter, parties with Jay-Z, and guests on the Pimp with a Limp show, and the other audits you, bugs your telephone line, and leaks your confidential tax records. But they’re two completely separate sinister entities. So it’s preposterous to describe Obama as Nixonian: Beyoncé wouldn’t have given Nixon the time of day. If you believe this, there’s a shovel-ready infrastructure project in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. In April last year, the Obama campaign identified by name eight Romney donors as “a group of wealthy individuals with less than reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans, and still others are donating to help ensure Romney puts beneficial policies in place for them.” That week, Kimberley Strassel began her Wall Street Journal column thus:
Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check. Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.
Miss Strassel wrote that on April 26, 2012. Five weeks later, one of the named individuals, Frank VanderSloot, was informed by the IRS that he and his wife were being audited. In July, he was told by the Department of Labor of an additional audit over the guest workers on his cattle ranch in Idaho. In September, he was notified that one of his other businesses was to be audited. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never previously been audited, attracted three in the four months after being publicly named by el Presidente. More to the point he attracted that triple audit even though Miss Strassel explicitly predicted in America’s biggest-selling newspaper that this was exactly what the Obama enforcers were going to do. The “separate, sinister entity” of the government of the United States went ahead anyway. What do they care? If some lippy broad in the papers won’t quit her yapping about it, they can always audit her, too — as they did to Miss Strassel’s sometime colleague Anne Hendershott, a sociology professor who got rather too interested in Obamacare and wrote about it in the Journal and various small Catholic publications. The IRS summoned Professor Hendershott to account for herself, and forbade her husband from accompanying her, even though they filed jointly. She ceased her political writing. A year after he was named to the Obama Dishonor Roll, the feds have found nothing on Mr. VanderSloot, but they have caused him to rack up 80 grand in legal bills. This is what IRS defenders (of whom there are more than there ought to be) mean when they assure us that the system worked: Yes, some rich guy had to blow through the best part of six figures fending off the bureaucrats, but it’s not like his body was found in a trunk at the airport or anything, if you know what I mean, Kimmy baby. Mr. VanderSloot is big enough, just about, to see off the most powerful government on the planet. Most of those who’ve caught the eye of the IRS share nothing in common with him other than his political preferences. They’re nobodies — ordinary American citizens guilty of no crime except that of disagreeing with the ruling party. Yet they were asked, under “penalty of perjury,” to disclose the names of books they were reading and provide the names and addresses of relatives who might be planning to run for public office — a kind of pre-enemies list. Is that banana-republic enough for you yet? Not apparently for Juan Williams, fired from NPR for thought crime a couple of years ago, but who was nevertheless energetically defending the IRS exertions on Fox News on Thursday evening. ... Page 2

Watergate 2.0 -- why the IRS scandal is far worse-5/18 Fox, By Matt Kibbe -- In the wake of one of the worst abuses of government power in recent history, many are rushing to frame the Internal Revenue Service scandal as simply an attack on conservative activists. That view risks creating a partisan political football and misses a fundamentally scarier abuse that exceeds the scandals of Watergate or any other prior government abuse. The IRS has admitted that since May 2010 it targeted grassroots-conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, unfairly subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny due to their political leanings. Such groups were told they were required to comply with IRS requests, no matter how absurd, in order to obtain non-profit status. Some were ask to provide book reports, names of family members, family members’ political affiliations, lists of donors and more. A report issued by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration this week begins to highlight the extent of misbehavior. Following the admission, many have accused the IRS of misusing and misrepresenting its power for political advantage, and it’s true that silencing – or at least handcuffing – conservatives in the run-up to the 2012 election could very well have made an impact. ...

True natural beauty: Mystical light that occurs only a few days every year captured in a series of stunning images-5/23 Daily Mail,
• The stunning light at Keyhole Arch, Pfeiffer Beach, California, looks like it is straight out of an Indiana Jones film
• It only occurs for a few weeks every year when the sun sets at the correct angle and the tide is at the right height ...

Fiery Thoughts for the Day ...

368. Urusvati knows that the world-outlook changes with each generation. But few individuals grasp this, for an entire generation is rarely studied. Amid life's confusion people are not accustomed to paying sufficient attention to the thinking of youth, and believe that by using the old textbooks, they will strengthen traditional concepts. But these books are obsolete, and young thought finds its own way. Twenty years is the measure of a generation. This division should be kept in mind, otherwise you will perpetuate the same old injustices.

For example, imagine the hostility that arises in a certain country where the population has been living in hatred for a quarter of a century and has transmitted its hostility to the next generation. Is this just? Even when the original enemies no longer exist, and the young generation has begun to think in a new way, there are those who will wish to impose upon the young minds earlier antiquated concepts. One should always remember the span of the generations so that injustice will not be done. The essential meaning of a society should not be judged by the outward conditions and customs of life which can remain unchanged from one generation to the next, but by its inner growth and striving. You should understand that I am not talking abstractly. I am observing a certain nation in which people are creating a new world-outlook, yet there is a strong opposition that attempts to force the nation to revert to the ancient concepts of past generations. Casual, short-sighted observers tell the most contradictory stories. It would be appropriate to ask these observers from which generation they have drawn their judgments.

One must insist upon clear discernment, or misjudgments will be committed and the new generation accused of crimes of the former generation for which they are not responsible. It is difficult to form a correct judgment, which is why one must learn to understand the causes and effects of life in general. The Thinker often questioned His listeners, "Of whom are you really speaking, a son, a father, or a grandfather?"
Supermundane II, The Inner Life (Agni Yoga, 1938)

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate hearings. For those of you too young to remember, back then the administration had an enemies list. They were spying on reporters, and they used the IRS to harass groups they didn’t like. Thank God those days are gone forever. Leno

You Have to Laugh So You Don’t Cry: Folks in L.A. Apparently Have No Idea What’s Going on Within Their Own City Gov’t-5/23

Yuck! NYC fourth grader sneaks camera into school, makes documentary about gross cafeteria food-5/18

You just can't make this stuff up. Kafka would be proud.

• Pelosi: GOP ‘Makes So Much’ of Scandals Because Obama Is ‘Such a Great President’
• Pelosi: ObamaCare 'largely responsible' for bringing down deficit
• Obama: Americans 'Are Root Cause of Violence That's Been Happening Here in Mexico'
• Carney: Benghazi Happened A Long Time Ago
• House Dem resolution warns climate change could push women to prostitution-4/30
• Asked about second term failures, Obama responded: "Maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly."

• Chinese general says Okinawa not Japan's-5/16
• Taiwan May Send Warships, F-16s To Escalate Philippine Naval Confrontation-5/14
• China Is Transforming Tibet's Holiest Area Into A Tourist District-5/13
• China destroys the ancient Buddhist symbols of Lhasa City in Tibet-5/11
• Chinese hackers caught trying to steal secrets of our new stealth fighter-5/12
• China adds missiles aimed at Taiwan, while pressing for 'military mutual trust'-5/11
• U.S. Directly Blames China’s Military for Cyberattacks-5/7
• Pentagon: Espionage Fuels China’s Fast-Paced Military Buildup-5/7
• Pentagon uses Chinese satellite to transmit data for U.S. troops in Africa-5/5
• Pentagon Paying Chinese for Satellite Bandwidth-4/30
• China's White Paper: 1.6 million armed police deployed for domestic 'social stability'-4/27
• China defense white paper signals policy shift on First Strike-4/26

A Virtual Weimar: Hyperinflation in a Video Game World-5/21 von Mises Institute, by Peter C. Earle -- As virtual fantasy worlds go, Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3 is particularly foreboding. In this multiplayer online game played by millions, witch doctors, demon hunters, and other character types duke it out in a war between angels and demons in a dark world called Sanctuary. The world is reminiscent of Judeo-Christian notions of hell: fire and brimstone, with the added fantasy elements of supernatural combat waged with magic and divine weaponry. And within a fairly straightforward gaming framework, virtual “gold” is used as currency for purchasing weapons and repairing battle damage. Over time, virtual gold can be used to purchase ever-more resources for confronting ever-more dangerous foes. But in the last few months, various outposts in that world — Silver City and New Tristram, to name two — have borne more in common with real world places like Harare, Zimbabwe in 2007 or Berlin in 1923 than with Dante’s Inferno. A culmination of a series of unanticipated circumstances — and, finally, a most unfortunate programming bug — has over the last few weeks produced a new and unforeseen dimension of hellishness within Diablo 3: hyperinflation.
Austrian Economics and Inflation In casual use, the term “inflation” is used in conjunction with price increases. From the perspective of the Austrian School of economics, though, that phenomenon is a secondary effect of increases in the money supply. As Henry Hazlitt wrote,
When the supply of money increase[s], people have more money to offer for goods. … Each individual dollar becomes less valuable because there are more dollars. Therefore more of them will be offered against, say, a pair of shoes or a hundred bushels of wheat than before. A “price” is an exchange ratio between a dollar and a unit of goods. When people have more dollars … [goods] rise in price, not because [they] are scarcer than before, but because dollars are more abundant.[1]
Furthermore, inflation is not simply an increase in the supply of money within an economy; it is the increase in that portion (if any) not backed by a commensurate increase in specie: most common in history, market commodities like gold or silver. Thus fiat currencies are, unless tightly controlled as to the amounts being created versus being destroyed (with the latter typically only occurring due to wear), notably susceptible to inflation. As virtual currencies are digitally-created and not commodity-backed — therefore, not particularly dissimilar from real world currencies in this day and age — those such as Diablo 3’s gold are de facto fiat currencies. ...

Dan Brown's Inferno set for blockbusting sales -5/13 Guardian, Booksellers are confident that The Da Vinci Code author's latest novel will be the biggest and fastest-selling title of the year ...

Book review: Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’-5/14 Wash. Post, By Monica Hesse -- It’s been four years now since our last encounter with Robert Langdon, the be-tweeded hero who has Da Vinci’d and Demon-ed his way through three previous Dan Brown page-rippers. Brown’s last book, “The Lost Symbol,” came out in 2009, smack in the vortex of a Brownado — a whirling era of “Da Vinci Code” European tour packages and Tom Hanks’s second cinematic turn as the lank-haired Harvard symbologist. “The Lost Symbol” seemed of the moment and of particularly heightened American interest, set as it was in D.C. Tuesday marks the release of “Inferno,” Brown’s newest Langdon installment. One is still excited — one must be; Doubleday is printing a whopping 4 million copies — but the anticipation feels different. At this point, it’s already clear what Brown can do with the genre. He has perfected the breathless art of the cliffhanger chapter, the ooky villain, the historish backdrop. ...
Review - Dan Brown's Inferno-5/15 Daily Grail

The Subliminal Mind-5/23 Coast to Coast Recap, Physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow discussed his work on the power of the subliminal, and how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world. According to him, all judgments and perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. Subliminal or subconscious effects can play out in a variety of ways. For instance, it's known that the sense of touch can build trust, and in an experiment with waiters and waitresses at a restaurant, the customers whom they subtly touched ended up tipping 20% better than those they hadn't. This is a form of subliminal persuasion, as the customers typically didn't even remember being touched, he detailed. People respond to non-verbal communication cues-- aspects of your smile, posture, and gestures send messages to people that may be perceived on a subconscious level. Interestingly, he noted that a real smile looks different than a fake one, as it involves different facial muscles. One of the surprising things Mlodinow learned was that people are often not in control of their own biases, which typically come from the bombardment of stereotypes in the media that have entered their subconscious (Project Implicit from Harvard offers online tests that reveal personal biases and prejudices). One can learn to harness the power of the subconscious mind in different ways, he said. For example, when working on a complex problem, by taking a break and doing something else such as going on a walk, solutions often arise easier. Mlodinow also addressed various topics in science and physics, such as the lack of progress in string theory, the future of quantum computing, advancements in brain imaging, and the effects of randomness and chance in our lives.

Ancient Celtic Knots inspire scientific breakthrough-5/23 Past Horizons, Scientists have devised a new molecular technique, inspired by Celtic Knots and trees, which could be used in the treatment of multiple diseases. ...

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THE WESAK FESTIVAL - the full moon of the Buddha-5/23

Editor: Wesak is normally celebrated on the first full moon in Taurus which was April 25th. However, many throughout the world, especially in South Asia celebrate it in May during the full moon which is either the 24th or 25th depending on your location:

The next full moon will be: Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 06:24:54 am Central European Summer Time (CEST) Moon sign: Sagittarius 04° 08' In other time zones:
WELLINGTON = Sat * 25th May 2013 * 04:24:54 pm
SYDNEY = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 02:24:54 pm
TOKYO = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 01:24:54 pm (JST)
BEIJING = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 12:24:54 pm (CST)
BANGKOK = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 11:24:54 am
DELHI = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 09:54:54 am (IST)
MOSCOW = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 08:24:54 am
BERLIN = Saturday, 25th May 2013, 06:24:54 am (CEST)
LONDON = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 05:24:54 am (BST)
RIO = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 01:24:54 am (BRT)
NEW YORK = Saturday * 25th May 2013 * 12:24:54 am
MEXICO CITY = Friday * 24th May 2013 * 11:24:54 pm
LOS ANGELES = Friday * 24th May 2013 * 09:24:54 pm
HONOLULU = Friday * 24th May 2013 * 06:24:54 pm

Editor: The gathering may have been in a valley, long, long ago. Today it is in Shambhala, high above the Gobi Desert.

Massive submerged structure stumps Israeli archaeologists-5/23 AP/Fox, The massive circular structure appears to be an archaeologists dream: a recently discovered antiquity that could reveal secrets of ancient life in the Middle East and is just waiting to be excavated. It's thousands of years old -- a conical, manmade behemoth weighing hundreds of tons, practically begging to be explored. The problem is -- it's at the bottom of the biblical Sea of Galilee. For now, at least, Israeli researchers are left stranded on dry land, wondering what finds lurk below. The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 230 feet, emerged from a routine sonar scan in 2003. Now archaeologists are trying to raise money to allow them access to the submerged stones. "It's very enigmatic, it's very interesting, but the bottom line is we don't know when it's from, we don't know what it's connected to, we don't know its function," said Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa who is one of several researchers studying the discovery. "We only know it is there, it is huge and it is unusual." Archaeologists said the only way they can properly assess the structure is through an underwater excavation, a painstakingly slow process that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if an excavation were to take place, archaeologists said they believed it would be the first in the Sea of Galilee, an ancient lake that boasts historical remnants spanning thousands of years and is the setting of many Bible scenes. ...

Nicholas Roerich - Triptych "Long live the King" "Fiat Rex"-5/5 Art Investment.ru/blog, by Про искусство --Triptych «Fiat Rex» (1931) is dedicated to one of the great teachers of mankind, the founder of Living Ethics. During the life of Nicholas Roerich triptych was in the house in Naggar Roerich and never exhibited at shows. In January 1948, was taken when moving from Naggar Helena Roerich, was with her in Delhi, Khandala and Kalimpong. After the death of Helena Roerich in October 1955, S. Roerich brought him to his estate «Tatguni Estate» near Bangalore. In this work, clearly embodied representation of Nicholas Roerich's "garb spirit" aura - a special field formed by human energy and is generally inaccessible to the physical eye. ...

Proof of heaven popular, except with the church-5/21 CNN, By John Blake -- “God, help me!” Eben Alexander shouted and flailed as hospital orderlies tried to hold him in place. But no one could stop his violent seizures, and the 54-year-old neurosurgeon went limp as his horrified wife looked on. That moment could have been the end. But Alexander says it was just the beginning. He found himself soaring toward a brilliant white light tinged with gold into “the strangest, most beautiful world I’d ever seen.” Alexander calls that world heaven, and he describes his journey in “Proof of Heaven,” which has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks. Alexander says he used to be an indifferent churchgoer who ignored stories about the afterlife. But now he knows there’s truth to those stories, and there’s no reason to fear death. “Not one bit,” he said. “It’s a transition; it’s not the end of anything. We will be with our loved ones again.” Heaven used to be a mystery, a place glimpsed only by mystics and prophets. But popular culture is filled with firsthand accounts from all sorts of people who claim that they, too, have proofs of heaven after undergoing near-death experiences. Yet the popularity of these stories raises another question: Why doesn’t the church talk about heaven anymore? Preachers used to rhapsodize about celestial streets of gold while congregations sang joyful hymns like “I’ll Fly Away” and “When the Roll is Called up Yonder.” But the most passionate accounts of heaven now come from people outside the church or on its margins. Most seminaries don’t teach courses on heaven; few big-name pastors devote much energy to preaching or writing about the subject; many ordinary pastors avoid the topic altogether out of embarrassment, indifference or fear, scholars and pastors say. “People say that the only time they hear about heaven is when they go to a funeral,” said Gary Scott Smith, author of “Heaven in the American Imagination” and a history professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Talk of heaven shouldn’t wait, though, because it answers a universal question: what happens when we die, says the Rev. John Price, author of “Revealing Heaven,” which offers a Christian perspective of near-death experiences. “Ever since people started dying, people have wondered, where did they go? Where are they now? Is this what happens to me?” said Price, a retired pastor and hospital chaplain.
A little girl’s revelation
Price didn’t always think heaven was so important. He scoffed at reports of near-death experiences because he thought they reduced religion to ghost stories. Besides, he was too busy helping grieving families to speculate about the afterlife. His attitude changed, though, after a young woman visited his Episcopal church one Sunday with her 3-year-old daughter. Price had last seen the mother three years earlier. She had brought her then-7-week-old daughter to the church for baptism. Price hadn't heard from her since. But when she reappeared, she told Price an amazing story. She had been feeding her daughter a week after the baptism when milk dribbled out of the infant's mouth and her eyes rolled back into her head. The woman rushed her daughter to the emergency room, where she was resuscitated and treated for a severe upper respiratory infection. Three years later, the mother was driving past the same hospital with her daughter when the girl said, “Look, Mom, that’s where Jesus brought me back to you.” “The mother nearly wrecked her car,” Price said. “She never told her baby about God, Jesus, her near-death experience, nothing. All that happened when the girl was 8 weeks old. How could she remember that?” When Price started hearing similar experiences from other parishioners, he felt like a fraud. He realized that he didn’t believe in heaven, even though it was part of traditional Christian doctrine. He started sharing near-death stories he heard with grieving families and dejected hospital workers who had lost patients. He told them dying people had glimpsed a wonderful world beyond this life. The stories helped people, Price said, and those who've had similar experiences of heaven should “shout them from the rooftops.” “I’ve gone around to many churches to talk about this, and the venue they give me is just stuffed,” he said. “People are really hungry for it.”

Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife-5/13 MaCleans, by Brian Bethune -- Heaven is hot again, and hell is colder than ever -- Death, it seems, is no longer Shakespeare’s undiscovered country, the one “from whose bourn no traveller returns.” Not according to contemporary bestseller lists. Dreams and visions of the afterlife have been constants across human history, and the near-death experiences (now known as NDEs) of those whose lives were saved by medical advances have established, for millions, a credible means by which someone could peek into the next world. Lately a fair-sized pack of witnesses claim to have actually entered into the afterlife before coming back again to write mega-selling accounts of what they saw and felt there. Afterlife speculation has become a vibrant part of the zeitgeist, the result of trends that include developments in neuroscience that have inspired new ideas about human consciousness, the ongoing evolution of theology, both popular and expert, and the hopes and fears of an aging population. Heaven is hot again. And hell is colder than ever. Recent polls across the developed world are starting to tell an intriguing tale. In the U.S., religion central for the West, belief in heaven has held steady, even ticking upwards on occasion, over the past two decades. Belief in hell is also high, but even Americans show a gap between the two articles of faith—81 per cent believed in the former in 2011, as opposed to 71 per cent accepting the latter. Elsewhere in the Western world the gap between heaven and hell believers is more of a gulf—a 2010 Canadian poll found more than half of us think there is a heaven, while fewer than a third acknowledge hell. What’s more, monotheism’s two destinations are no longer all that are on offer. In December a survey of the 1970 British Cohort group—9,000 people, currently 42 years old—found half believed in an afterlife, while only 31 per cent believed in God. No one has yet delved deeply into beliefs about the new afterlife—the cohort surveyors didn’t ask for details—but reincarnation, in an newly multicultural West, is one suggested factor. So too is belief in what one academic called “an unreligious afterlife,” the natural continuation of human consciousness after physical death. While most of the current bestselling accounts of afterlife experiences are recognizably Christian—at least in outline—signs of changing beliefs can be found in them too. Nor are the new travellers—who include a four-year-old boy and a middle-aged neurosurgeon—what religious skeptics would think of as the usual suspects. Colton Burpo, now 13, “died” 10 years ago from a ruptured appendix, and spent three minutes of earthly time in heaven—some of it in Jesus’s lap, some of it speaking with a miscarried sister whose existence he had never been told about—before being pulled back to Earth by his surgical team. Since 2010, when his father, Todd, a Nebraska minister, published his account of what Colton told him, Heaven is for Real has sold more than 7.5 million copies. If Colton’s story sounds like a contemporary take on an ancient Christian motif—“unless you become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3)—the same can’t be said about Eben Alexander’s post-religious cosmic experience. It is Alexander’s provocatively named Proof of Heaven, released in November, that wrenched afterlife visitation literature out of its below-the-radar religious publishing niche and into the spotlight. Alexander’s professional stature—as a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon, a man expected to know what is possible and what is not for human consciousness—ensured him of extensive media coverage, including on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday, massive sales (it remains No. 1 on the New York Times paperback non-fiction bestseller list), and often venomous responses from fellow scientists. ...

Do Heaven, Hell and Ghosts Exist? Author Tackles What He Believes Happens After You Die-5/1 The Blaze, by Billy Hallowell

'Angels were there. God spoke to me': Man, 62, describes 'dying' and coming back to life after his heart stopped beating-5/2 Daily Mail

Dr Pim Van Lommel’s scientific studies on near-death experiences and consciousness-5/18 Lilou's Juicy Living Tour

The Unbelievable Mr. Ripley-5/13 Vanity Fair, By Neal Thompson -- Before he was a museum namesake, television and radio host, lecturer, author, and freak-show magnate, Robert Ripley was a simple newspaper illustrator with a zest for explaining the impossible. Along the way to international fame, he accumulated knowledge of thousands of oddities, girlfriends from around the world, a curio-stuffed house on a private island—and who could forget that dried whale penis? In an excerpt adapted from his new book, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley, author Neal Thompson retraces the brilliant and belief-beggaring career of a man whose name lives on in American culture as a symbol of wit and wonder. -- In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made his treacherous solo voyage across the Atlantic, flying his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from New York to Paris and becoming an instant hero for accomplishing a feat long thought to be impossible—crossing an ocean in a day and a half; traveling 60 miles an hour for more than 3,000 miles; flying alone through the night, through storms, without sleep. It was the most daring and astounding achievement of its day. Months later, Robert Ripley—a connoisseur of mosts and bests, of fastest and furthest—featured Lindy in his popular syndicated New York Evening Post cartoon, Believe It or Not. Instead of heaping more praise on the aviator, however, he declared that Lindbergh was not the first but the 67th man to make a nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Thousands of irate readers sent incredulous letters and telegrams, berating Ripley for insulting an American icon, and calling him all sorts of names, primarily a liar. . . .

Is Robert Downey Jr. Tracking End Times Prophecy by Chuck Missler?-5/22

Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?-5/13 Vanity Fair, A prestigious Harvard psychiatrist, John Edward Mack, thought so. His sudden death leaves behind many mysteries. ...

Dark, massive asteroid to fly by Earth on May 31-5/17

Blavatsky’s Subtle Body-5/18 Blavatsky News, Geoffrey Samuel, Director of the Research Group on the Body, Health and Religion at Cardiff University, has added a new book to his numerous studies on Tibetan religious culture. Professor Samuel has edited with Jay Johnston, Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body. Fourteen academic writers, including Samuel and Johnston, contribute on subjects related to their area of expertise. At 296 pages, the book published by Routledge UK, sells for £90.00 / $155.00 USD. Chapters are grouped into four sections detailing
(1) Subtle Bodies in China and India;
(2) Subtle Bodies in the Tibetan Tradition;
(3) Subtle Bodies in Europe and Islam; and, of course,
(4) Subtle Bodies and Modernity.
Dr. Johnston of the Department of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney, who introduces part 4 of the book, notes Blavatsky’s contribution to the notion of a “Subtle Body”:
Blavatsky’s text in her multi-volumed tomes Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine draw together scientific aspirations (and nomenclature), Eastern religious ideas (adapted and changed), and Hermetic ideas and astrology. Core to the complex cosmology of ‘planes if existence’ and ‘root races’ was the subtle body.
She writes that “In Theosophical narratives, the subtle body comprises seven layers or sheaths, each interpenetrating and exceeding the other,” which is only partially correct. In Blavatsky’s schema the consciousness of the individual has seven aspects, often referred to as principles, rarely as bodies. Drawing from Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, a brief attempt on defining how these bodies function leads quickly into an outline of the contribution of C.W. Leadbeater and Alice Bailey and later writers who were influenced by them. Unfortunately the book includes no chapter on Blavatsky and her influential ideas on the subject, though a detailed literature exists. The pioneering 1919 work by Blavatsky’s secretary, G. R. S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition: An Outline of What the Philosophers Thought and Christians Taught on the Subject, is referenced.

Atlantis Rising New Sampler PDF-5/21
• Andrews Collins: GOBEKLI TEPE: THE COSMIC CONNECTION On Astonishing New Findings from Before 9,000 BC
• William B. Stoecker: THE COMING NEW SPECIES Should We Be Expecting Strange Creatures Soon?
• Jeff Nisbet: ANCIENT CODE OF THE TEMPLE BUILDERS The Shared Secrets of Rosslyn Chapel & Chartres Cathedral
• Michael E. Tymn: THE MAN WHO PROVED HE WASN’T DEAD The Very Strange Story of the Late George Pellew
• Steven Sora: VIKINGS & IROQUOIS: BLOOD BROTHERS? Just How Much Did These People Owe to Each Other?

The Minoans were Caucasian: DNA debunks longstanding theory that Europe's first advanced culture was from Africa-5/17

New discovery of ancient diet shatters conventional ideas of how agriculture emerged-5/18 Archaeology News, Archaeologists have made a discovery in southern subtropical China which could revolutionise thinking about how ancient humans lived in the region. They have uncovered evidence for the first time that people living in Xincun 5,000 years ago may have practised agriculture -- before the arrival of domesticated rice in the region. Current archaeological thinking is that it was the advent of rice cultivation along the Lower Yangtze River that marked the beginning of agriculture in southern China. Poor organic preservation in the study region, as in many others, means that traditional archaeobotany techniques are not possible. Now, thanks to a new method of analysis on ancient grinding stones, the archaeologists have uncovered evidence that agriculture could predate the advent of rice in the region. The research was the result of a two-year collaboration between Dr Huw Barton, from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and Dr Xiaoyan Yang, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. Funded by a Royal Society UK-China NSFC International Joint Project, and other grants held by Yang in China, the research is published in PLOS ONE. ...

THE PROPHECY OF THE KING OF THE WORLD IN 1890-5/14 From Beasts, Men and Gods, by Ferdinand Ossendowski:
CHAPTER XLIX: The Hutuktu of Narabanchi related the following to me, when I visited him in his monastery in the beginning of 1921:
"When the King of the World appeared before the Lamas, favored of God, in this monastery thirty years ago he made a prophecy for the coming half century. It was as follows: "'More and more the people will forget their souls and care about their bodies. The greatest sin and corruption will reign on the earth. People will become as ferocious animals, thirsting for the blood and death of their brothers. The 'Crescent' will grow dim and its followers will descend into beggary and ceaseless war. Its conquerors will be stricken by the sun but will not progress upward and twice they will be visited with the heaviest misfortune, which will end in insult before the eye of the other peoples. The crowns of kings, great and small, will fall . . . one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. . . . There will be a terrible battle among all the peoples. The seas will become red . . . the earth and the bottom of the seas will be strewn with bones . . . kingdoms will be scattered . . . whole peoples will die . . . hunger, disease, crimes unknown to the law, never before seen in the world. The enemies of God and of the Divine Spirit in man will come. Those who take the hand of another shall also perish. The forgotten and pursued shall rise and hold the attention of the whole world. There will be fogs and storms. Bare mountains shall suddenly be covered with forests. Earthquakes will come. . . . Millions will change the fetters of slavery and humiliation for hunger, disease and death. The ancient roads will be covered with crowds wandering from one place to another. The greatest and most beautiful cities shall perish in fire . . . one, two, three. . . . Father shall rise against son, brother against brother and mother against daughter. . . . Vice, crime and the destruction of body and soul shall follow. . . . Families shall be scattered. . . . Truth and love shall disappear. . . . From ten thousand men one shall remain; he shall be nude and mad and without force and the knowledge to build him a house and find his food. . . . He will howl as the raging wolf, devour dead bodies, bite his own flesh and challenge God to fight. . . . All the earth will be emptied. God will turn away from it and over it there will be only night and death. Then I shall send a people, now unknown, which shall tear out the weeds of madness and vice with a strong hand and will lead those who still remain faithful to the spirit of man in the fight against Evil. They will found a new life on the earth purified by the death of nations. In the fiftieth year only three great kingdoms will appear, which will exist happily seventy-one years. Afterwards there will be eighteen years of war and destruction. Then the peoples of Agharti will come up from their subterranean caverns to the surface of the earth.'" Afterwards, as I traveled farther through Eastern Mongolia and to Peking, I often thought: "And what if . . . ? What if whole peoples of different colors, faiths and tribes should begin their migration toward the West?" And now, as I write these final lines, my eyes involuntarily turn to this limitless Heart of Asia over which the trails of my wanderings twine. Through whirling snow and driving clouds of sand of the Gobi they travel back to the face of the Narabanchi Hutuktu as, with quiet voice and a slender hand pointing to the horizon, he opened to me the doors of his innermost thoughts: "Near Karakorum and on the shores of Ubsa Nor I see the huge, multi-colored camps, the herds of horses and cattle and the blue yurtas of the leaders. Above them I see the old banners of Jenghiz Khan, of the Kings of Tibet, Siam, Afghanistan and of Indian Princes; the sacred signs of all the Lamaite Pontiffs; the coats of arms of the Khans of the Olets; and the simple signs of the north Mongolian tribes. I do not hear the noise of the animated crowd. The singers do not sing the mournful songs of mountain, plain and desert. The young riders are not delighting themselves with the races on their fleet steeds. . . . There are innumerable crowds of old men, women and children and beyond in the north and west, as far as the eye can reach, the sky is red as a flame, there is the roar and crackling of fire and the ferocious sound of battle. Who is leading these warriors who there beneath the reddened sky are shedding their own and others' blood? Who is leading these crowds of unarmed old men and women? I see severe order, deep religious understanding of purposes, patience and tenacity . . . a new great migration of peoples, the last march of the Mongols. . . ."
Karma may have opened a new page of history! And what if the King of the World be with them? But this greatest Mystery of Mysteries keeps its own deep silence.

Richard Nolle's May Astrology-5/8 AstroPro, The "acceleration in the flow of time and events starting this month" promised in my April forecast has already begun, clearly. From the outburst of danger and violence beginning within days of the April 18 Sun-Mars conjunction, a rash of the "fires, crashes, clashes and explosions" so typical of Red Planet alignments is obviously well underway. It continues into May, with Mars first opposing Saturn on May 1 and then partaking of the May 10 solar eclipse stellium in Scorpio – with Uranus and Pluto hovering less than a degree from their May 20 exact quadrature all the while. If you’re looking for safe and dull, these Red Planet triggers guarantee that it’s still some distance away yet. Stay safe, get a grip; steer clear of conflict if you can. (And if you can’t, then get in a knock-out punch at the get-go.) Remember that strong Mars factors, particularly when amplified by eclipses as happens this month, don’t show up only in the headlines. They manifest in our own heads. Feeling irritable, frustrated and impatient – particularly if there are important fixed sign factors in your natal chart (most especially Taurus and Scorpio) - is the course of least resistance under the aegis of this month’s Mars factors. Be mindful of this, lest you get carried away by it and do things in haste you’ll regret later. Stubbornness, arguments, bellicosity and outright fights, road rage and worse: that’s what we’re facing if we don’t get a grip and stay focused – on and off all month, but most especially around the 1st, 10th and 25th. Watch the headlines, you’ll see plenty of evidence of this, in the form of criminal violence; also big fires and explosions - some due to carelessness, but others by design. By far the biggest bang associated with this combination of Mars opposing Saturn, the solar eclipse and the Uranus-Pluto square will be collective in nature; that is, conflict rooted in ideological and socio-economic strife. People who have been dispossessed by upheaval in the financial system, and then get hit again with austerity programs that cut their meager safety line to shreds, refuse to go quietly. ...

Eclipse Notes: May 25th-5/21 The Oxford Astrologer, May 25th sees the final eclipse in the Gemini-Sagittarius group that's spanned November 2o1o until now. You can see it's at 4° Sagittarius. In the way of these eclipse groups, it has overlapped at one end with Cancer-Capricorn and now it's overlapping at this end with Taurus-Scorpio. ...

Archaeology | Studies examine clues of transoceanic contact-5/21

DID JAPANESE FISHERMEN DISCOVER AMERICA 5,000 YEARS AGO?-5/21