Truthout Daily Digest January 28, 2014

Hawaii’s GMO War Headed to Honolulu and Federal Court

Mike Ludwig, Truthout: The question facing Hawaiians in their grassroots opposition to GMO development: Do county governments – and the local communities they represent – have the power to regulate global chemical companies and the pesticide-laden process of developing genetically engineered seeds?

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Pete Seeger Dies at 94; Balladeer Was America’s Conscience

Claudia Luther, Los Angeles Times: Pete Seeger, the iconoclastic American singer, songwriter and social activist who did battle with injustice in America armed with a banjo, a guitar and the transformative power of song, has died. He was 94.

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Costs of Privatization Hidden in Plain Sight

Ellen Dannin, Truthout: Privatization often is sold as providing higher-quality services and infrastructure at lower cost. In fact, important costs regularly are overlooked and services and infrastructure privatized even though keeping them public is the better and less expensive choice.

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Veterans in the SOTU: Ending the Mindset That Got Us Into War

Robert Naiman, Truthout: In his State of the Union address, President Obama has an opportunity to talk about providing the funding to care for the veterans from a decade of war. And Sen. Bernie Sanders’ veterans’ benefits bill is poised to grab national headlines.

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Why the Olympics Are a Lot Like The Hunger Games

Samantha Retrosi, The Nation: “As a former Olympic athlete, I can tell you from experience that the Olympic Games have much more in common with The Hunger Games than anyone would want to admit.”

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Michoacan and the Economics of Crime

Santiago Navarro F., Truthout: In southwest Mexico, Michoacan residents have taken up arms and formed a self-defense militia to protect themselves from violent drug cartels, succeeding where state and federal authorities have failed.

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1969: The Year the Black Panther Party Was To Be Annihilated

Gabriel San Roman, Truthout: Former member Elaine Brown talks about the savage attacks on the Black Panther Party in 1969, from the January murders of Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins through the LAPD SWAT team siege to the COINTELPRO murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

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A Declaration of the End of the Reagan Era

The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program: It’s time to roll back the Reagan tax cuts, declare an end to 33 years of failed Reaganomics and start practicing sensible economics that will improve the lives of all Americans, not just the wealthy elite.

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Senators Should Read Before Signing the Menendez-Kirk Iran Sanctions Bill

Dr. Edward Levine, Truthout: Fifty-nine US senators have signed up to sponsor the Menendez-Kirk Iran sanctions bill, the “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act.” Yet it is hard to believe many have actually read the 53-page bill.

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The Pacific Pivot: Why America’s Strategic Rebalance Is Really Just Retreat

John Feffer, TomDispatch: In reality the “strategic rebalancing” the Obama administration has been promoting as a midcourse correction to its foreign policy remains strong on rhetoric and remarkably weak on content. Think of it as a clever fiction for whose promotion many audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief.

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On the News With Thom Hartmann: The NSA Is Spying on Angry Birds, and More

In today‘s On the News segment: The NSA is spying on Angry Birds; more crude oil was spilled from train cars in 2013 than in the entire four previous decades combined; President Obama will deliver the 2014 State of the Union speech, and the AFL-CIO has a few suggestions; and more.

Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

“We Shall Overcome”: Remembering Folk Icon, Activist Pete Seeger in His Own Words and Songs

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: The legendary folk singer and activist died Monday at the age of 94. For nearly seven decades, he was a musical and political icon who helped create the modern American folk music movement.

Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

BuzzFlash

Income Redistribution to Wealthy Continued Upward at Accelerating Pace in 2013

Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: Ronald Reagan would have made a bad plumber. He got his infamous “trickle down” economic meme confused with the financial reality in the United States of a “trickle up” redistribution of income.

Read the BuzzFlash Commentary

Eugene Robinson | Science Is Telling Us Something

Read the Article at BuzzFlash

The Return of the Firing Squad? US States Reconsider Execution Methods

Read the Article at The Guardian

Corporate Chemical Spills

Read the Article at The Progressive Populist

You Have a “Fundamental Right” To Make End-of-Life Decisions … Unless You’re Pregnant

Read the Article at RH Reality Check

Charles P. Pierce | Congress Agrees That People Should Go Hungry

Read the Article at Esquire

Obama Justice Department Intervenes in Gun Case – on Behalf of Notorious Gun Dealer

Read the Article at Mother Jones

New GOP Plan Makes Everything They Hate About Obamacare Even Worse

Read the Article at Talking Points Memo

The Oracle Report Tuesday, January 28, 2014 | The Oracle Report

Balsamic Moon Phase – Moon: Capricorn – Ruling Mahavidya: Kali

The Moon returns to the position it held at the New Moon on January 1, making conjunctions with Pluto and Venus today. We started the month with the unfolding Sabian symbol theme of “students of nature lecturing, revealing little-known aspects of life.” It has been a long journey this month, like a study abroad, but we are much improved by it – wiser.

But even though we are in the Balsamic phase of the Moon, the time when we would be taking an energetic “vacation” after the semester, we feel far from relaxed. There are many reasons for this but three that are primary are:

1) Mars is preparing to turn retrograde and is churning at a standstill, whipping up the winds of war with Eris, conjuring plenty of little wars between people;

2) Venus is preparing to turn direct and is churning at a standstill, pounding our relationships with Pluto, transforming those relationships into something else or banishing them entirely; and

3) the biggie: we are in the energy that is preparing for the final lunar month of the final year of the “old world” (the year that began with the astrological new year, the New Moon in Aries, of April 2013).

(Meanwhile, the beacon through it all for the past several years, the Oracle Report, is undergoing its own rather tumultuous transformation into a new form so that it can better serve in the new world. As they would say in the old days before cable TV, please stand by…)

So the challenge of staying grounded while in the midst of these massive energetic factors is resolved, as always, by getting back “on time” with nature and finding the frequency or mindset the current Moon phase, the Balsamic Moon phase. Balsamic phase is the time when we release the past month and prepare for the next. We release or surrender what we do not want to carry forward. It’s dreamy, drifty energy. In a grand cycle of time, we are orienting ourselves in the pre-dawn hours of the last month of a dissolving world. It is hard to feel grounded under such influences. But it is an honor to behold, isn’t it? How many people truly know what we are on the edge of?

This is what helps: First, understand that with these dramatic retrogrades of Mars and Venus, relationships, structures, and foundations must transform or slip away. The way this happens is that we change and relationships follow suit. These energies are trying to bring us to our highest and best. With Pluto and Eris in the mix here, you can bet your bottom dollar that we have face to face encounters with things we don’t want to see about ourselves and others. When things become difficult, turn it over to a higher power (Kali remains on duty and is more than willing to annihilate anything that is limiting us) and walk away from it, if only for a little while. Go outside, reconnect with nature, and watch for signs. Wash away the old with water – in the shower, a pool, or whatever. Consciously intend that the old is washing away. Facilitate the process instead of resisting it. And keep in mind that February 21-22 will bring another evolution to whatever is happening in relationships right now.

Second, for the more esoteric-minded wise owls, remember that we’ve crossed a bridge in space-time and have arrived on the field to hold ground, not to battle (holding ground is defensive, however). But this is ourplace. We’ve been escorted here by Kali herself and it is a place where the sacred feminine and sacred masculine are united. There is no conflict here. The natural world order reigns. We are sovereign. This is our home. We are home, meaning in complete resonance with Gaia Sophia, the divine being embodied as our planet. We are in the new world-mind space and the rest of the world will follow. Archons are attacking it for sure, but it matters not. They bounce off like rubber balls. It’s no contest at all.

The contest, or the mission from here on out, is to hold the field of consciousness for it to expand. This means we hold ourselves together and continue to build the things we’ve been building all of our lives while the old world continues to dissolve around us. It’s now a matter of watching it dissolve and remaining as unscathed or untraumatized by it as possible and to help others do the same.

Finally, we do what we do. We keep it real, we find beauty, and we fall back in love with life.

http://www.oraclereport.com/tuesday-january-28-2014/

The manuscript of survival – part 392

Thank you Aisha!

aisha north

The increasing activity in the sky will also induce some increased activities within you all. And no, we are not simply referring to all of that dreaded physical moaning and groaning that your body is apt to perform. Rather, we are referring to those activities that you are all eagerly awaiting, in the form of a deeper connection not only with those aspects of you you have yet to make acquaintance with, but also with the rest of Creation. For now, these long hidden doors will start to creak slowly open, and one by one, you will start to see glimpses of light where you before have seen nothing but blankness. And yes, we do mean that in every description of the word “light”, for the light you will start to distinguish will come in many shapes and forms, and we venture to guess that after this, you will no…

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