A Letter From Alberto: The Hole at the Center of the Galaxy

http://thefourwinds.com/newsletter/DEC2008/hole-alberto.html

The Hole at the Center of the Galaxy Xibalba is the Mayan underworld, the "place of fear." The prophets and day-keepers of the Yucatan described this as the dark rift in the Milky Way. This is the place of our beginning and of our return. An according to lore, the gates of Xibalba would open before the great planetary alignment that would occur on December 21, 2012. Recently I read an article entitled "Milky Way's Giant Black Hole Awoke from Slumber 300 Years Ago" authored by scientists Robert Naeye and Rob Gutro of the Goddard Space Flight Center. It seems that the gigantic black hole at the center of our galaxy, with a mass that is more than 4 million times that of our sun, has awakened from a long sleep, and begun to emit huge outbursts of radiation. Black holes in space are so dense that not even light can escape from them, as they gobble up anything and everything in their path. But it appears that they also play an important role in the birth and formation of galaxies, and seem to be at the center of many of our nearby constellations. How did ancient astronomers know that this was the source of beginnings and endings? And why did they refer to it as the "place of fear"? One of the meditation practices of shamans-in-training consists of finding your "star". To do this, you scan the night sky and find a distant sun that calls to you in some way. Then you sit quietly and gaze at the point of light, following instructions to direct your awareness along that beam of starlight back to its source. Even though it took millions of years for that light to reach the earth, the seers of old believed that the mind could travel instantaneously. Just like in dreams when we are able to journey to distant lands, or even visit relatives and friends from the past, the shaman's discipline allowed them to ride a beam of starlight to its source. Once you found your star, it would protect you and guide you throughout the rest of your days. The lore of the shamans say that even as you can travel along a beam of light, then you can also travel along a beam of darkness, of the invisible starlight. We know that the black hole at the center of the galaxy has woken up from its long slumber and started to emit invisible radiation, massive outbursts of X-rays. Could the seers of old have made this fantastic journey to the center of the Milky Way, to the "place of fear"? As I was musing about this, I asked myself if even consciousness would be trapped in the immense gravitational pull of a black hole. How close could you come to the edge of infinity? The galactic center is 26,000 light years away. On December 21, 2012, our solar system will come into perfect alignment with the center of the galaxy, an event that occurs only every 26,000 years, and that the Maya and other indigenous peoples of the Americas prophesied would be a time of tremendous upheaval, the end of one way of life and the birth of a new one. They foresaw the journey back through Xibalba and through the time of fear that many are experiencing today. And they left us a message of hope. This is a time of birth, of beginnings, a moment in history fraught with opportunity. It is a time for courage, for purity, for integrity, and for holding forth our highest dreams and hopes. A time of the dawn of a new day. Have a joyous holiday season, and join us on December 21, 2008 for a meditation, in ceremony or around a fire – a candle, a bonfire, or by your fireplace, to give thanks to Mother Earth for her bounty and to the Great Spirit, and to dream a new world into being. In Peace, Alberto Villoldo PhD Design by Dustin Neece Copy by: Alberto Villoldo Photo Credit: Matt Morrissey Content © 2008 The Four Winds Society

Education is Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Key Link: http://www.NetworkAztlan.com

Bolivian President Evo Morales: 20 Ways to Save Mother Earth and Prevent Environmental Disaster

http://www.alternet.org/story/112765/bolivian_president_evo_morales:_20_ways_to_save_mother_earth_and_prevent_environmental_disaster/?page=entire

By Evo Morales, International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Posted December 15, 2008.



Capitalism's glorification of competition and thirst for limitless profit are destroying the planet.
Sisters and brothers, today our Mother Earth is ill. From the beginning of the 21st century we have lived the hottest years of the last thousand years.

Global warming is generating abrupt changes in the weather: the retreat of glaciers and the decrease of the polar ice caps; the increase of the sea level and the flooding of coastal areas, where approximately 60% of the world population live; the increase in the processes of desertification and the decrease of fresh water sources; a higher frequency in natural disasters that the communities of the earth suffer[1]; the extinction of animal and plant species; and the spread of diseases in areas that before were free from those diseases.

One of the most tragic consequences of the climate change is that some nations and territories are the condemned to disappear by the increase of the sea level.

Everything began with the industrial revolution in 1750, which gave birth to the capitalist system. In two and a half centuries, the so called “developed” countries have consumed a large part of the fossil fuels created over five million centuries.

Capitalism

Competition and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying the planet. Under Capitalism we are not human beings but consumers. Under Capitalism Mother Earth does not exist, instead there are raw materials. Capitalism is the source of the asymmetries and imbalances in the world. It generates luxury, ostentation and waste for a few, while millions in the world die from hunger in the world. In the hands of capitalism everything becomes a commodity: the water, the soil, the human genome, the ancestral cultures, justice, ethics, death … and life itself. Everything, absolutely everything, can be bought and sold and under capitalism. And even “climate change” itself has become a business.

“Climate change” has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

In the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the developed countries and economies in transition committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5% below the 1990 levels, through the implementation of different mechanisms among which market mechanisms predominate.

Until 2006, greenhouse effect gases, far from being reduced, have increased by 9.1% in relation to the 1990 levels, demonstrating also in this way the breach of commitments by the developed countries.

The market mechanisms applied in the developing countries[2] have not accomplished a significant reduction of greenhouse effect gas emissions.

Just as well as the market is incapable of regulating global financial and productive system, the market is unable to regulate greenhouse effect gas emissions and will only generate a big business for financial agents and major corporations.

The Earth is much more important than the stock exchanges of Wall Street and the world

While the United States and the European Union allocate $4100 billion to save the bankers from a financial crisis that they themselves have caused, programs on climate change get 313 times less, that is to say, only $13 billion.

The resources for climate change are unfairly distributed. More resources are directed to reduce emissions (mitigation) and less to reduce the effects of climate change that all the countries suffer (adaptation)[3]. The vast majority of resources flow to those countries that have contaminated the most, and not to the countries where we have preserved the environment most. Around 80% of the Clean Development Mechanism projects are concentrated in four emerging countries.

Capitalist logic promotes a paradox in which the sectors that have contributed the most to deterioration of the environment are those that benefit the most from climate change programs.

At the same time, technology transfer and the financing for clean and sustainable development of the countries of the South have remained just speeches.

The next summit on climate change in Copenhagen must allow us to make a leap forward if we want to save Mother Earth and humanity. For that purpose the following proposals for the process from Poznan to Copenhagen:

Attack the structural causes of climate change

1) Debate the structural causes of climate change. As long as we do not change the capitalist system for a system based in complementarity, solidarity and harmony between the people and nature, the measures that we adopt will be palliatives that will limited and precarious in character. For us, what has failed is the model of “living better”, of unlimited development, industrialisation without frontiers, of modernity that deprecates history, of increasing accumulation of goods at the expense of others and nature. For that reason we promote the idea of Living Well, in harmony with other human beings and with our Mother Earth.

2) Developed countries need to control their patterns of consumption -- of luxury and waste -- especially the excessive consumption of fossil fuels. Subsidies of fossil fuel, that reach $150-250 billion[4], must be progressively eliminated. It is fundamental to develop alternative forms of power, such as solar, geothermal, wind and hydroelectric both at small and medium scales.

3) Agrofuels are not an alternative, because they put the production of foodstuffs for transport before the production of food for human beings. Agrofuels expand the agricultural frontier destroying forests and biodiversity, generate monocropping, promote land concentration, deteriorate soils, exhaust water sources, contribute to rises in food prices and, in many cases, result in more consumption of more energy than is produced.

Substantial commitments to emissions reduction that are met

4) Strict fulfilment by 2012 of the commitments[5] of the developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least by 5% below the 1990 levels. It is unacceptable that the countries that polluted the planet throughout the course of history make statements about larger reductions in the future while not complying with their present commitments.

5) Establish new minimum commitments for the developed countries of greenhouse gas emission reduction of 40% by 2020 and 90% by for 2050, taking as a starting point 1990 emission levels. These minimum commitments must be met internally in developed countries and not through flexible market mechanisms that allow for the purchase of certified emissions reduction certificates to continue polluting in their own country. Likewise, monitoring mechanisms must be established for the measuring, reporting and verifying that are transparent and accessible to the public, to guarantee the compliance of commitments.

6) Developing countries not responsible for the historical pollution must preserve the necessary space to implement an alternative and sustainable form of development that does not repeat the mistakes of savage industrialisation that has brought us to the current situation. To ensure this process, developing countries need, as a prerequisite, finance and technology transfer.

Address ecological debt

7) Acknowledging the historical ecological debt that they owe to the planet, developed countries must create an Integral Financial Mechanism to support developing countries in: implementation of their plans and programs for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change; the innovation, development and transfer of technology; in the preservation and improvement of the sinks and reservoirs; response actions to the serious natural disasters caused by climate change; and the carrying out of sustainable and eco-friendly development plans.

8) This Integral Financial Mechanism, in order to be effective, must count on a contribution of at least 1% of the GDP in developed countries[6] and other contributions from taxes on oil and gas, financial transactions, sea and air transport, and the profits of transnational companies.

9) Contributions from developed countries must be additional to Official Development Assistance (ODA), bilateral aid or aid channelled through organisms not part of the United Nations. Any finance outside the UNFCCC cannot be considered as the fulfilment of developed country’s commitments under the convention.

10) Finance has to be directed to the plans or national programs of the different states and not to projects that follow market logic.

11) Financing must not be concentrated just in some developed countries but has to give priority to the countries that have contributed less to greenhouse gas emissions, those that preserve nature and are suffering the impact of climate change.

12) The Integral Financial Mechanism must be under the coverage of the United Nations, not under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other intermediaries such as the World Bank and regional development banks; its management must be collective, transparent and non-bureaucratic. Its decisions must be made by all member countries, especially by developing countries, and not by the donors or bureaucratic administrators.

Technology transfer to developing countries

13) Innovation and technology related to climate changes must be within the public domain, not under any private monopolistic patent regime that obstructs and makes technology transfer more expensive to developing countries.

14) Products that are the fruit of public financing for technology innovation and development of have to be placed within the public domain and not under a private regime of patents[7], so that they can be freely accessed by developing countries.

15) Encourage and improve the system of voluntary and compulsory licenses so that all countries can access products already patented quickly and free of cost. Developed countries cannot treat patents and intellectual property rights as something “sacred” that has to be preserved at any cost. The regime of flexibilities available for the intellectual property rights in the cases of serious problems for public health has to be adapted and substantially enlarged to heal Mother Earth.

16) Recover and promote indigenous peoples' practices in harmony with nature which have proven to be sustainable through centuries.

Adaptation and mitigation with the participation of all the people

17) Promote mitigation actions, programs and plans with the participation of local communities and indigenous people in the framework of full respect for and implementation of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The best mechanism to confront the challenge of climate change are not market mechanisms, but conscious, motivated and well organised human beings endowed with an identity of their own.

18) The reduction of the emissions from deforestation and forest degradation must be based on a mechanism of direct compensation from developed to developing countries, through a sovereign implementation that ensures broad participation of local communities, and a mechanism for monitoring, reporting and verifying that is transparent and public.

A UN for the environment and climate change

19) We need a World Environment and Climate Change Organisation to which multilateral trade and financial organisations are subordinated, so as to promote a different model of development that environmentally friendly and resolves the profound problems of impoverishment. This organisation must have effective follow-up, verification and sanctioning mechanisms to ensure that the present and future agreements are complied with.

20) It is fundamental to structurally transform the World Trade Organiation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the international economic system as a whole, in order to guarantee fair and complementary trade, as well as financing without conditions for sustainable development that avoids the waste of natural resources and fossil fuels in the production processes, trade and product transport.

In this negotiation process towards Copenhagen, it is fundamental to guarantee the participation of our people as active stakeholders at a national, regional and worldwide level, especially taking into account those sectors most affected, such as indigenous peoples who have always promoted the defense of Mother Earth.

Humankind is capable of saving the Earth if we recover the principles of solidarity, complementarity and harmony with nature in contraposition to the reign of competition, profits and rampant consumption of natural resources.

Notes:
[1] Due to the “Niña” phenomenon, that becomes more frequent as a result of the climate change, Bolivia has lost 4% of its GDP in 2007.

[2] Known as the Clean Development Mechanism

[3] At the present there is only one adaptation fund with approximately $500 million for more than 150 developing countries. According to the UNFCCC secretary, $171 billion is required for adaptation and $380 billionis required for mitigation.

[4] Stern report

[5] Kyoto Protocol, Art. 3.

[6] The Stern Review has suggested one percent of global GDP, which represents less than $700 billion per year.

[7] According to UNCTAD (1998), public financing in developing countries contributes with 40% of the resources for innovation and development of technology.

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Evo Morales is the president of Bolivia.

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California's Latinos and blacks still lag in university eligibility: LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-eligible10-2008dec10,0,5792529.story

California's Latinos and blacks still lag in university eligibility

New report finds that the groups are doing better on meeting application requirements for UC and CSU but still trail whites and Asians.

By Larry Gordon
December 10, 2008

Despite recent improvements, Latino and black students continue to lag behind whites and Asians in becoming academically eligible to enter California's two public university systems, according to a state report released Tuesday.

The study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission also showed that female high school seniors still do significantly better than males in taking required classes and earning grades and test scores that could gain them admission to the University of California and California State University systems.

• 

  Making the grade

Murray J. Haberman, the commission's executive director, said he was pleased by the improved eligibility rates for African Americans and Latinos in the Cal State system. "Things are certainly moving in the right direction, although we still have a long way to go," he said.

Haberman criticized recent proposals to reduce or cap enrollment at Cal State and UC. "Exactly at the time that more students are preparing themselves to go on to higher education, we are beginning to close the doors on so many of these students," he said.

A student who wants to be admitted to either university first has to establish basic eligibility, then must typically meet separate, often tougher standards for the campuses at which they hope to enroll.

The study reported that 22.5% of Latino high school graduates were eligible for Cal State in 2007, up from 16% in 2003, when the last such study was done. For black students, Cal State eligibility went up to 24%, from 18.6%. Latino and black eligibility for UC's more rigorous standards were 6.9% and 6.3%,respectively, last year, slightly higher than four years ago. White and Asian students did better in meeting requirements for both universities. For Cal State, 37.1% of white high school graduates were eligible last year and 50.9% of Asians, both somewhat higher than in 2003. For UC, 14.6% of white graduates and 29.4% of Asians met course, grade and test score requirements; those rates were both slightly lower than in the previous survey.

Factors holding down eligibility rates for black and Latino students include shortages of the necessary courses and sometimes inadequate counseling at high schools in many low-income, often predominantly minority areas, Haberman said.

Overall, Cal State rates rose mainly because more students met new requirements to take a second year of history and lab science, said Adrian Griffin, the commission's research director. Griffin presented the report at a meeting Tuesday in Sacramento. "It takes time for schools to adjust their offerings, and it takes a while for the message to sink in for students," he said.

Griffin attributed the drops in white and Asian eligibility for UC to tighter course and grade requirements at the university. Griffin also suggested that California's high school exit exam, required since 2006, cut out weaker students and may have affected eligibility rates somewhat. Continuing a gender imbalance at many U.S. colleges, more women than men were ready for California's state universities. About 15.3% of female high school graduates were eligible for UC, compared with 11.2% of males, and 37.6% of women for Cal State, compared with 27.3% for males.

On a sliding scale that also includes standardized test scores, UC's minimum grade point average in required high school courses is now a 3.0 -- a B average on a 4-point scale -- and Cal State's is a 2.0, or a C average. Those minimums, however, do not guarantee a spot at the most popular campuses, where much higher standards usually are enforced. The eligibility study, which surveyed 72,000 transcripts at 158 public high schools around California, found that UC and Cal State requirements are well-aligned with their missions under the state's 1960 master plan for higher education. About 13.4% of California high school graduates were found to be eligible for UC in 2007, near the university's target under the master plan of drawing from the top 12.5% of the state's high school graduates.

The Cal State eligibility rate was 32.7%, very close to its 33.3% master plan guideline. Previous commission surveys influenced university requirements. For example, four years ago, a report found that many otherwise UC-eligible students could not be accepted because they had not taken the two subject exams required by UC in addition to the basic SAT or ACT tests. Now, UC is on the verge of changes that, among other things, would drop the subject tests mandate.

Gordon is a Times staff writer. larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Third-World-News Yahoo Group

Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta

Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

My Thanksgiving List ~ Thanksgiving Day ~ November 27, 2008

My Thanksgiving List ~ Thanksgiving Day ~ November 27, 2008 I am thankful for the divine wisdom of the Creator, For the awesome beauty of Creation with all its creatures For the colorful beauty of Mother Earth with its seasons For being a compassionate cosmic creature who reasons For being a humane being in the family of humanity! I am thankful for all my secret allies and spiritual guides. For little simple blessings that give great priceless rewards For magical moments of divine inspiration born from perspiration For creative imaginations that light up the darkness with truth. I am thankful for being able to exercise my humane right To rebel, to resist, to revolutionize against tyranny! I am thankful for all those people who know and love me Who respect, honor and strive to understand me. I am thankful for all my mistakes that taught critical lessons About life among the living, about being in the eternal here now, About loving the sublime sacredness of life in all innocent beings! I am thankful for waking up sane and sober on serene mornings. For clean air I breathe, cool waters I drink and tears of joy. For being able to love and be loved all the time! I am thankful for having a home, sweet, home to go to after I roam. Where I can be safe in the sanctuary of my sublime sanity! I am thankful for all my good books, useful tools and creative toys. And for not being possessed by possessions! I am thankful for you being you, I being I and knowing On the cosmic-quantum level that we are ultimately all one! I am thankful for the consciousness of being thankful! Every day should be a day of true thanksgiving in celebration of life, Not for the often forgotten massacre of the native Pequot people, But for the blessings the Creator has bestowed upon us Count your blessings, not your curses! With Thanksgiving ~ Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta peter.lopez51@yahoo.com Related Link: http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/history/ThanksgivingDayMassacre.htm c/s Educate to Liberate! Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com Sacramento, California, U.S.A.