Prophecies, Dreams and Visions of the Future
This a space to share and discuss Prophecies, Dreams and Visions of all Spiritual Traditions, Prophets,Dreamers, Visionaries and People (including yourself )
Views: 2021
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Phil Lane Jr. on
-
KNEWWAYS Brian David Hardin said:It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water. See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over, Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we've been waiting for..."
-Hopi Elder Lansa- around 1960?
-
-
Thank You!!!!! Great Teaching!!!!!
Phil Lane Jr. said:KNEWWAYS Brian David Hardin said:It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water. See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over, Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we've been waiting for..."
-Hopi Elder Lansa- around 1960?
-
Permalink Reply by Firewoman on
-
Wow! What an overwhelming vision you have shared. Wa-do for sharing this most important and moving experience. I really needed to read this tonight as I reflect on my path and wonder if I am speaking to my people clearly in a good way with a voice that can be heard. With my brain injury from domestic violence I often times feel I cannot get my points across to the ones I speak to. You have given me a new energy, inspiration and renewed hope that the experiences I have had will help me be a light to others when they need it as you have been to me beloved sister. From my heart and soul, thank you for shining. Hope and love, Firewoman
Starchild Kostyshyn said:Violence against women breaks sacred traditional laws
International Women’s Day – what does that mean for each woman? What is the reason for having such a day?
On a grand scale, it is an attempt to reach out to all women and men to understand what violence against women means.
It is intolerable even in our First Nation communities that violence against women exists. It goes against our Cree Society and against our ancestors traditional teachings before which guided us prior to colonization.
I will tell you of a dream I had and it took some time for me to understand it. It must mean something to have been given this message in the dream:
The year was 1994, the season was early summer and I was in Toronto. I was ready to head home for the summer to Fort Albany. This was my usual practice, to get away from the hot city and go home for summer.
Anyhow, one night I was extremely tired and I fell asleep. I was disturbed earlier about some youths’ behaviours. I could not understand why youth continued to behave the way they did despite guidance at home and from teachings they learned from Elders in the community.
It is true, Elders always spoke to young people in the ‘rez’ back then.
They didn’t lecture, they simply talked about their way of life when they were growing up. That was how they taught us, in a quiet and subtle way.
There was no blaming us for our behavior, but their silent coaching was a form of discipline, it was in our heads and like seeds they began to grow and spread knowledge until we understood. Many of us who chose to listen to these teachings live a pretty good life – at least we pass the knowledge on to our children and our grandchildren.
So I slept and I felt myself drifting off somewhere and in this place I woke up.
I went to this blue centre and the light seemed to suspend from nowhere. I went closer and I noticed people sitting around the blue flame. The one closest to me turned and motioned me to sit in an empty space beside him. I walked over and sat down. That’s when I realized there was no floor! We were all suspended in air! I looked under me and I felt under, I could see lights everywhere below.
I asked: Where are we?
The blue flame in the centre began to glow a bit more and it drew my. It was so quiet. I could say the silence was deafening and then I realized there was a deep humming sound. It was the most wonderful hum I had ever heard.
I looked around and focused my eyes. I saw old people. They all seemed to have long flowing white hair. They were all sitting cross-legged and they were speaking, but I also noticed their mouths didn’t move. I realized that I could hear them in my head.
I took this in stride.
OK, I asked myself: Where am I?
They all turned to look at me and smiled because they had heard me.
There were sixteen men and women altogether. I guessed they were the grandfathers and grandmothers of our ancestors. That’s what I sensed from them. They sat in this circle around the blue flame and I wondered if they sat here forever.
They spoke to me and I listened, because I had no choice.
They explained that they had called me here.
They said they chose me to be their voice on the Earth plane.
A grandfather pointed downward. I looked and there were stars below. I could see the solar system and I saw our Earth. I wanted to reach down and touch it, but I didn’t instead I looked down at it.
‘We are formless as we sit here, however, we seem to have form as you still need to see us. The blue fire is here to help with that. We called this council, because there is a need to stop men from breaking the Sacred Law.
They have dishonored the Circle and it is broken. They have dishonored Earth as they broke tradition.
‘We have sent out others like you from this council over the centuries to make sure the Scared Law remains among the people.
‘It is understandable the White Tribe have crossed the oceans to take over the Red Tribe’s continent. They brought with them the Yellow Tribe and Black Tribe to serve them as slaves. The Sacred Law was broken.
‘All tribes were placed in their own continents after that the tectonic plates separated.
‘Each tribe was given a specific place where they could use the environment to exist.
‘Over time, the ones we sent were responsible for keeping the Sacred Law intact. Each tribe failed and have broken the Sacred Law.
‘Now, it is not to say all our messengers failed, the Red Tribes’ messengers did what they were advised to do.’
This is what happened and then they proceeded to tell me about the purity of the Sacred Law.
Woman was revered by Sacred Law and the Sacred Law was revered by woman. Without both male and female energy, there could not exist this universe in the mind of our Creator. It is that simple. That is the mystery of the Sacred Law.
I sat there as if in a trance and I could sense what was in their collective minds.
It was overpowering, however, my separateness was intact.
They said I was not allowed to be at their level due to material elements in my ethereal body. They said I must deliver this message the best way I knew how when the time was right to Indigenous tribes as this is the reason they are now suffering.
We are asked by the grandfathers, in one unified effort, to SILENCE the drums for one year until the Circle heals and the Sacred Law is re-established by the Red Tribe and then they will teach their brothers and sisters this knowledge to complete the rift.
I started shaking and I said it seemed like a lot to ask of me. I said I was not worthy to fulfill this role. The sixteen grandfathers and grandmothers looked at me and they spoke in unison in my head that the honor was mine by calling me to this council.
Suddenly, I felt like I was falling and I woke up only to see that I had slept for at least five minutes.
-
-
James Howard Kunstler's Forecast 2010 is worth reading. He is the author of The Long Emergency and provides some guidance at the end of the article on how we need to come together.
The year ahead-- Just about everything which evaded fate via gamed numbers, budgets, and balance sheets in 2009 seems destined to hit a wall in 2010. To pick an arbitrary starting point, it is hard to see how states like California and New York can keep staving off monumental changes in their scale of operations with further budget trickery. Those cans they've been kicking down the street have fallen through the sewer grate. What will they do They can massively raise taxes or massively lay off employees and default on obligations - or they can do all these things. The net result will be populations with less income, arguably impoverished, suffering, and perhaps very angry about it. Welcome to reality. Will Washington bail the states out, too? I wouldn't be surprised to see them pretend to do so, but not without immense collateral damage in everybody's legitimacy and surely an increase in US treasury interest rates.
But backing up a moment, I'm writing between Christmas and New Year's Eve. The frenzied distractions of the holidays ongoing for much of fourth quarter of 2009 are still in force. In a week or so, when the Christmas trees are hauled out to the curbs (and it turns out that municipal garbage pickup has been curtailed for lack of funds) a picture will start to emerge of exactly how retail sales went leading up to the big climax. My guess is that sales were dismal. Reports of such will start a train of events that sends many retail companies careening into bankruptcy, including some national chains, leading to lost leases in malls and strip malls, leading to a final push off the cliff for commercial real estate, leading to the failure of many local and regional banks, leading to the bankrupt FDIC having to go to congress directly to get more money to bail out the depositors, leading again to rising interest rates for US treasuries, leading to higher mortgage interest rates for whoever out there is crazy enough to venture to buy a house with borrowed money, leading to the probability that there are few of the foregoing, leading to another hard leg down in house values because so few are now crazy enough to buy a house in the face of falling prices - all of this leading to the recognition that we have entered a serious depression, which is only a facet of the greater period of hardship we have also entered, which I call The Long Emergency.
This depression will be a classic deleveraging, or resolution of debt. Debt will either be paid back or defaulted on. Since a lot can't be paid back, a lot of it will have to be defaulted on, which will make a lot of money disappear, which will make many people a lot poorer. President Obama will be faced with a basic choice. He can either make the situation worse by offering more bailouts and similar moves aimed at stopping the deleveraging process - that is, continue what he has been doing, only perhaps twice as much, which may crash the system more rapidly - or he can recognize the larger trends in The Long Emergency and begin marshalling our remaining collective resources to restructure the economy along less complex and more local lines. Don't count on that.
Of course, this downscaling will happen whether we want it or not. It's really a matter of whether we go along with it consciously and intelligently - or just let things slide. Paradoxically and unfortunately in this situation, the federal government is apt to become ever more ineffectual in its ability to manage anything, no matter how many times Mr Obama comes on television. Does this leave him as a kind of national camp counselor trying to offer consolation to the suffering American people, without being able to really affect the way the "workout" works out? Was Franklin Roosevelt really much more than an affable presence on the radio in a dark time that had to take its course and was only resolved by a global convulsion that left the USA standing in a smoldering field of prostrate losers?
One wild card is how angry the American people might get. Unlike the 1930s, we are no longer a nation who call each other "Mister" and "Ma'am", where even the down-and-out wear neckties and speak a discernible variant of regular English, where hoboes say "thank you", and where, in short, there is something like a common culture of shared values. We're a nation of thugs and louts with flames tattooed on our necks, who call each other "motherfucker" and are skilled only in playing video games based on mass murder. The masses of Roosevelt's time were coming off decades of programmed, regimented work, where people showed up in well-run factories and schools and pretty much behaved themselves. In my view, that's one of the reasons that the US didn't explode in political violence during the Great Depression of the 1930s - the discipline and fortitude of the citizenry. The sheer weight of demoralization now is so titanic that it is very hard to imagine the people of the USA pulling together for anything beyond the most superficial ceremonies - placing teddy bears on a crash site. And forget about discipline and fortitude in a nation of ADD victims and self-esteem seekers.
I believe we will see the outbreak of civil disturbance at many levels in 2010. One will be plain old crime against property and persons, especially where the sense of community is flimsy to nonexistent, and that includes most of suburban America. The automobile is a fabulous aid to crime. People can commit crimes in Skokie and be back home in Racine before supper (if supper is anything besides a pepperoni stick and some Hostess Ho-Hos in the car). Fewer police will be on guard due to budget shortfalls.
I think we'll see a variety-pack of political disturbance led first by people who are just plain pissed off at government and corporations and seek to damage property belonging to these entities. The ideologically-driven will offer up "revolutionary" action to redefine some lost national sense of purpose. Some of the most dangerous players such as the political racialists, the posse comitatus types, the totalitarian populists, have been out of sight for years. They'll come out of the woodwork and join the contest over dwindling resources. Both the Left and the Right are capable of violence. But since the Left is ostensibly already in power, the Right is in a better position to mount a real challenge to office holders. Their ideas may be savage and ridiculous, but they could easily sweep the 2010 elections - unless we see the rise of a third party (or perhaps several parties). No sign of that yet. Personally, I'd like to see figures like Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank sent packing, though I'm a registered Democrat. In the year ahead, the sense of contraction will be palpable and huge. Losses will be obvious. No amount of jive-talking will convince the public that they are experiencing "recovery". Everything familiar and comforting will begin receding toward the horizon.
Markets and Money I'll take another leap of faith and say that 6600 was not the bottom for the Dow. I've said Dow 4000 for three years in a row. Okay, my timing has been off. But I still believe this is its destination. Given the currency situation, and the dilemma of no-growth Ponzi economies, I'll call it again for this year: Dow 4000. There, I said it. Laugh if you will ...
I'm with those who see the dollar strengthening for at least the first half of 2010, and other assets falling in value, especially the stock markets. The dollar could wither later on in the year and maybe take a turn into high inflation as US treasury interest rates shoot up in an environment of a global bond glut. That doesn't mean the stock markets will bounce back because the US economy will only sink into greater> disorder when interest rates rise.
Right now there are ample signs of trouble with the Euro. It made a stunning downward move the past two weeks. European banks took the biggest hit in the Dubai default. Now they face the prospect of sovereign default in Greece, the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the Balkan nations (Serbia, et al), Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland and the former soviet bloc of Eastern Europe. England is a train wreck of its own (though not tied into the Euro), and even France may be in trouble. That leaves very few European nations standing. Namely Germany and Scandanavia (and I just plain don't know about Austria). What will Europe do? Really, what will Germany do? Probably reconstruct something like the German Deutschmark only call it something else ... the Alt.Euro? As one wag said on the Net: sovereign debt is the new sub-prime! The Euro is in a deeper slog right now than the US dollar (even with our fantastic problems), so I see the dollar rising in relation to the Euro, at least for a while. I'd park cash in three month treasury bills - don't expect any return - for safety in the first half of 2010. I wouldn't touch long-term US debt paper with a carbon-fiber sixty foot pole.
I'm still not among those who see China rising into a position of supremacy. In fact, they have many reasons of their own to tank, including the loss of the major market for their manufactured goods, vast ecological problems, de-stabilizing demographic shifts within the nation, and probably a food crisis in 2010 (more about this later).
Though a seemingly more stable nation than the US, with a disciplined population and a strong common culture with shared values, Japan's financial disarray runs so deep that it could crash its government even before ours. It has no fossil fuels of its own whatsoever. And in a de-industrializing world, how can an industrial economy sustain itself? Japan might become a showcase for The Long Emergency. On the other hand, if it gets there first and makes the necessary adjustments, which is possible given their discipline and common culture, they may become THE society to emulate!
I'm also not convinced that so-called "emerging markets" are places where money will dependably earn interest, profits, or dividends. Contraction will be everywhere. I even think the price of gold will retrace somewhere between $750 and $1000 for a while, though precious metals will hold substantial value under any conditions short of Hobbesian chaos. People flock to gold out of uncertainty, not just a bet on inflation. My guess is that gold and silver will eventually head back up in value to heights previously never imagined, and it would be wise to own some. I do not believe that the federal government could confiscate personal gold again the way it did in 1933. There are too many pissed off people with too many guns out there - and I'm sure there is a correlation between owners of guns with owners of gold and levels of pissed-offness. A botched attempt to take gold away from citizens would only emphasize the impotence of the federal government, leading to further erosion of legitimacy.
Bottom line for markets and money in 2010: so many things will be out of whack that making money work via the traditional routes of compound interest or dividends will be nearly impossible. There's money to be made in shorting and arbitrage and speculation, but that requires nerves of steel and lots and lots of luck. Those dependent on income from regular investment will be hurt badly. For most of us, capital preservation will be as good as it gets - and there's always the chance the dollar will enter the hyper-inflationary twilight zone and wipe out everything and everyone connected with it.
Peak Oil It's still out there, very much out there, a huge unseen presence in the story, the true ghost-in-the-machine, eating away at economies every day. It slipped offstage in 2009 after the oil spike of 2008 ($147 per barrel) over-corrected in early 2009 to the low $30s per barrel. Now it's retraced about halfway back to the mid-$70s. One way of looking at the situation is as follows. Oil priced above $75 begins to squeeze the US economy; oil priced over $85 tends to crush the US economy. You can see where we are now with oil prices closing on Christmas Eve at $78 per barrel.
Among the many wishful delusions operating currently is the idea that the Bakken oil play in Dakota / Montana will save Happy Motoring for America, and that the Appalachian shale gas plays will kick in to make us energy independent for a century to come. Americans are likely to be disappointed by these things.
Both Bakken and the shale gas are based on techniques for using horizontal drilling through "tight" rock strata that is fractured with pressurized water. It works, but it's not at all cheap, creates plenty of environmental mischief, and may end up being only marginally productive. At best, Bakken is predicted to produce around 400,000 barrels of oil a day. That's not much in a nation that uses close to twenty million barrels a day. Shale gas works too, though the wells deplete shockingly fast and will require the massive deployment of new drilling rigs (do we even have the steel for this?). I doubt it can be produced for under $10 a unit (mm/BTUs) and currently the price of gas is in the $5 range. In any case, we're not going to run the US motor vehicle fleet on natural gas, despite wishful thinking.
Several other story elements in the oil drama have remained on track to make our lives more difficult. Oil export rates continue to decline more steeply than oil field depletion rates. Exporters like Iran, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, are using evermore of the oil they produce (often as state-subsidized cheap gasoline), even as their production rates go down.> So, they have less oil to sell to importers like the USA - and we import more thn sixty percent of the oil we use. Mexico's Pemex is in such a sorry state, with its principal Cantarell field production falling off a cliff, that the USA's number three source of imported oil may be able to sell us nothing whatsoever in just 24 months. Is there any public discussion about this in the USA? No. Do we have a plan? No.
A new wrinkle in the story developing especially since the financial crisis happened, is the shortage of capital for new oil exploration and production - meaning that we have even poorer prospects of offsetting world-wide oil depletion. The capital shortage will also affect development in the Bakken play and the Marcellus shale gas range.
Industrial economies are still at the mercy of peak oil. This basic fact of life means that we can't expect the regular cyclical growth in productive activity that formed the baseline parameters for modern capital finance - meaning that we can't run on revolving credit anymore because growth simply isn't there to create real surplus wealth to pay down debt. The past twenty years we've seen the institutions of capital finance pretend to create growth where there is no growth by expanding financial casino games of chance and extracting profits, commissions, and bonuses from the management of these games - mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and all the rest of the tricks dreamed up as America's industrial economy was shipped off to the Third World. But that set of rackets had a limited life span and they ran into a wall in October 2008. Since then it's all come down to a shell game: hide the giant pea of defaulted debt under a giant walnut shell.
Yet another part of the story is the wish that the failing fossil fuel industrial economy would segue seamlessly into an alt-energy industrial economy. This just isn't happening, despite the warm, fuzzy TV commercials about electric cars and "green" technology. The sad truth of the matter is that we face the need to fundamentally restructure the way we live and what we do in North America, and probably along the lines of much more modest expectations, and with very different practical arrangements in everything from the very nature of work to household configurations, transportation, farming, capital formation, and the shape-and-scale of our settlements. This is not just a matter of re-tuning what we have now. It means letting go of much of it, especially our investments in suburbia and motoring - something that the American public still isn't ready to face. They may never be ready to face this and that is why we may never make a successful transition to whatever the next economy is. Rather, we will undertake a campaign to sustain the unsustainable and sink into poverty and disorder as we fight over the table scraps of the old economy ... and when the smoke clears nothing new will have been built.
President Obama has spent his first year in office, and billions of dollars, trying to prop up the floundering car-makers and more generally the motoring system with "stimulus" for "shovel-ready" highway projects. This is exactly the kind of campaign to sustain the unsustainable that I mean. Motoring is in the process of failing and now for reasons that even we peak oilers didn't anticipate a year ago. It's no longer just about the price of gasoline. The crisis of capital is making car loans much harder to get, and if Americans can't buy cars on installment loans, they are not going to buy cars, and eventually they will not be driving cars they can't buy. The same crisis of capital is now depriving the states, counties, and municipalities of the means to maintain the massive paved highway and street system in this country. Just a few years of not attending to that will leave the system unworkable.
Meanwhile President Obama has given next-to-zero money or attention to public transit, to repairing the passenger railroad system in particular. I maintain that if we don't repair this system, Americans will not be traveling very far from home in a decade or so. Therefore, Mr Obama's actions vis-a-vis transportation are not an intelligent response to our situation. And for very similar reasons, the proposal for a totally electric motor vehicle fleet, as a so-called "solution" to the liquid fuels problem, is equally unintelligent and tragic. Of course something else that Mr Obama has barely paid lip-service to is the desperate need to retool our living places as walkable communities. The government now, at all levels, virtually mandates suburban arrangements of the most extremely car-dependent kind. Changing this has to move near the top of a national emergency priority list, if we have one.
Even with somewhat lower oil prices in 2009, the airlines still hemorrhaged losses in the billions, and if the oil price remains in the current zone some of them will fall back into bankruptcy in 2010. Oil prices may go down again in response to crippled economies, but then so will passengers looking to fly anywhere, especially the business fliers that the airlines have depended on to fill the higher-priced seats. I believe United will be the first one to go down in 2010, a hateful moron of a company that deserves to die.
My forecast for oil prices this year is extreme volatility. A strengthening dollar might send oil prices down (though that relationship has temporarily broken down this December as both oil prices and the dollar went up in tandem for the first time in memory). So could the cratering of the stock markets, or a general apprehension of a floundering economy. But the oil export situation also means there is less and less wiggle room every month for supply to keep pace with demand, even in struggling economies if they are dependent on foreign imports. Another part of the story that we don't pay attention to is the potential for oil scarcities, shortages, and hoarding. We may see the reemergence of those trends in 2010 for the first times since 1979.
Geopolitics The retracement of oil prices in 2009 took place against a background of relative quiet on the geopolitical scene. With economies around the world sinking into even deeper extremis in 2010, friction and instability are more likely. The more likely locales for this are the places where most of the world's remaining oil is: the Middle East and Central Asia. The American army is already there, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an overt pledge to up the ante in Afghanistan. It's hard to imagine a happy ending in all this. It's increasingly hard to even imagine a strategic justification for it. My current (weakly-held) notion is that America wants to make a baloney sandwich out of Iran, with American armies in Iraq and Afghanistan as the Wonder Bread, to "keep the pressure on" Iran. Well, after quite a few years, it doesn't seem to be moderating or influencing Iran's behavior in any way. Meanwhile, Pakistan becomes more chaotic every week and our presence in the Islamic world stimulates more Islamic extremist hatred against the USA. Speaking of Pakistan, there is the matter of its neighbor and adversary, India. If there is another terror attack by Pakistan on the order of last year's against various targets in Mumbai, I believe the response by India is liable to be severe next time, leading to God-knows-what, considering both countries have plenty of atom bombs.
Otherwise, the idea that we can control indigenous tribal populations in some of Asia's most forbidding terrain seems laughable. I don't have to rehearse the whole "graveyard of empires" routine here. But what possible geo-strategic advantage is in this for us? What would it matter if we pacified all the Taliban or al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Most of the hardest core maniacs are next door in Pakistan. Even if we turned Afghanistan into Idaho-East, with Kabul as the next Sun Valley, complete with Ralph Lauren shops and Mario Batali bistros, Pakistan would remain every bit as chaotic and dangerous in terms of supplying the world with terrorists. And how long would we expect to remain in Afghanistan pacifying the population? Five years? Ten Years? Forever? It's a ridiculous project. Loose talk on the web suggests our hidden agenda there was to protect a Conoco pipeline out of Tajikistan, but that seems equally absurd on several grounds. I can't see Afghanistan as anything but a sucking chest wound for dollars, soldiers' lives, and American prestige.
What's more, our presence there seems likely to stimulate more terror incidents here in the USA. We've been supernaturally lucky since 2001 that there hasn't been another incident of mass murder, even something as easy and straightforward as a shopping mall massacre or a bomb in a subway. Our luck is bound to run out. There are too many "soft" targets and our borders are too squishy. Small arms and explosives are easy to get in the> USA. I predict that 2010 may be the year our luck does run out. Even> before the start of the year we've seen the attempted Christmas bombing of> Northwest-KLM flight 253 (Amsterdam to Detroit). One consequence of this is that it will only make air travel more unpleasant for everybody in the USA as new rules are instated limiting bathroom trips and blankets in the final hour of flight.
As far as the USA is concerned, I think we have more to worry about from Mexico than Afghanistan. In 2009, the Mexican government slipped ever deeper into impotence against the giant criminal cartels there. As the Cantarell oil field waters out, revenue from Pemex to the national government will wither away and so will the government's ability to control anything there. The next president of Mexico may be an ambitious gangster straight out of the drug cartels, Pancho Villa on steroids.
Another potential world locale for conflict may be Europe as the European Union begins to implode under the strains of the monetary system. The weaker nations default on their obligations and Germany, especially, looks to insulate itself from the damage. Except for the fiasco in Yugoslavia's breakup years ago, Europe has been strikingly peaceful for half a century. For most of us now living who have visited there, it is almost impossible to imagine how violent and crazy the continent was in the early twentieth century. I wonder what might happen there now, with more loosed again. History is ironical. Perhaps this time the Germans will be the good guys, while England goes ape with its BNP. Wouldn't that be something?
One big new subplot in world politics this year may be the global food shortage that is shaping up as a result of spectacular crop failures in most of the major farming regions of the world. The American grain belt was hit by cold and wet weather and the harvest was a disaster, especially for soybeans, of which the USA produces at least three-quarters of the world's supply. Crops have also failed in Northern China's wheat-growing region, in Australia, Argentina, and India. The result may range from extremely high food prices in the developed world to starvation in other places, leading to grave political instability and desperate fights over resources. We'll have an idea where this is leading by springtime. It maybe the most potent sub-plot in the story for 2010.
Conclusions The Long Emergency is officially underway. Reality is telling us very clearly to prepare for a new way of life in the USA. We're in desperate need of decomplexifying, re-localizing, downscaling, and re-humanizing American life. It doesn't mean that we will be a lesser people or that we will not recognize our own culture. In some respects, I think it means we must return to some traditional American life-ways that we abandoned for the cheap oil life of convenience, comfort, obesity, and social atomization.
The successful people in America moving forward will be those who attach themselves to cohesive local communities, places with integral local economies and sturdy social networks, especially places that can produce a significant amount of their own food. I don't think that we'll be living in a world without money, some medium of exchange above barter, but it may not come in the form of dollars. My guess is that for a while it may be gold and silver, or possibly certificates issued by bank-like institutions representing gold-on-hand. In any case, I doubt we'll arrive there this year. This is more likely to be the year of grand monetary disorders and> continued shocking economic contraction.
Political upheaval can get underway pretty quickly, without a whole lot of warning. I'm still waiting to hear the announced 2009 bonuses for the employees of the TBTF banks. All they said before Christmas was that thirty top Goldman Sachs employees would be paid in stock instead of money this year, but no other big banks have made a peep yet. I suppose they'll have to in the four days before New Years. I still think that could be the moment that shoves some disgruntled Americans into the arena of protest> and revolt. Beyond that, though, there is plenty room for emotions to run wild and for behavior to get weird.
President Obama will have to make some pretty drastic moves to salvage his credibility. I see no sign of any intention to seriously investigate or prosecute financial crimes. Yet the evidence of misdeeds piles higher and higher - just this week new comprehensive reports of Goldman Sachs's irregularities in shorting their own issues of mortgage-backed securities, and a report on the Treasury Department's issuance of treasuries to "back-door" dumpers of toxic mortgage backed securities. And on Christmas Eve, when nobody was looking, the Treasury lifted the ceiling on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's backstop money to infinity. Even people like me who try to pay close attention to what's going on have lost track of all the various TARPs, TALFs, bailouts, stimuli, ZIRP loans, and handovers to every bank and its uncle in the land. Good luck to readers in 2010. To paraphrase Tiny Tim: God help us, every one ...
-
-
Dear Relatives,
Another take on 2010 by the Financial Times. Nothing overwhelming, but certainly some issues that deserve awareness. I don't see who wins the world cup as very relevant to our future on Mother Earth, but for some it is very important!
Warm Love and Greetings,
Brother Phil
Heatwaves, Trade wars And A World Cup Victory For Brazil
Once again, the Financial Times’ top pundits have assembled to pit their wits against the fickle future. Some of them are recklessly putting years of calm reflection and carefully built reputations at stake, piling up their chips on what they foresee for 2010. Others are simply taking a punt, going for broke as they scramble to soothe their bruised egos after some big misses last year.
Where will oil finish the year?
I observed a year ago that the oil market often made fools out of forecasters, and then proved myself right with a dreadful prediction. I underestimated the strength of the recovery in Chinese demand and OPEC’s discipline. This year, those forces will be tested again – and the continued recovery in demand, led by developing countries, is likely to be matched by increased flows from OPEC. The result is that oil is most likely to end the year within its present trading range of about $70-$80 a barrel. But after last year, caveat lector. Ed Crooks
Should investors put their money into the stock market?
Yes. Cash will continue to yield almost nothing, gold is overvalued, and there is a risk of a sell-off in government bonds as quantitative easing ends and fears over sovereign creditworthiness mount.
Next year’s stock market gains will be less spectacular than 2009’s. The liquidity that supported so many asset classes this year will subside in 2010 as exit strategies are implemented and interest rates start going up. At that point, fundamentals will start to reassert themselves.
Not that the fundamentals are bad for equities, given improving corporate profits, reasonable valuations and the likelihood of a higher pace of takeover activity. But the predominant mood will be one of caution and there will be plenty of things that could unsettle shares, from a bond market sell-off to a double-dip recession. Chris Brown-Humes
Will there be a trade war in 2010?
Conflict, yes. Full-blown war, no. Trade wars aren’t what they used to be. Time was when they were full-on pitched battles, with each side exchanging artillery fire in the form of reciprocal tariff increases. These days, trade conflicts resemble guerrilla war with damage inflicted through a wide variety of means.
The weapons are a selection of improvised devices – technical standards that keep out imports, government procurement rules such as “Buy China” and “Buy America”, automotive and financial bail-outs that favour domestic companies, “countervailing duties” intended to negate the effect of subsidies abroad. But with global commerce recovering after the huge drop during the financial crisis, they will not this year have a serious impact on actual trade. Alan Beattie
Will Putin declare his candidacy for Russia’s presidency?
Mr. Putin will not formally declare his candidacy until closer to the election date but it seems likely that over the next 12 months he will send ever-stronger signals that he intends to run for the presidency in 2012. In one sense, it does not matter. He rules the roost even from his present seat as prime minister. But, for political gossips in Moscow, 2012 is the hottest topic around. So expect guessing games throughout the year, and much clearer signals that the prime minister does indeed intend to return to the presidency. Stefan Wagstyl
Will the world make progress on nuclear disarmament?
Yes. In 2010, nuclear disarmament will provide a rare example of a piece of international diplomatic progress. This is partly because there are really only two big players that need to agree. Between them, the US and Russia account for 95 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads. Quite soon – perhaps in January – they are likely to reach an agreement significantly to reduce deployed warheads.
Later in the year, they could build on this agreement by including battlefield nuclear weapons in arms reduction talks. A US-Russia accord could also have a positive spillover effect on the United Nations conference in May that will review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). The NPT regime has come under strain in recent years – with India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea all developing weapons. Disarmament by the status quo nuclear powers may make it easy to patch it up. But don’t get carried away. The world will not come closer to cracking the most serious nuclear problem of all – Iran’s drive to develop nukes. Gideon Rachman
Will this be the year that Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear installations?
No. Israel, the US and European powers will become increasingly alarmed in 2010 by signs that Iran is close to developing a nuke. Iran will make significant progress, for example, in developing its enrichment programme, defying world opinion. But Israel knows a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities remains a big risk, not least because Tehran now has the ability to counter with effective ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities. This time next year, the question on world leaders’ minds will no longer be when Iran gets bombed, but when Iran gets the bomb. James Blitz
Will Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari see out the year in office?
This is a risky one to predict given Pakistan’s history of military rule, an intensifying conflict against the Taliban and Mr. Zardari’s long tussle with corruption allegations. I’ll wager he does survive in spite of his fragile tenure on the strength of having ridden out a turbulent year that could easily have unseated him.
When the husband of slain Benazir Bhutto entered the presidency little more than a year ago, few gave him more than a couple of months in the job. Far from an example of inspiring leadership, Mr. Zardari has managed to preserve civilian rule in the face of Taliban advances into Pakistan’s heartland, a political crisis precipitated by lawyers’ protests and a clumsy effort to neutralise opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and a cold shoulder from India.
Within the confines of the presidential palace, Mr. Zardari cuts a Miss Havisham-like figure sitting in a dimmed room (the windows have been filled in as protection against attack) surrounded by pictures of his late wife. Yet, Pakistan’s accidental president has shown unexpected resilience, and some courage.
The odds are stacked against almost any civilian ruler in a country where the locus of power is so unclear, even to Pakistanis themselves. But the army’s reluctance to take up the reins of government and flows of US aid money and military assistance should keep Mr. Zardari in place for some months to come, albeit with the curtains drawn. James Lamont
Will Afghanistan turn into Obama’s Vietnam?
No. Vietnam was a much larger war. For several years there were upwards of 400,000 US troops based in Vietnam, against a peak in Afghanistan of 100,000 troops by next autumn. The war in Vietnam was partly lost at home because of the massive backlash against the draft – a measure it is virtually inconceivable Mr. Obama would adopt for Afghanistan. What is more, Mr. Obama has diluted and blurred the threshold for victory in Afghanistan, giving him a great deal of leeway to pull out without a total loss of face. Furthermore, everyone in the White House has read up about Lyndon Johnson’s travails and is terrified of repeating them. Far likelier, therefore, that they make quite different mistakes – such as pulling out too soon and leaving a vacuum in Afghanistan that could risk war between Pakistan and India. Edward Luce
Will the Republicans make a comeback in 2010?
Certainly. In the US midterm elections, they will take seats from the Democrats. The real question is, how many? Voters have soured on the Democrats since their comfortable victories in 2008. Independents who voted for them are disenchanted and many left-leaning liberals are angry. But have the electorate’s feelings changed enough to overturn the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives? No.
A Republican majority in the Senate, though possible, would be astonishing, because relatively few Democratic seats are up for grabs there. (The Democrats will be much more vulnerable in the Senate in 2012.) The Republicans can hope to pick up four seats, reducing the Democrats from their present filibuster-proof 60 (counting independents) to 56.
In the House, the Republicans will win back the seats they lost in 2008, which is halfway back to a majority, and then some. They could give the Democrats a real scare if the economic recovery fails to gather pace and the president’s popularity slides any further – but things would have to get much worse than now to make Republican control of the House a realistic prospect. Clive Crook
Who will win the football World Cup being held in South Africa?
There is a pattern to World Cups, which is why the most likely winner of the next one is Brazil. The country usually has the best individual players and, since 1970, has absorbed the dull but effective European style. And when the World Cup isn’t in Europe, Brazil usually wins. However, football today has two superpowers. Spain’s victory at Euro 2008 was no accident. Since 2000 Spain has lost just 12 per cent of its games, a performance as good as Brazil’s in spite of having only one-quarter of the population.
The dark horse of this World Cup is the US. In the long run, population size and wealth correlate with success in international soccer. The US has more young people playing soccer than any other country. Its national team has risen to a position just below the global top 10 and at last summer’s Confederations Cup it surprised Spain in the semis and scared Brazil in the final. By contrast, avoid sentimental bets on African teams. Simon Kuper
Will 2010 be the hottest year globally in recorded history?
Climate change sceptics frequently point out that 1998 was the hottest year since measurements began. If the world is warming, why has the record not been broken, they ask.
Scientists say 1998 was so hot because of the exceptional El Niño warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that year. With another El Niño apparently developing now – and superimposing its effect on man-made climate change – it is more likely than not that 2010 will beat the 1998 record, according to the much-maligned but often accurate UK Met Office.
Although a big volcanic eruption or El Niño’s sudden death would cool things down, I’ll go for the big heat. Next year’s global average temperature will be the highest on record – which may give renewed impetus to international action against global warming, after the Copenhagen fiasco. Clive Cookson
Will there be progress on a climate change agreement?
Shambolic scenes at Copenhagen masked the fact that the deal was not that bad. The vast majority of governments – including the biggest emitters, developed and developing – agreed to limit their emissions and to financing targets. If diplomats had been told beforehand that this would be the outcome, they would have danced for joy.
But flaws marred the accord, and resolving them will be the task for this year. Countries did not set out emissions targets in full, deferring that to January 31; a small group prevented the formal adoption of the accord; there was no timetable for turning it into a legally binding treaty.
Fevered diplomacy in the next few weeks will concentrate on the first, trying to get countries to up their emissions targets. Reforms to the UN process should make it easier to gain consensus. But the third will be hardest. China refused to sign up to a legally binding treaty, even one that only encapsulated commitments already made. Will that be resolved by the end of 2010? No. Fiona Harvey
Source: Financial Times
3 January 2010
-
Permalink Reply by Chandira on
-
White-Bear! You are anything but crazy for having that kind of view of things..
For me, it was always John Lennon's song 'Imagine' that helped me feel like I wasn't alone in wishing for peace and change. "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope some day you will join us, and the world will live as One."
White-Bear said:So many years ago after all the abuse that was inflicted upon me as a child I decided that the world around me had to go through some serious changes if all of us were to "make it". I began this what I perceived as a singular journey, by approaching people and saying to them...."I am at peace with you." I have adhered to this belief my whole life and have for many years felt that I was the only who felt this way. I have since discovered that there are others who believe this way. It is a comforting feeling to know that I am not alone and not crazy.
It gives me great comfort in knowing that you feel as I do. It will be a struggle, but worth it. To know that the human beings will eventually become "humane" beings is a great comfort. I believe as you do, I just don't have the words of eloquence that you have. Thank you for your words and your voice.
Brother, may you walk in beauty...........White-Bear
-
Permalink Reply by Linda Diane Taylor on
-
1989
At the end of my first vision quest I got up from my place beside the still waters of lightening lake. I turned around and there stood a large mule deer. I looked deep into his eyes and I saw a vastness of a world never before seen. I had no fear as he bowed his head. He looked up for a moment then ran into the bushes. Where he stood was a roughly carved walking stick.
I picked up the stick and gave thanks to the grandfather deer. I knew it was to go on a journey of not only self discovery but one of talking to the people and listening to the children.
Deer has been my friend since I was a child. I have vivid memories of me and my grandfather feeding apples to the deer on Galiano Island in British Columbia.
I started making drums and more drums while working with the native children. I saw it as a project to help them learn about their culture.
One day I had a vision of 10,000 drums all beating to the sound of the heartbeat to honor the great mother. So I began making even more drums: Drums for the children, drums for the artists, drums for European & Asian travelers, drums for shamans and anyone else that came along. There was never much if any profit in the drum making but the vision was important. I even heard of a South American Shaman that had the same vision of the 10,000 drums.
Sometimes when I see the 10,000 drums beating to the sound of the heartbeat I feel a great sorrow and then a great sense of heaven being on earth.
http://www.taylyn.com/drums/astoryaboutdrummaking.html - Attachments:
-
-
Walking Bear.jpg, 526 KB
-
-
-
and recently I had a new vision. that turned into a painting.. it was of the great mother rising. The painting has a great story to tell.
Painting with Stories. - Attachments:
-
-
wc feb 19-1.jpg, 1.3 MB
-
-
Permalink Reply by Yvonne L. Swan on
-
I liked this, thank you Brian David Hardin and Phil for posting it. Reading it helped me analyze a strange dream I had a few months ago: It was a dusky setting and a male friend and I were standing on a forested bank above a river and a voice said "The wind will reach 100 miles an hour" (it is 50 mph as I write this). The wind was blowing from left to right and we saw branches and dead tree trunks floating by on the river. The wind was getting stronger and small 'islands' of clusters of dirt and branches were floating by. To my left I saw a large 'earthy island' coming down the river, and my friend and I decided to jump on it. We timed it just right and landed safely on the large clump, fell back and laughed. We stood up and rode the rapidly moving object for a distance then decided to jump back onto the shore. I jumped off first and happily looked around for my friend. He'd landed in a small draw and was on the ground. I rushed down to see if he was okay and when I got close I saw that he was laughing.
The dream reminds me the great Creator designed a beautiful way of life for humankind to enjoy. Knowing that, I trust the original design will soon be visible for all to see. We are in a time that man-made change has darkened the spirit of life and there is confusion, fear, and other negative feelings among us. If we practice self analysis and admit our past mistakes (as my friend and I in the dream have both done) that seems to be the first step. If we look for higher spiritual guidance to our ancestors' time, we will grow to love and trust the Creator. That step dissolves all negative feelings and opens a way to learn from the past. A small obstacle to growth is lashing ourselves for our mistakes. In the dream, I fully trusted the Creator and my friend wasted only a few seconds and found the same trust. He laughed at how easy it was to let go of the pain of self hate.
In the future I see myself working with this friend in a way only the Creator knows, but it will be to help another.
KNEWWAYS Brian David Hardin said:It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water. See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over, Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we've been waiting for..."
-Hopi Elder Lansa- around 1960?
-
-
I appreciate receiving this important message and I will share it with my family. Thank you.
Firewoman said:Wow! What an overwhelming vision you have shared. Wa-do for sharing this most important and moving experience. I really needed to read this tonight as I reflect on my path and wonder if I am speaking to my people clearly in a good way with a voice that can be heard. With my brain injury from domestic violence I often times feel I cannot get my points across to the ones I speak to. You have given me a new energy, inspiration and renewed hope that the experiences I have had will help me be a light to others when they need it as you have been to me beloved sister. From my heart and soul, thank you for shining. Hope and love, Firewoman
Starchild Kostyshyn said:Violence against women breaks sacred traditional laws
International Women’s Day – what does that mean for each woman? What is the reason for having such a day?
On a grand scale, it is an attempt to reach out to all women and men to understand what violence against women means.
It is intolerable even in our First Nation communities that violence against women exists. It goes against our Cree Society and against our ancestors traditional teachings before which guided us prior to colonization.
I will tell you of a dream I had and it took some time for me to understand it. It must mean something to have been given this message in the dream:
The year was 1994, the season was early summer and I was in Toronto. I was ready to head home for the summer to Fort Albany. This was my usual practice, to get away from the hot city and go home for summer.
Anyhow, one night I was extremely tired and I fell asleep. I was disturbed earlier about some youths’ behaviours. I could not understand why youth continued to behave the way they did despite guidance at home and from teachings they learned from Elders in the community.
It is true, Elders always spoke to young people in the ‘rez’ back then.
They didn’t lecture, they simply talked about their way of life when they were growing up. That was how they taught us, in a quiet and subtle way.
There was no blaming us for our behavior, but their silent coaching was a form of discipline, it was in our heads and like seeds they began to grow and spread knowledge until we understood. Many of us who chose to listen to these teachings live a pretty good life – at least we pass the knowledge on to our children and our grandchildren.
So I slept and I felt myself drifting off somewhere and in this place I woke up.
I went to this blue centre and the light seemed to suspend from nowhere. I went closer and I noticed people sitting around the blue flame. The one closest to me turned and motioned me to sit in an empty space beside him. I walked over and sat down. That’s when I realized there was no floor! We were all suspended in air! I looked under me and I felt under, I could see lights everywhere below.
I asked: Where are we?
The blue flame in the centre began to glow a bit more and it drew my. It was so quiet. I could say the silence was deafening and then I realized there was a deep humming sound. It was the most wonderful hum I had ever heard.
I looked around and focused my eyes. I saw old people. They all seemed to have long flowing white hair. They were all sitting cross-legged and they were speaking, but I also noticed their mouths didn’t move. I realized that I could hear them in my head.
I took this in stride.
OK, I asked myself: Where am I?
They all turned to look at me and smiled because they had heard me.
There were sixteen men and women altogether. I guessed they were the grandfathers and grandmothers of our ancestors. That’s what I sensed from them. They sat in this circle around the blue flame and I wondered if they sat here forever.
They spoke to me and I listened, because I had no choice.
They explained that they had called me here.
They said they chose me to be their voice on the Earth plane.
A grandfather pointed downward. I looked and there were stars below. I could see the solar system and I saw our Earth. I wanted to reach down and touch it, but I didn’t instead I looked down at it.
‘We are formless as we sit here, however, we seem to have form as you still need to see us. The blue fire is here to help with that. We called this council, because there is a need to stop men from breaking the Sacred Law.
They have dishonored the Circle and it is broken. They have dishonored Earth as they broke tradition.
‘We have sent out others like you from this council over the centuries to make sure the Scared Law remains among the people.
‘It is understandable the White Tribe have crossed the oceans to take over the Red Tribe’s continent. They brought with them the Yellow Tribe and Black Tribe to serve them as slaves. The Sacred Law was broken.
‘All tribes were placed in their own continents after that the tectonic plates separated.
‘Each tribe was given a specific place where they could use the environment to exist.
‘Over time, the ones we sent were responsible for keeping the Sacred Law intact. Each tribe failed and have broken the Sacred Law.
‘Now, it is not to say all our messengers failed, the Red Tribes’ messengers did what they were advised to do.’
This is what happened and then they proceeded to tell me about the purity of the Sacred Law.
Woman was revered by Sacred Law and the Sacred Law was revered by woman. Without both male and female energy, there could not exist this universe in the mind of our Creator. It is that simple. That is the mystery of the Sacred Law.
I sat there as if in a trance and I could sense what was in their collective minds.
It was overpowering, however, my separateness was intact.
They said I was not allowed to be at their level due to material elements in my ethereal body. They said I must deliver this message the best way I knew how when the time was right to Indigenous tribes as this is the reason they are now suffering.
We are asked by the grandfathers, in one unified effort, to SILENCE the drums for one year until the Circle heals and the Sacred Law is re-established by the Red Tribe and then they will teach their brothers and sisters this knowledge to complete the rift.
I started shaking and I said it seemed like a lot to ask of me. I said I was not worthy to fulfill this role. The sixteen grandfathers and grandmothers looked at me and they spoke in unison in my head that the honor was mine by calling me to this council.
Suddenly, I felt like I was falling and I woke up only to see that I had slept for at least five minutes.
-
Permalink Reply by Karma Chodzin Lalo on
-
All in One
One in All-the Diamond Sutra
-
Permalink Reply by Keala Nohea on
-
Dream . . .
My spirit transcended into what I call the heavenly realm of our Creator. I stood in front of this huge glass building, there were huge glass columns infront of the glass building , , , it was shining like a prisim. Standing infront of the door was a beautiful being that was transparent and also shining like a prisim. Her aura was eminating such pure uncondtional love.
She didn't speak by moving her mouth but through her mind and I heard her and knew what she was saying. She led me into this glass building and upon entering we stood in the forye. Looking out to the back of the building I saw a most amazingly beautiful garden, their were magnificent rainbows everywhere, beautiful and amazing fountains, and flowers that were so amazing in color and the aroma mermiated the air with such sweet perfume. Then I saw the man we call Jesus here on earth and he telling stories to the children, all the beings here were not human form but prisim beings that spoke through their minds. Jesus smiled at me and I was filled with such love, that I never wanted to leave this place of immense beauty and love!
The angel (I called my guide angel) had me follow her into this room and when we entered I was amazed at this room for from the floor to the ceiling were shelves of books, it was so unreal and yet I knew that is was . . . my angel said it was called the room of knowledge. She then led me to another room and this time the room we entered was an amphitheater.
In this room there were many, many other angels. I don't remember much except that they were all filled with unconditional love, but the one thing that made me cry was the music . . . I awoke after this and can't remember the sound of the music, but I know that one day I will remember that beautiful music that filled my entire being with such unconditional love . . . that brought tears to my eyes, and woke me up. When I awaken I had been crying and I wrote everything down.
Peace, joy, harmony and love. Keala Nohea
Guiding Principles
Starting From Within, Working in a Circle, in a Sacred Manner, We Heal and Develop Ourselves, Our Relationships, and the World.
Events
Order Online
© 2023 Created by Phil Lane Jr..
Powered by
