20050417

Humanity Lost Among Thorns & Brambles


Hopi Warnings to the World -
No More Time For Divisions

by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today

HOTEVILLA, Ariz. - From Hopiland, a spiritual vortex for Native people, spiritual leaders Dan Evehema and Thomas Banyacya became the voice of the voiceless: the birds and animals. Warning of the impending apocalypse, they urged all people of good hearts to join them. Even in their last years, Evehema and Banyacya warned that material greed and ignoring spiritual truth results in climate change, and, ultimately, the destruction of the world.

Hopi Snake Priest Evehema said the disease in the world today is greed, and the final insult for this country's aboriginal people is the loss of ceremonial land.

''We are now faced with great problems, not only here but throughout the land. Ancient cultures are being annihilated. Our people's lands are being taken from them. Why is this happening? It is happening because many have given up or manipulated their original spiritual teachings.

''The way of life that the Great Spirit has given to all people of the world, whatever your original instructions, are not being honored. It is because of this great sickness called greed, which infects every land and country,'' Evehema said, at the age of 105, in a statement to all humanity.

''Now we are at the very end of our trail. Many people no longer recognize the true path of the Great Spirit. They have, in fact, no respect for the Great Spirit or for our precious Mother Earth, who gives us all life.''

Evehema said Hopi long ago were told that someone would go to the moon and bring something back. Because of this, nature would show signs of losing its balance.

''Now we see that coming about. All over the world, there are now many signs that nature is no longer in balance. Floods, drought, earthquakes and great storms are occurring frequently and causing widespread suffering.

''Now we must look upon each other as brothers and sisters. There is no more time for divisions among people.''

Evehema said there is no freedom of the press for traditional Hopi speaking the truth because newspapers only publish what the government wants printed. He said the leaders in the White House and the Glass House (United Nations) have been warned of what is to come, but have not listened.

''So, as our prophecy says, it must be up to the people with good pure hearts that will not be afraid to help us to fulfill our destiny in peace for this world.''

Banyacya was among the Motee Sinom (Hopi for first people) who urged the United Nations in 1992 to listen. Banyacya said traditional Hopi follow the spiritual path given by Massau'u (the Great Spirit).

''We made a sacred covenant to follow his life plan at all times, which includes the responsibility of taking care of this land and life for his divine purpose. We have never made treaties with any foreign nation, including the United States, but for many centuries we have honored this sacred agreement. Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way.''

In 1948, traditional Hopi spiritual leaders chose Banyacya and others to carry the message forward. Repeating the wisdom, Banyacya said the Creator made the first world in perfect balance, but humans turned away from moral and spiritual principles and only a handful survived the earthquakes.

The mistakes were repeated in the second world, and freezing in the great ice age destroyed the people. The third world lasted a long time and, as in the previous worlds, the people spoke one language. They invented technologies still unknown to modern man, but eventually turned away from natural laws and pursued material things.

''They gradually turned away from natural laws, pursued only material things, and finally only gambled while they ridiculed spiritual principles. No one stopped them from this course, and the world was destroyed by the great flood that many nations still recall in their ancient history and religious teachings.

''The elders said again only small groups escaped and came to this fourth world where we now live. Our world is in terrible shape again even though the Great Spirit gave us different languages and sent us to four corners of the world and told us to take care the Earth and all that is in it.''

Banyacya said mankind is in the final days of the prophecy.

''What have you, as individuals, as nations and as the world body, been doing to take care of this Earth?'' Banyacya asked the United Nations.

''In the Earth today, humans poison their own food, water and air with pollution. Many of us, including children, are left to starve. Many wars are still being fought. Greed and concern for material things is a common disease.''

Banyacya said Hopi foretold of the ''gourd of ashes'' (atomic bomb) that destroyed thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hopi believe that the Persian Gulf would have been the third great war if use of the worst weapons had not been stopped.

''We do have a choice. If you, the nations of this Earth, create another great war, the Hopi believe we humans will burn ourselves to death with ashes.

''Nature itself does not speak with a voice that we can easily understand. Neither can the animals and birds we are threatening with extinction talk to us. Who in this world can speak for nature and the spiritual energy that creates and flows through all life?''

Banyacya said it is necessary for human beings that have not separated themselves from the land and nature to speak out. Finally, he said, the first people and the spirit of the ancestors are giving loud warnings. He pointed out that there are increasing floods, hurricanes; hail storms, climate changes and earthquakes.

''Even animals and birds are warning us with strange changes in their behavior, such as the beaching of whales. Why do animals act like they know about the Earth's problems and most humans act like they know nothing?

''If we humans do not wake up to the warnings, the great purification will come to destroy this world just as the previous worlds were destroyed.''

Evehema and Banyacya died within three weeks of one another in early 1999. Evehema died at the age of 108 on Jan. 15, 1999. Banyacya, born in 1910, died on Feb. 6, 1999.

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410637

"I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned
by the habit of attending to trivial things...
Read not the Times, read the Eternities."
-- Henry David Thoreau



Man plays a big role in ‘Club Extinct’

Friday, April 08, 2005
- By Sue Hammer

I trust we all survived the crash course on our arrival and concede there is more to a period than just a dot at the end of a sentence. By charting our arrival it looks as though we all reside on an intricate chain of life and, excluded from the relationships developed by man, our wildlife neighbors adhere to a strict arrangement of being predator as well as being the pursued.

With the groundwork now fixed, so to speak, this week lets examine how man has and continues to play a major role on the nominating committee and the induction of those chosen into Club Extinct.

Since wildlife includes all living things, large or small, and plants, just how then do these creatures and organisms of the vegetal kingdom interact with each other and the obvious limits of their indigenous habitat?

As no living thing or array of living things lives in solitude, wildlife needs power and substances from the environment in order to exist and the lives of all existing sentient beings influence the existence of others. Therefore we inhabit the highest level of a pyramidal body or community and aren’t assimilating just how much our existence relies on the coexistence of other forms of life. Each critter and plant bare responsibility - just like us - and are all conjoined.

Yet no matter what we think we couldn’t survive without plants and animals. Remember some 480 million years ago when ancient vegetation and creatures started to evolve? Well the green stuff was and remains today, the rudimentary basis of food on this terrestrial sphere. Their central function is to convert rays from the sun and inorganic materials from the ground into groceries for the animals. It is speculated that each plant order has some 10 to 30 species of some kind that absolutely rely on
plants for their nourishment. Just think then of the consequences if we lost a single plant group - we might just lose 10 to 30 entities as well.

When we want to learn about someone we need more than just a phone number. What do they do? What do they like? How do they fit into the neighborhood and interact with others? These same questions can be applied to wildlife. Ergo, we are all arranged in an Ecological Niche, “the functional status of an organism in its community.”

When it comes to animals and birds, they can only gain survival in such groups as the populace of their quarry makes attainable. An essential canon is that the plenitude of any creature is literally contingent on the attainable excess numbers of its dietary sources.

Life then, can essentially be illustrated as an endless struggle with the primary theme being survival of the fittest and the cast of characters surviving the best they can. When contemplating the ramifications of predation we should keep in mind that those creatures being preyed upon have managed to coexist with their adversaries for millions of years and not just because of their prolific capabilities.

Availability dictates what and who shall be pursued. Mother Nature, through trial and error, clearly evokes the premise that potential prey will be pursued by whatever can catch it. She obviously created a method whereby a consensus within these communities is so thorough that, unless tampered with by us, it was supposed to be near impossible for any creature to obliterate another.

Early man was much like any other kind of animal being an innate part of the food chain. As a primary consumer, being devoured in turn by bigger and undaunted secondary consumers, it’s not hard to see why he became a hunter first. Animals were not needlessly destroyed, but were killed to fulfill a basic necessity… survival. The meat was used for food, skins were worn because it was the only clothing available at the time and the bones were fashioned into weapons and tools.

We can start to see extinction unfolding, not by natural circumstances, but rather the attitudes and deeds of modern man as he established himself on the North American continent. The unexplored frontier was seen as a wilderness abounding with wealth and resources that couldn’t be depleted.

As soon as the emigrants started hitting the eastern shores and the monumental exodus westward our wildlife became endangered, not only by the large-scale killing and the preconceived idea that wildlife was limitless but also by the bedlam the terra firma was about to be subjected to. Creatures were over-trapped, relentlessly killed, poisoned and persecuted but somehow learned to gain advantage over our presence. Unfortunately, some were not so lucky and are no longer around.

Each and every creature remains alive and keeps in check the excess community of the species it consumes. All documentation seems to attest that no undomesticated predator has ever wiped out its own prey. The problem however arises when links are interfered with. Habitat destruction, pesticides, vehicles, indiscriminate killing and mayhem, the feral cat and dogs allowed to pack and roam free can all create consequences to our wildlife neighbors who are already straddling a precarious link.

Some 17 million animals are seized yearly in the United States with illegal steel traps for their coats or because someone has determined them to be pests. All wildlife critters seem to share an idiosyncrasy that is, even with our callous attempts to terminate their existence, they seem to exhibit no prejudices or boundaries in the world in which they exist.

We can go to a local mall and purchase clothes made from a myriad of fabrics and man-made goods. Apparently some treasure their vanity more than the animal and still feel the need to strip an animal of their wardrobe so they can be fashionable and sport the latest outfit forfeited by some unassuming creature. Though this nonessential enterprise is illegal, poaching birds and animals remains an extremely lucrative revenue. Certain creatures are still being destroyed for ornaments and jewelry, a head to be displayed over a fireplace mantel or wall and slaughtered for a vital organ or part to be used for a presupposed remedy.

As we march into the future we need to learn how the past has fashioned our lives and will formulate our fate. Man cannot be disentangled from the past, baring within his body both the frightful capacity of the predator and the fallibility of the prey, nevertheless he is unfortunately fast becoming the most formidable of all predators.

We can justify extinction as the result of a biological catastrophe, however it is extremely hard to rationalize the ignorance of a species that frequently puts its importance on corporeal assets at the expense of other different living things.

Until we meet again, remember: Be careful and watch out for the little critters out there.

Sue Hammer R.V.T. is the director of animal care and education at Tri County Wildlife Care and can be reached at 267-5867.
http://www.ledger-dispatch.com/life/lifeview.asp?c=152986

Earth To Humankind: Back Off
Say good-bye to your car, computer, everything. We are burning up the planet too fast to hang on


By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch. We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can't even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I'm finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done. Don't take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.

It's one of those stories that sort of punches you in the karmic gut, about how they just completed this unprecedented, four-year, $24 million, U.N.-backed study involving 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who all pored over thousands of satellite images and countless scientific reports and reams of stats, and they all distilled their findings down to one deadly, heartbreaking summary.

And here it is: We, humankind, people, sentient carbon-based biped creatures, only us and no one else but us because it sure as hell ain't the goddamn lions or caribou or meerkats or rhododendrons, we humans have, in our shockingly short time on this wobbly sphere, used up a staggering 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmland, rivers and lakes.

That's right, 60 percent. Gone. Burned up. Used up. Much of it irreversibly. These are the basic ecosystem services that, simply put, sustain life on Earth. The glass ain't even half full, people. It's about three-fifths empty and draining fast and we are doing our damnedest to expedite the process because, well, this is just who we are.

We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first "Matrix" movie where he stares menacingly at Morpheus and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, "but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague," and then Morpheus gets all huffy and righteous and goes on to inspire Neo to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack.

But it doesn't stop there. The study also reveals that our fair and gluttonous species has altered the planet more violently and rapidly in the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history. Yay accelerated technology. Yay multinational conglomerates. Yay lack of corporate ethics and rabid unchecked capitalist consumer gluttony. Whee.

And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worst environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee.

And this heartbreaking study, it comes hot on the heels of one of the most distressing and sobering pieces of journalism I've read in ages, an excerpt from a book by James Howard Kunstler called "The Long Emergency," all about the imminent and staggering oil/natural gas crisis now looming large over the U.S. and the world, a crisis of such dire proportions that it will very soon reshape American life like nothing since the Industrial Revolution. Except in reverse.

It's about peak oil. It's coming within a year or two. It means we've essentially siphoned off all the easily attainable oil on the planet (about 50 percent of the grand total) and getting to the remaining 50 percent -- the lower-quality stuff that's buried deep in rock or in impossibly difficult locations or that lies underneath countries where the people absolutely hate us -- will be so fraught and expensive and hypercompetitive that it will mean not only, in the immediate future, much more war and strife and pain but also, in the next decade or two, a radical -- and I do mean radical -- reshaping of life as we know it.

Petroleum and gas will become incredibly scarce and everything we know about consumer culture, travel, products, Wal-Mart, easy access to all daily goods and services, will essentially vanish, and we will return to a intensely local, viciously competitive agricultural model of raw survival. Read this article now, and be amazed.

This is the incredible thing about humans. We are capable of such amazing extremes, such breathtaking beauty and such violent ugliness, astounding awareness to utter blindness, transcendental light to staggering dark. Some periods in our history, it feels like we're actually progressing, calming down, evolving, reaching new heights and new levels of psychospiritual awareness, as opposed to merely rearranging the puzzle pieces in a drunken haze of frustrating anxiety.

And at other times, like now, like the new and violent and fractured Dark Age so savagely exemplified by BushCo, it feels as though we are working toward the other extreme, working our last raw nerve, seeing how far we can go before we implode, how much of the planet we can abuse and pollute and rape before something pops so violently and unexpectedly we can only sit back and go, oh holy hell.

Maybe the nutball evangelical born-agains have it right: Maybe it's best to just burn up this whole godforsaken lump of Earth as fast as possible and then watch in giddy flesh-rended glee as Armageddon rains down and only those who've given tens of thousands of dollars to secretly gay televangelists will rise up and be saved and the rest of us will merely drive our Priuses off a collective cliff into the fiery pits of gay-marriage-friendly hell.

Ah, but we have bad news there, too, because, according to the cute Rapture Index, that adorable little Web site o' righteousness that charts the various global "signs" leading up to the impending Second Coming, the Rapture should be happening, like, right now. Or maybe last week.

In fact, the index now stands at 152, well above the "Oh sweet Jesus take me now" threshold. Which means, of course, that the Second Coming might have already come and gone, and Jesus may have swooped down and taken one look at what we've done to the place and said, you've got to be freakin' kidding me, and said, sorry but no one here deserves much of anything illuminative or enlightened right now. Can't you just hear all those gay-hatin' born-again Christians saying, what the hell?

Of course, no one said this was gonna be easy. Not Christ, not Buddha, not Allah and not Lao Tse and not Rumi and not Krishna and not the light beings right now swirling around your head and trying to get the message across that this earthly plane is one of the harshest and more difficult and bloody messy ugly lessons in the universe, which is also why it's so valuable and mandatory and why so many souls want to come here, to learn. Trial by fire, is what it is. This is what they say. But if these scientific studies and stories are to be believed -- and there's little reason to think otherwise -- that fire is about to get one hell of a lot hotter. Stock up on duct tape. And water. And hope.

"Where armies flourish, thorns and brambles grow."
-- Lao Tzu


ORDERING PIZZA IN 2008

This is so close to what is probably going to be happening in 2008 that we're not sure how funny this really is...

Operator: Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your national ID number?

Customer: Hi, I'd like to place an order.

Operator: I must have your NIDN first, sir.

Customer: My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's 6102049998-45-54610.

Operator: Thank you Mr Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number is 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number is 266-2566. Email address is sheehan@home.net. Which number are you calling from sir?

Customer: Huh? I'm at home. Where'd you get all this information?

Operator: We're wired into the HSS, sir.

Customer: The HSS, what is that?

Operator: We're wired into the Homeland Security System, sir. This will add only 15 seconds to your ordering time.

Customer: (sighs) Oh well, I'd like to order a couple of your All-Meat Special pizzas.

Operator: I don't think that's a good idea, sir.

Customer: Whaddya mean?

Operator: Sir, your medical records and commode sensors indicate that you've got very high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice.

Customer: What?!?! What do you recommend, then?

Operator: You might try our low-fat Soybean Pizza. I'm sure you'll like it.

Customer: What makes you think I'd like something like that?

Operator: Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion.

Customer: All right, all right. Give me two family-sized ones, then.

Operator: That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids. Your 2 dogs can finish the crusts, sir. Your total is $49.99.

Customer: Lemme give you my credit card number.

Operator: I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash. Your credit card balance is over its limit.

Customer: I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here.

Operator: That won't work either, sir. Your checking account is overdrawn also.

Customer: Never mind! Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready. How long will it take?

Operator: We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick'em up while you're out getting the cash, but then, carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward.

Customer: Wait! How do you know I ride a scooter?

Operator: It says here you're in arrears on your car payments, so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid for and you just filled the tank yesterday.

Customer: Well, I'll be a #%#^^&$%^$@#

Operator: I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got a July 4, 2003 conviction for cussing out a cop and another one I see here in September for contempt at your hearing for cussing at a judge. Oh yes, I see here that you just got out from a 90 day stay in the State Correctional Facility. Is this your first pizza since your return to society?

Customer: (speechless)

Operator: Will there be anything else, sir?

Customer: Yes, I have a coupon for a free 2 liter of Coke..

Operator: I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics. The New Constitution prohibits this.

Thank you for calling Pizza Hut.

----------------------

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Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling—
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex—cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
—Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud—

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker,
from No Heaven
University of Pittsburgh Press

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.