10/15 is Blog Action Day.

Theme: Poverty.

Please, please read my contribution and follow several calls to action for global good:
Blog Action Day: Poverty

Have you ever heard of aerial hunting? It's a brutal practice. Wolves are shot from low-flying aircraft or chased to exhaustion, then killed at point-blank range.

Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, promotes this barbaric practice, exploiting a loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act to allow private wolf killers to shoot down wolves using aircraft. We have to get the word out about this!

Please watch this powerful video by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, and then share it with every wildlife lover you know.

Directly from Defenders of Wildlife:

Sarah Palin and the Environment

Governor Sarah Palin has an extreme anti-conservation record on issues ranging from global warming, energy and drilling to wildlife and habitat protection.

Aerial hunting of wolves and bears

Governor Palin is an active promoter of Alaska's aerial hunting program whereby wolves and bears are shot from the air or chased by airplanes to the point of exhaustion before the pilot lands the plane and a gunner shoots the animals point blank. 

• Palin offered a $150 bounty for wolves to entice hunters to kill more wolves in certain parts of the state, with hunters having to present a wolf's foreleg to collect the bounty. 

• She actively opposed a ballot measure campaign seeking to end the aerial hunting of wolves by private hunters and approved a $400,000 state-funded campaign aimed at swaying people's votes on the issue. 

• She also introduced legislation to make it easier to kill wolves and bears and which would have also removed the aerial hunting initiative from the ballot and block the ability of citizens to vote on the issue.

• The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs.

• The media is currently looking into reports that state officials implementing one of the aerial wolf killing programs illegally killed five-week old wolf pups just outside their dens.

Global Warming

As recently as August 2008, Governor Palin questioned whether man-made fossil fuel emissions are responsible for global warming, defying worldwide scientific consensus (Newsmax 8/29/08).  And her drill-drill-drill approach to energy issues will do nothing to ease the causes of global warming, promote the use of clean, renewable energy sources, or break our addiction to foreign oil.

Endangered Species

Palin has repeatedly opposed the listing of endangered animals under the Endangered Species List despite overwhelming scientific evidence that such listings are warranted.

Polar Bear

The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that loss of summer sea ice - crucial habitat for polar bears - could lead to the demise of two-thirds of the world's polar bears by mid-century, including all of Alaska's polar bears. The Bush administration has proposed listing the polar bears as threatened under the ESA to help protect polar bear habitat from threats such as oil and gas development.

Governor Palin has actively opposed the listing of the polar bear despite the fact that Alaska's top marine mammal biologists agreed with the federal scientists who believed the bear should be listed. She wrote the Secretary of Interior urging him not to list the bear on the ground it might hurt the state's oil- and gas-dependent economy. After the bear was listed, she recently filed suit seeking to overturn the listing of polar bears. 

Beluga Whales

Alaska's Cook Inlet beluga whales are a unique group of white whales whose numbers have dramatically declined in the past two decades due to pressures ranging from pollution to increased ship traffic. Governor Palin opposes the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whales, citing the listing as a threat to oil and gas development, despite their genetic uniqueness and the fact that their numbers have decreased from 1,300 in the 1980s to about 350 today.

Drilling

Palin is a strong supporter of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vital wilderness area.  It is home to hundreds of thousands of caribou who use the refuge as a calving ground, more than one million migratory birds, and countless other wildlife. It's the most important onshore denning habitat for female polar bears. Senator McCain himself has repeatedly voted to protect this pristine wilderness area.  Palin is also a supporter of drilling in Bristol Bay and other offshore sites despite the risks to sensitive marine wildlife in the area, including the endangered polar bear and Beluga whale.

Clean Water and Pebble Mine

Governor Palin actively campaigned against a state ballot measure this summer aimed at protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay. The mining industry seeks to develop a gold and copper mine in the area that would pollute the Bay's headwaters and threaten the spawning grounds for the largest remaining wild salmon run. The initiative would have prevented large-scale mining operations from dumping waste materials into salmon watersheds.

 

Directly from Greenpeace:

In what must surely be the absolute height of tragic irony, Kimberly-Clark is using a movie about conservation to sell Kleenex, a disposable paper product containing absolutely no recycled content.

Disney/Pixar's new animated film Wall*E is set in a distant future when the Earth is barren of all life forms and humans have survived only by leaving the wasted planet to live in outer space. The sole inhabitant of planet Earth in this doomsday scenario is Wall*E, a lovable but lonely robot that has been tasked with cleaning up the mess us humans left behind. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably got the same thrill out of its environmental theme as us here at Greenpeace. Meanwhile, the movie's smashing success at the box office is a clear indicator that its message resonates with Americans' concerns for the future.

That’s why it’s perplexing to see that K-C is featuring Wall*E on boxes of Kleenex. If you look on the bottom of these boxes, you’ll see a little recycled symbol that says: “This box is made from 100% recycled paper.” What you won’t see on the bottom of that box is a message telling you that the tissues inside it are made from centuries-old trees that were cut from forests that had been around for as much as 10,000 years – until K-C came along with its clearcutting practices, that is. Nor will the box tell you that K-C refuses to use any recycled material in Kleenex even though doing so would save huge areas of ancient forests.

Wall*E + Kleenex = Iron*E

For the past few years, Greenpeace has been running the Kleercut campaign to pressure K-C to stop devastating ancient forests. Naturally, we couldn’t let K-C’s blatant attempt to use Wall*E as a means of greenwashing Kleenex’s image go by without comment. So we commissioned celebrated political cartoonist Mark Fiore to create an animated movie of our own.

Our animated short features a new character called Kleer*E who gobbles up forests and spits out boxes of Kleenex. He is a precursor to Wall*E, who spends his days cleaning up a world where all the forests (and animals and people) are gone, a world where nothing is left but trash and empty boxes. Like Kleer*E, Kimberly-Clark is working to bring you that world, one box of Kleenex — and one forest — at a time.

In order to make sure K-C’s attempts at deceiving the public are unsuccessful, we need to band together to get the truth out about the company’s dishonest marketing. Help save the world’s ancient forests by viewing the Kleer*E video and then telling all your friends and family about it. The more people who are aware of K-C’s destructive business practices and refuse to buy Kleenex or other disposable products made by the company, the sooner they’ll change their ways.

Join us in telling K-C to stop the Iron*E! Instead of putting money towards looking like they’re “green,” the company needs to actually become green by improving their environmental practices. Specifically, they need to stop clearcutting ancient forests and start using recycled material in Kleenex and other consumer paper products. And when they do have to use virgin pulp, they should be sourcing it sustainably through the Forest Stewardship Council.

If we stop Kimberly-Clark from destroying any more of the world’s ancient forests, we will be able to avoid the dismal fate depicted in Wall*E. Untold future generations will surely thank us for giving them hope and a healthy planet to live on.

Tell Kimberly-Clark to stop the Iron*E

GRACE LIGHT

Something extraordinary is happening! The Grace of God in the form of Light is coming to the earth to help usher in the Golden Age that is anticipated by many to start in 2012. This event is triggering the Light of the Golden Age and gives us all an opportunity to assist the transformation to the Satya Yuga (Age of Truth). Find out more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky4C4dbjyg

GLOBAL MEDITATION: July 17 8pm Pacific Time

The TIME to create a divine awareness of the Grace Light is 11pm Eastern Time / 8pm Pacific Time. Please check your time zone and plan accordingly:

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

What to do on July 17:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xazMXJ7q2Wc

Guided Meditation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLf_kvfguzE

For more instructions to go www.TheGraceLight.com

http://www.TheGraceLight.com

This past weekend I held Shoden/Level I Reiki Training at the Nursing College of a local University. Please read more here and enjoy the slideshow.

Greetings!

I wanted to share a success-- I've been published on a very popular & savvy business blog. You will find the content helpful if you spend any time on the computer.  Please take a peek & comments are welcome on the host blog:
http://tinyurl.com/5p6p3k

There's a companion piece on my own blog about personal challenges that stem from your business; comments are welcome there as well:
http://tinyurl.com/57dr6q

March 5th is "Night of Siva." It is on this night that Lord Siva grants a moratorium on karma for those who request it of him. It is also believed that Siva grants enlightenment to the most devoted on this auspicious night. Siva becomes a mountain at Thiruvanamallai. The mountain itself is called Arunachala which means "The Mountain of Fire". Thiruvanamallai mountain has the unique quality to smash the small "I" consciousness of people and put them in the realm of the bigger "I." On Sivaratri day the mountain comes alive. Sivaratri becomes powerful in the night. The night is symbolic of a condition prior to creation. It refers to chaos that existed before light. But this chaotic darkness is not a negative condition. It is pure consciousness without the pollution of knowledge. In the Buddha's terminology it is the Emptiness of Nirvana. It is a cosmically eventful time where the destiny of not only the earth plane, but of the entire cosmos can be changed. Shiva is the Supreme Consciousness that illuminates the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep.