Drone Memo

Obama and drones...The paper states that the U.S. would be able to kill a U.S. citizen overseas when "an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government" determines the target is an imminent threat, when capture would be infeasible and when the operation is "conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles."

The white paper suggests that such decisions would not be subject to judicial review and outlines a broad definition of what constitutes “imminent” threat.

Save the World's Seeds

Alert! Join Seed Savers Exchange in helping to save the Pavlovsk Station from development


A Russian court recently ruled that one of the world's most important seed banks near St. Petersburg, Russia may be destroyed in order to make way for a housing development. If allowed to stand, this decision will have a catastrophic impact on global plant diversity. Called a "living library", the Pavlovsk Experimental Station is widely considered the crown jewel of agricultural biodiversity, since 90% of the collection's varieties are not found anywhere else on the planet.

Join scientists and concerned people around the world in petitioning President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin to overrule the court decision. To learn more about this issue and to sign the petition, click on this link to the

Global Crop Diversity Trust

Oil, oil everywhere, and not a drop to burn

Why didn't BP close the deep water oil well after the explosion? Why doesn't BP abandon the well. $$$$$$$$$$$. So far BP seems satisfied with recovering 10% of the gushing oil leak.

The tears we shed as we watch and read, are they sadness over the loss or remorse for our greed? Why is our focus on clean up rather than permanent shut down? Where will we put the millions of gallons of oil contaminating the Gulf of Mexico? Are we so addicted to oil that we will destroy to Earth to get it?

There is nothing natural about this disaster. It is all manmade.

LESSON: Turn to CREATOR LORD now. Only He can save us from ourselves.

Globalization: Good vs. Bad

"At first glance, of course, one might think that globalization is a good thing: each country or people liberated to exchange the fruits of their labor on the world's markets; each culture free to learn from all the others; more buying and selling, higher standards of living, and modernity; less poverty and backwardness. In practice, however, much of globalization tends to promote an extremely selective, and often quite destructive and unjust, distribution of power and wealth. It supports certain cultures and communities and eliminates others. Its successes tend to be measured by the simplest and least humane of economic measures -- more economic activity, more 'wealth' understood purely as purchasing power -- while its crushing human and ecological effects are ignored. Above all, globalization's transformations of the way people work, live, and raise families are not democratically chosen but created and managed by political and economic elites."

"To get a sense of globalization's dark side, consider and example of the international production of energy involving Enron in the Indian state of Maharastra. Enron contracted to build power plants there, and Maharastra agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in return. Because the resulting facilities produced electricity that was between two and seven times more expensive than previously existing Indian plants, a new state government attempted to break the disastrous agreement. Pressure was applied by the U.S. ambassador (who soon retired from government service to become an Enron director), and soon a new contract was signed that was even more expensive. Millions of dollars of bribes to local officials secured the contract, threats from U.S. and other global institutions solidified Enron's position, and Enron made billions in profits. An already poverty-stricken area of a third world country became poorer, but economic activity measured as the exchange of funds increased. National boundaries, and to some extent national sovereignty, were diminished. Some people did quite well out of the deal, but many more suffered."

"Another harmful impact of globalization arises when subsistence farming is replaced by huge plantations growing a single export corp, and peasants who used to support themselves on the land move to already overcrowded cities with high unemployment. In such cases, people who had been living a reasonably secure existence, with access to land and food, get turned into consumers who must pay for everything they need. Economic activity increases, more money circulates, but the loss of access to their own fields, forests, or coastlines is not registered as a monetary loss, and because the ensuing poverty involves more cash flow, it can be seen as a 'better life.'"

Quotation taken from: A Greener Faith, by Roger S. Gottlieb

The World of Finance

This little excerpt posted by automaticearth and was guest written by J.S. Kim.

"And finally, the greatest irony of all is that the anger that brews inside those that have been tragically hurt by this crisis can coexist with the failure to recognize that it matters not in America if the President has the last name Clinton, Bush or Obama – that monetary and fiscal agenda inside the US for the last 17 years has not wavered nor changed one iota during this period of time because it was not these men that have been in charge of the economy but the men that manufactured these men’s rise to power and that control the US Federal Reserve and the world’s Central Banks, and thus the global monetary policy."

What's Your Plan?

"It was a clear day when the non-instrument rated commercial pilot named Mark left Billings, Montana, in his Beechcraft Debonair. However, the weather along his route through the mountains was not good and was forecast to get worse. When the briefer says twice that VFR flight is not recommended, Mark's response is that the sooner he leaves the better, and that he can 'get a long way down there and then take another look.'"

Jay Hopkins, in an article entitled Responding to Reality published in the March 2009 issue of FLYING magazine, quotes and comments on Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why written by Laurence Gonzales.

"Gonzales says that one of the biggest problems that get people into trouble in survival situations is that they do not face reality. They want to believe they can still proceed according to their plan, and this blocks an accurate assessment of their real situation."

"Gonzales points out that in our complex, technological world we have come to depend on a problem-solving strategy that 'often gives us a illusory sense of control that fails us in moments of crisis.'"

LESSON: "Plan the flight and fly the plan. But don't fall in love with the plan. Be open to a changing world and let go of the plan when necessary so that you can make a new plan." Laurence Gonzales