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The Big Event: Please mark your calendars
Mysterium All Souls Weekend with Maniko
and Michael Stone aka dj Divine
Saturday, October 30th, 9:30am – 5pm /Sunday October 31st 11am – 9:30pm
St Joseph’s Cultural Center, Grass Valley, CA
Special Price for entire weekend events $225 (includes Saturday morning and Sunday evening)
Saturday Mysterium Ritual and Sweat Your Prayers only, $30. 9:30am-12:30pm
Sunday Gathering the Ancestors only (Ancestor costumes welcomed)
6:30-9 pm $30. / $50 For both
Please join us for a magical, shamanic journey where we move with intimacy and awareness into the innermost truth of that which never dies. As the exponential effects of our collective ways of living on earth are felt more and more acutely, growing awareness and courageous participation become essential to restore balance to life on this precious little planet and within ourselves. The power of attuning the heart to the flow of love in our ancestral stream brings a spirit of belonging that even death cannot destroy. The fear of death is the mother fear of all fears (also known as survival fears), and to recognize the eternal through the timeless dimensions of love is the antidote to so much that ails us. Embodying the stream of undying love is the ultimate empowerment to live fully, here and now. Come celebrate, honor and enter the Mysterium of these hallowed (lit. means to honor as holy) days and nights.
By way of love, by way of connection with the undying spirit that lives and breathes and moves in all that is, past/present/future, this weekend is devoted to venturing with full awareness into the meeting of the visible and invisible worlds – dissolving the veils of separation.
Through dance invocations, tonal incantations, song, awareness practices, writing and full-bodied prayer we will cross over again and again – offering our bodies and voices as vehicles to honor our rich heritage in the unbreakable stream of life of and death and rebirth – all the way to communion with ‘that which never dies’ – the full Mysterium.
Wishing you love and happiness, now. ~ Maniko
To register, contact Michael Stone: 530-477-7757
 As this historic Cochabamba Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, attended by over 35,000 participants, comes to a close on this Earth Day there is a great deal of hope and possibility in the air. President Evo Morales welcomed representatives of 90 governments including several heads of state to present the findings from the 17 groups working on issues such as Mother Earth Rights, Creating a Climate Tribunal, Climate Debt, Just Finance, Agricultural Reform and other related topics. Four representatives, from Australia, USA, Malaysia, and Bolivia gathered the findings and presented them to this auspicious gathering.
While the Copenhagen accord set a non-binding agreement to hold climate temperature rise to 2 degrees C the finding of these working groups felt the target should be 1-1.5 degrees and holding CO2 emissions to 300ppm to save the island states and many others already heavily impacted by climate change. Another major issue was Eco Debt which people felt very strongly needed to be addressed in the upcoming COP 16 UN conference on climate change. There was strong agreement that the development model offered by Western (capitalist) society was severely flawed and that a new global model that was based in honoring the rights of Mother Nature had to be created. How can a system built on continuous growth (hyper-consumerism) continue with finite resources?
It was suggested that at it’s heart this is a spiritual issue. How can we stand by and protect our privileged way of life, while so many of our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving. Perhaps we think this doesn’t impact us, but in reality it makes the world less safe, more unstable, leads to hording, greater separation, denial and spiritual disharmony. The working groups put Mother Earth rights first, because human rights and all the other issues are a subset of it.
 Another critical issue that was addressed was agricultural reform, food is a primary example of our lack of honoring the rights of Mother Nature. Factory farms, fast food, Genetically modified crops, privatization, pesticides and toxic chemicals, the patenting of seeds and our disregard for the preciousness of our water were examples of being out of touch with nature. Indigenous wisdom was called on to find solutions to help us return to balance with the needs of our Mother. It was felt that the capitalist system has used nature as a slave instead of a live being that supports all life on this planet. They suggested that this is why the rights of nature must come first and it is the duty of all people to fight for her rights.
Climate Justice and debt were big topics of this conference. It was decided that a new organization needed to be formed to regulate abuses to Mother Earth with a Tribunal to enforce the standards of living in harmony with the natural world. Many of the developed nations are calling for the cancellation of the Kyoto Accord, but this group will be calling for a commitment to adopting the protocol for the years from 2013-2017. They are looking for a 50% reduction from 1990 emission levels with no offsets or voluntary compliance. The consensus is that there must be legally binding commitments that can punish polluters and be upheld in a court of law.
The working groups also rejected REDD, the United Nations Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, considered by the many in the group to be simply a way of making money from pollution through carbon trading. Twenty percent of the planet’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. The group feels that this proposal takes the attention away from the real issue of respecting nature. The suggested solution is education and a global tree planting campaign. Of course that needs to be part of a larger plan that includes getting away from our dependency on oil. As my friend Nnimmo Bassey, president of Friends of the Earth, says “Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole, and leave the tar sand in the land.”
 After a gruelingly long and bombastic speech by Hugo Chavez, that put most of the people asleep, Evo Morales gave his closing remarks. He said that the corporate mass media turns things around to make people working for true democracy into the enemy and that it was up to us to get the word out and raise awareness of these important issues. In the end the future of the planet is in the hands of the people!
All in all it was a very inspiring day. More tomorrow.
michael
 The Day Started with an early press conference with Bolivian president Evo Morales. In contrast to yesterday’s rock concert atmosphere, today was much more focused on what needs to be done and how we can bring about change. Evo, as everyone here calls him, spoke without any notes and his comments were very heart-felt.
He began his talk by saying that social movements need to organize to produce concrete results in defending the rights of Mother Earth and that we need to focus on the real causes and not the effects. If we look beyond the the pollution, destruction and disharmony we see that our social and political systems are broken. You cannot have continuous growth and exploitation with finite resources. It is not about capitalism, communism or socialism, it is about protecting Mother Earth!
Morales said that we need to create a new grass roots global organization that represents Mother Earth. This organization must have a tribunal that is responsible for enforcing the agreements. If there is no punitive action, he asserted, there will be no compliance. Who will obey? This is the problem with the Copenhagen Accord, it has no teeth. An international Tribunal must deal with countries that do not obey or don’t want to participate. This can be done with peaceful sanctions and restricting trade…
Evo also talked about Human rights vs. Earth rights. The focus he said needed to be on the rights of the earth, if we focus on that we will have to deal with human rights. It made me think about the whole issue of human rights and how it is an outgrowth of our holding ourselves above and separate from nature. But, in reality we are a subset and if we respect natures rights then all life will be respected. Perhaps it sounds overly idealistic to some that we could actually give rights to nature, but it has already been done. Ecuador was the first country to grant rights to trees, rivers and mountains in their new constitution, which has been a huge inspiration to activists around the world. Other countries are looking at how to follow in their footsteps.
Here in Bolivia most of us feel strongly that something is emerging — a global revolution of epic proportion is taking place — a new story of our human earth relationship is being defined and people around the planet are waking up to a new possibility…
 I arrived in La Paz this morning at 6 am, just in time to catch a most luminous and hopeful sunrise on this 14,000ft high mountain plateau surrounded by sun lit peaks and thin air. From there I flew to Cochabamba where the First People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is being held.
As I flew over these dry and barren mountain peaks I wondered if the nearly 20,000 participants from 129 countries would be able to find common ground and construct an agreement that might be proposed as an alternative to the non-binding agreement from Copenhagen at this December’s UN conference on climate change being held in Mexico.
I am hopeful that something substantial will come out of this gathering — that the little voices of the multitude will swell into a unified front that stands united, not against something, but for the rights of mother earth and the commons — knowing that we are strong as an aligned force, but powerless divided. The Machine is too big, the issues too pressing and time too short to come away with anything less than a document that addresses all life on this planet. We need to get beyond blame and finger pointing and find out how we can provide clean air, water, enough food to eat, education, shelter, health care so that everyone can live a life of dignity and self respect. It is time to recognize that we are all connected and that the future of life on this planet depends on our coming together in common unity.
From my vantage point the success of this conference will be dependent on our willingness to listen compassionately, to drop our personal agendas, our anger and opposition and focus on our common needs holding a vision of a world that works for all life with no one and nothing left out. This could be the start of a peaceful global revolution where the 2 million organizations that Paul Hawkin has called Blessed Unrest stand together as a unified force for good.
So we have gathered here to bring our light, our listening and our prayers to this conference which starts tomorrow morning when President Evo Morales gives the opening address. Robin Milam, our team and I will be bringing you up to the minute reports through our blog and the evening news on KVMR (to listen go to KVMR.org) Stay tuned…
Bless us all,
michael
 George Monbiot, a British writer, known for his environmental and political activism stated today that “climate delegates are not dealing with climate change”. He explained that this was do to contradictory policies of supply and demand. On the one hand we are working on policies to provide new non-polluting sources of renewable energy. At the same time we are trying to maximize supplies of fossil fuels thereby undermining the more expensive alternatives.
He said that science has shown that once we put CO2 into the atmosphere it is there for at least a thousand years and that once you reach a temperature it isn’t coming down. The 2-degree rise that scientists say we must stay below is based on the cumulative emissions of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere. When you look at the total amount of estimated coal and gas reserves we can only use 60% of them to stay under the 2-degree ceiling. The real question is what part of the oil, gas and coal reserves are going to be left in the ground. Furthermore total reserves of the primary fuels doesn’t take into account the even dirtier sources being looked at with greedy eyes, like tar sands, oil shale, coal gasification and other unconventional fossil fuels. People think, oil in the ground is like money in the bank but it is also a superhighway to destruction of life as we know it. “We need to eliminate supply side policies and totally replace fossil fuel with alternative sources of energy”, says George Monbiot. “The real problem we’re facing is too much fossil fuels!”
 The links between water, energy and climate are interrelated and complex. Energy production requires vast quantities of water, which calls for significant amounts of energy. The consequent CO2 emissions are major drivers of climate change. Changes in any of these sectors will effect the other and increase the impact on land use, food production and transportation. Climate change affects the availability and quality of our water and the types of energy supplies that are sustainable and economically feasible.
Like excluding biodiversity, leaving water problems out of the equations and negotiations at COP15 could lead to serious scientific, political and social problems. There are several reasons this. What is not fully appreciated is the hydrological cycle and how overusing water can speed desertification, which in turn increases the impact on the climate.
I talked to Maude Barlow, who is the Senior Advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly and head of the Council of Canadians. She said that there were three main reasons that water should be included in climate negotiations:
- Climate Change is having an enormous impact on water around the world, with melting glaciers, the rapid evaporation of surface water, the overuse of ground water, and disappearing snow packs, available water is rapidly disappearing.
- Water is not just a victim of climate change, it is also a major cause of it. This is because our massive displacement of water from where it is needed in watersheds to maintain a healthy hydrologic cycle through growing crops in deserts, selling it off or sending it into big cities where we dump it with garbage and then into the ocean. (170 trillion liters a year from land based water systems into the oceans)
- Climate refugees are water refugees. They are the first and most devastated face of climate change. Industrialized countries are trying to set the same market based responses to climate change to water in the form of privatization and commoditization of water.
Dr Riccardo Petrella of the World Political Forum’s Scientific Committee says that in spite of the massive water problems facing humanity today “the future is not finished.” We must include three goals among the priorities of the world policy for a sustainable and lasting development:
- The human universal right to water
- The protection and safeguard of water resources on the planet as a common good, human heritage and essential to the functioning of ecosystems.
- A public, integrated, effective and united government of the planet’s water.
Dr. Petrella believes that the inclusion of water in the COP15 negotiations would provide many advantages. Most importantly it would be a positive sign in favor of the revaluation of the role of world common goods at the top of the agenda of strategies for attenuation and adaptation to climate change. In other words it would put the wellbeing of the public above private interests and competitive world markets. Which would leader to greater security and an “eco-nomy of justice and shared welfare.
 Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) sounds like a good idea, but with closer inspection seems to reveal a number of problems. One of the concerns here in Copenhagen, especially amongst indigenous and poorer peoples, is that the strategies could have a disastrous impact on biodiversity and the lives and land of Indigenous Peoples in developing countries.
The involvement of Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities in the development of REDD strategies and projects differs significantly from country to country, however there are numerous key issues that arise. These issues include the lack of consultation and inclusion of indigenous peoples, no recognition of the involvement of women who will be most impacted, concerns with lack of biodiversity and increase of monocultures, protection of indigenous property rights, the threat to the world’s natural forests, and the fact that Market-based approaches to REDD are complex yet lucrative, a combination that discourages community participation but encourages fraud and corruption. For most of the people in these areas climate negotiations should not be focused on discussing REDD and other market-based mechanisms, but rather on the transition to a new production, distribution and consumption model based on agro-ecology, on a solidarity-based economic approach, and on a diversified and decentralized energy matrix capable of ensuring food security and sovereignty.
The Industrialized nations are pushing hard for this market based approach, but it is becoming another instrument for creating phantom wealth. Since mono crops and bio-fuels are included in the equation, the impact on biodiversity would further exacerbate the environmental problems. As money is involved in payment for carbon credits, it is likely that the people of the forest would get little or no return for their participation. Indigenous peoples have been protecting the forests for thousands of years. It is the richer nations that have been responsible for most of the destruction. Who would be best to leave as the stewards of the land, the people of the forest or big business? Can the market really be expected to take responsibility for the future of life on this planet? Seems to me like putting the fox in the house to guard the hens…
 Bill McKibben
Bill MicKibben is an American environmentalist, writer and founder of 350.org, an international climate change campaign. Today at Klimaforum09 he shared the history of the organization he founded and why 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 is such an important goal to reach. For the past 10,000 years the carbon count was pretty stable at 275 ppm, but with the advent of the Industrial revolution some 200 years ago it began to rise with the burning of fossil fuels. In 1950 it reached 315 ppm, in the 80’s American Climatologist, James Hansen testified in Congress that scientists were getting very worried about the increases. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 that it became clear to scientists that we had passed the danger line. That was the summer that ice melts across the Arctic reduced the ice pack by 25%, way ahead of all scientific projections.
At this time climatologist came to an agreement that any CO2 level greater 350ppm was going to have a severe if not disastrous impact on our climate. Currently we are at 390 ppm, well past the agreed upon redline set by the majority of the planets climatologists. It is estimated that some 300,000 people a year are already dying from climate change and with glaciers melting, increasingly violent storms, desertification, rising sea levels, dying coral reefs and the warming of the seas future trends do not look good for the planet. Looking at the promises being made by member countries at the UN Climate Change Conference and calculating the predictable outcome, we can expect CO2 to reach 770ppm by 2,100. Which basically means a dead planet for our children’s children.
Isn’t it time to ask ourselves what do we want? And what are we going to do to achieve it? 350.org is building a global movement to reduce CO2 to 350ppm and kept it there in order to maintain a healthy functioning planet. McKibben, sponsored the largest global demonstration in the history of the planet on October 24th, when people at over 5200 events in 181 countries united to call for strong climate action. Today he asked, “If people around the world can get organized for change and come together why can’t our leaders?
President Mohamed Nasheed
The President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, was released only a few years ago as a political prisoner and became the first democratically elected president. The Maldives are a group of 1,200 islands in Southern Asia in the Indian Ocean, south-southwest of India. They are an island nation acutely threatened by the rising sea levels. While they are small, here in Copenhagen they represent the little country that roared and have become one of the most vocal and stirring voices in Copenhagen.
In his speech President Nasheed stressed the power of people taking action on climate change, when he spoke to a packed audience at Klimaforum09, the alternative climate summit in Copenhagen, Monday evening. “The social movements have the power to save the planet from the effects of climate change. My message to you is to continue the process of movement building after the conference,” the President said. “We had no power, but our cause,” the President explained, before he went on to promise to turn his country into the first CO2 neutral society in the World in just ten years time. “Let us make the planetary goal of reaching 350 parts per million. We believe that if the Maldives can become carbon neutral so can larger countries.”
 Saturday Climate Demonstrations
An estimated crowd of over 100,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Copenhagen on Saturday, the largest gathering in this city since the end of WW2. South African Spiritual leader, Desmond Tutu inspired the crowd with a call to the rich nations to pay their debt saying, if you are able to bail out the banks, surly you can spend a few billions to stop climate change. “Wake up rich countries! We, the world expect a real deal.” He then handed UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer the countdown to CO2penhagen petition with 500,000 signatures.
Yvo de Boer responded by saying, “I’ve just come from the Bella Center and they’re always talking about the financial crisis. But this is a moral crisis, which could result in a global climate crisis. The demonstrators then began a 3-hour march to the center where a candle light vigil was held.
Arrests
Unfortunately the mostly peaceful march was disrupted when a small group of people dressed in black, called Never Trust a Cop, started digging up cobblestones and throwing them at the stock exchange along the route. Approximately a 1000 people were arrested as the large police force encircled both offenders and innocent bystanders, arresting them under a new law, which allows them to arrest anyone suspicious and hold them for up to 12 hours. May innocent people had to sit on the frozen ground with their hands bound behind them for 3-4 hours. On Sunday another 230 people were arrested when they tried to block the harbor here.
Heads of State Arrive Tomorrow
Tomorrow 110 heads of state arrive tomorrow to begin the final negotiations on and the draft of a global climate change treaty. The big question is will it be a political nonbinding treaty, as the richer, more powerful nations want or will there be a legally binding treaty as the majority of the poorer more impacted nations want?
Further complicating matters is the issue of climate debt and reparation by the industrialized countries towards the poorer nations. Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain states that “industrialized countries are responsible for over 70% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution, they have incurred a debt that must be repaid!” This topic make it even more difficult to leave Copenhagen with a legally binding treaty.
Tibet
Global warming has had a devastating impact on Tibet which will have huge consequences for the fresh water supply in most of Asia, a representative from the Tibet exile government warns. Tibet has the worlds third largest ice mass in the form of the many glaciers and is the world’s largest fresh water reservoir. Many of the large Asian rivers come from Tibet. Rising temperatures in Tibet will make a huge impact on billions of Asian’s who need access to clean drinking water. The organization “Third Pole” in Copenhagen is pushing forward an agreement to secure the Tibeten plateau. Its not just Tibetan glaciers that climate changes affecting, it is also upsetting the monsoon weather system. The Chinese have begun to tap more water from the Tibetan rivers with massive tunnels redirecting the water to China to compensate for their own diminishing water supply.
 Pacific Island states
The Island state Kirbati, risks being swallowed up by the ocean and the people are speaking out. Many of the Pacific Ocean island states face enormous risk of not existing in 90 years. The Kirbati states are asking that an ambitious plan be put forth to reduce CO2 emissions. They cannot withstand more extreme weather and water levels rising more than 80 cm more according to the UN climate panel.
They are asking. along with other 40 countries in the Alliance of small island states (AOSIS) that are vulnerable to climate changes that the global emission of CO2 be topped in 2015 so that the temperature does not rise more than 1.5 degrees centigrade rather than the 2 degrees currently proposed.
Thailand
Part of Thailand’s main rice growing region is under severe economic and environmental threat from climate change which must be addressed by world leaders at a UN summit, Greenpeace said Monday. A study by the activist group revealed the dangers faced by the Bangpakong River Basin, which supports around 1.25 million people who rely heavily on the region’s fertile soils for crops, especially rice, fruit and fishing. The study was released days before Bangkok holds another major meeting on climate change.
The 7,900 square-kilometre (3050 square mile) area in eastern Thailand is “one of the most productive river basins the world” and a prominent source of jasmine rice, Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaign manager Tara Buakamsri said. But the basin, which empties into the Gulf of Thailand, “is threatened with severe economic and environmental impacts due to flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion caused by climate change”, Greenpeace said. “Local rural communities stand to suffer most from climate change impacts,” said Ply Pirom, a campaigner for the group, adding that the “worst impacts are yet to come”….
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