Mohammed's Conversion on the Road to Mecca

This puts our understanding of fundamental Islam on an entirely another level. It is actually a worse ideology than Nazism. Effectively women are denied the right of free will. The same process also ensnares the men who also be come as compliant.

Do not think that Islam is generally successful in what it sets out to do. But it is successful enough to seriously skew its population part way into this regime to the point that a modest push or event easily brings forward fanatics.

What Mohammed began with was no more that the normal shape of spiritualism in his time and place and acceptable. The two changes here then imposed are contrary to every spiritual tradition. They are not so contrary to the abusive idol based traditions though which was all over the map when it came to women and slaves.

Your household God was a simple license to be a household tyrant.

Quite bluntly, Mohammed chose to adopt barbarism when he was put to the test and applied 'dualism' to square the philosophical circle. He was in pursuit of revenge. His was the archetypal test that Christ passed and he failed.

Islam is facing its true Armageddon today because modernism is grinding it down. Modernism is in fact impossible unless the family engages the women and educates them. An educated woman will soon work to break the bonds of the Stockholm Syndrome.

In the short sighted present, we see and experience the pain but not the trend lines or even the inevitability. We can actively speed the process up but that may not even be necessary. The Arab spring ended social stability in the Islamic world forever. Every civil war and every protest is grinding down the ideology of submission.

The truth may be that these populations need to ripped back and forth internally until they emerge out the other side as a modern people. Whatever the case, Islam itself is doomed unless they utterly cleanse the religion of Mohammed's conversion to barbarism on the road to Mecca.

Mohammed’s Greatest Discovery

Kenneth Roberts, Associate Writer

http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/mohammeds-greatest-discovery

What causes a Muslim woman to honor-kill the children she has borne and raised? The explanation is ‘the Stockholm Syndrome’. It is one of the secret keys of political Islam and Mohammed’s greatest discovery.

The Stockholm syndrome or ‘capture bonding’ is a psychological paradox in which hostages develop empathy and positive feelings towards their captors, even to the point of adopting the captor’s oppressive ideology. One would expect captives to experience resentment and hatred towards an abuser, but that is not what occurs in the Stockholm syndrome.

Rather, the Stockholm syndrome takes hold in a few days as a result of captors performing small acts of kindness towards their doomed captives. The threat of certain death in contrast with kind gestures is thought to bring about the syndrome. The confused captive soon begins to identify with the cruel psyche of the captor in order to survive.

This push-pull dynamic of terror alternating with moments of relative benevolence produces this delusion in the mind of the captive. The captive then begins to believe the far-fetched justifications for brutality and murder that bend the minds of her or his terrorist captors.

The Stockholm syndrome is a severe form of a psychological phenomenon known as dissociation. It is the mind's survival mechanism, the way trauma victims convince themselves that "this isn't happening". Mohammed discovered it by accident.

Why ‘Greatest Discovery’

The discovery of the Stockholm syndrome changed Mohammed’s life. Before discovering the Stockholm syndrome, Mohammed preached religion for 13 years and collected about 150 followers. After his discovery of capture bonding, Mohammed’s political movement grew exponentially.

How did Mohammed’s great discovery occur? It began with a problem.

Omar’s Revelations

After leaving Mecca, Mohammed’s small, impoverished movement began to pick up ruffians to assist in pillaging the Meccans. Mohammed had previously been living in a polite, middle class, business environment. He and his followers were not used to the rough, rude manners of the pillaging ‘Ansaris’ (auxiliaries) that Mohammed had hired in exchange for a share of booty on his vengeful raids against the Meccans. Even the manners of Ansari women were rough and insubordinate. The women of Mohammed’s group began to pick up the highly assertive manners of the Ansari women. At first, Mohammed took no notice, but Omar bin Khattab did. Omar pushed Mohammed to receive a revelation from Allah.

Allah soon sent Mohammed an eternal revelation that men should beat their wives into submission. Were these original Muslim women beaten ‘lightly’ as recommended by modern mullahs? Apparently not. Aisha (Mohammed’s preteen bride) later said, “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.” (Bukhari 7:72:715)

Veiling and Isolation: Ingredients of Stockholm Syndrome

Veiling is another important contributor to the Islamic Stockholm syndrome. Veiling causes isolation from perspectives other than those of the captor.

Veiling came about when Omar yet again provoked a crisis, this time by following Muslim women to the privies. Omar noted that free Muslim women, if left unveiled, could not be distinguished from unveiled slaves. Since Mohammed permitted his men to ‘molest’ slaves, Omar demanded action “…as he desired eagerly that the verses of al-hijab may be revealed. So Allah revealed the verses of "al-Hijab" (Sahih Bukhari 1.14.148). Allah swiftly gave an eternal command about veiling, so that married women (including Omar’s wives) could no longer be ‘misidentified’ as kafirs and ‘molested’ by jihadists (Koran 33.59). According to Allah, unveiled women don’t get protection from rape.

Mohammed’s Prisoners

By limiting women’s independence of movement and making them indistinguishable one from another, veiling produces permanent isolation of women, a necessary condition for the Stockholm syndrome. The combination of isolation, beating and the veil turn Muslim women into passive, isolated, malleable non-persons. Muslim women live in a permanent state of dissociation and denial.

Because of Omar, the freedom of Muslim women has not increased at all in the last 1400 years, while everywhere else women’s rights have steadily evolved. Muslim women are still restricted to a form of house arrest as ‘domestic animals’ or ‘prisoners’, forced to interact only with their husbands and children (read ‘Mohammed’s Final Sermon’).

Choosing Compliance as an Alternative to Death

As the Stockholm syndrome takes hold, victims perceive they can either resist the perpetrator and meet certain death or they can comply and hope to live. The threat of certain death is a necessary factor in the Stockholm syndrome. Islam provides this permanent threat to women through the eternally existing Koran, Mohammed’s Sunna (perfect example) and sacred Sharia law.

No Islamic doctrine depends on a single verse, but on the Koran, Mohammed’s example and the canonical decisions of Islamic jurists. They create a three-dimensional picture of conduct that all Muslims must follow. Tragically, Islamic law provides broad loopholes for the honor killing of women.

The Koran says that if a Muslim woman obeys her male owner after a beating, no further action should be taken. The words ‘take no further action’ (Koran 4.34) are highly significant, since they imply that actions beyond beating may be taken, perhaps mutilation, perhaps starvation or death through honor killing. The choice of ‘further action’ is up to the male owner of the chattels. Modern mullahs often try to tone this down for Western audiences, but such moderation is not in foundational Islam. Koran 4.15 & 34 offer the basis for honor killing of women, since a husband needn’t feed a woman if her performance is unsatisfactory. She may be locked up and starved in her home.

Mohammed’s sacred example approves of a blind man who murders the mother of his children because she blasphemed Mohammed.

Sharia law also makes ample room for honor killing of women by omitting any punishment for the murderer of an apostate or the murderer of disobedient children or grandchildren. In the context of cousin marriage, Sharia leaves the door open to the honor killing of women with the blessing of the couple’s common grandparents (Reliance of the Traveller, o1.2, 1-5). Such honor killing is perfectly legal under Sharia, there being no punishment for it.

Honor killing is eternally permitted (though not commanded) in Islam. Such violence against women is part of jihad, the ‘struggle’ to force women and ‘others’ to submit without resistance to Muslim males.

Dhimmitude: a Captivity Contract

Dhimmis capitulate to Islamic rule. Captive Muslim women (as well as entire captive nations) are given the stark choice of being beaten (or dead) prisoners…or living, compliant semi-slaves to Islam. Since it is difficult to endure the despair of permanent captivity, Islam’s captives dissociate and ‘voluntarily’ choose compliance. This condition of surrender to Islam is called ‘dhimmitude’. When entire kafir nations submit to Islamic supremacism, they become pacified kafirs or ‘dhimmis’ under a humiliating ‘dhimma’ (protection) agreement. Nevertheless, if dhimmis resist their Muslim overlords even a little, they are deemed to have broken their contract of ‘protection’ and they revert to being unprotected ‘kafirs’ or ‘harbis’ who must be ‘fought’.

Sharia’s logic is that a Muslim woman who resists her owner has become an apostate from Islam, a ‘kafir’ or even a ‘harbi’ who may lawfully be murdered, since she has abandoned the rules of Islam. Under Sharia, no blood indemnity is required in the murder of an apostate, so killing defiant women is permitted. This is easily done with the consent of the parents or grandparents in a cousin marriage.

A majority of Muslim women actually marry a first cousin, so family-directed violence against women is rife in Islam. Cousin marriage places a secure sociological noose around the majority of Muslim women. Thanks to Sharia law and cousin marriage, Muslim women are Mohammed’s prisoners having no escape from violence and death.

Jihad-and-hegira (attack-and-retreat) is the third ‘essential doctrine’ (usul ud-deen) in Islam. This push-pull dynamic, applied against women, produces Islam’s Stockholm syndrome, forcing women to submit to men. Compliant women in turn create compliant families in a compliant, monocultural Muslim society.

Muslims instinctively recognize jihad-and-hegira, a dualistic pattern that allows Muslims in stages to be both militant, then conciliatory. Jihad and hegira are opposite ends of one swing or, if you will, two phases of one cycle. Militant jihad prepares the way for conciliatory ‘peaceful Islam’. ‘Peaceful Islam’ then sets up jihad/holy warfare. In this manner, Islam ratchets itself forward, just as a reaper advances into a field, cutting wheat with the forward-and-back, swinging motion of a scythe.

Dualistic Jihad-and-Hegira creates Stockholm Syndrome

Muslims instinctively expect jihadic violence to set up the conditions for conversion to ‘peaceful Islam’ (and so it does), but the ‘miracle’ they perceive is actually the Stockholm syndrome. An example from the Sira illustrates this point:

“Mas’ud leapt upon Sunayna, one of the Jewish merchants with whom his family had social and commercial relations and killed him. The Muslim’s brother complained, saying, ‘Why did you kill him? You have much fat in you belly from his charity.’ Mas’ud answered, ‘By Allah, had Muhammad ordered me to murder you, my brother, I would have cut off your head.’ Whereupon the brother said, ‘Any religion that can bring you to this is indeed wonderful!’ And he accepted Islam.” (Ishaq: 369)

This counterintuitive story from the Sira illustrates how terrorism and the startling threat of fratricide lead to Islamic conversion. After the carnage of 9-11, Muslims around the world claimed without evidence that there was an increase in conversions to Islam. Muslims sincerely believed the viciousness of 9-11 had led to a miraculous admiration for Islam, rather than revulsion. This is a telltale sign that Muslims unconsciously recognize the Stockholm syndrome.

However, victims of the Stockholm syndrome are unaware they have been programmed to endorse violence. Muslims themselves, and their victims, become dissociated through the ratcheting motion of jihad-and-hegira.

Kafirs need to recognize that militant jihadists (what politicians call ‘Muslim extremists’) and ‘nice Muslims’ (i.e. ‘moderate Muslims’) are simply opposite ends of Islam’s bipolarity…jihad-and-hegira…rather two different kinds of Muslim. Muslims shift easily between the two poles.
From Submissives to Co-perpetrators

Jihad-and-hegira is classic Islamic dualism. Dualism explains most of Islam. In dualism, there are unequal pairs in which one side must submit to the other. In the Stockholm syndrome, there is a dominator and a submissive. In Islam, women always submit to a man. Under the permanent threat of execution sanctioned by Allah in the Koran and sacred Sharia law, Islam’s unwilling female victims are transformed into willing codependents and active co-perpetrators with the jihadists.

Gendercide embedded in Sharia Law

Islamic male supremacism is embedded in the eternally valid words of Mohammed. He said that women are mentally and spiritually inferior to men, that they may be controlled by their husbands by beating them and by isolating them. Muslim husbands even have the right to honor kill their wives under Koran 4.34: “Then if they obey you, take no further action against them.”

The choice of ‘further action’ is up to the male owner of the chattels. Daughters and granddaughters may be honor killed under Koran 18.81 and Sharia law (ref. o1.1-4, ‘The Reliance of the Traveller’). In many Islamic countries, honor killings are not punished with severity, if they are punished at all.

Mullahs living in Western countries sometimes claim that honor killing is ‘un-Islamic’; however, here it is clearly allowed in Sharia law. What is left unsaid in Sharia’s murder loophole is more important than what is said, because murder is morally reprehensible and the mullahs need plausible deniability.

Muslim women realize honor killing is a valid part of Islam, since it is eternally approved by Allah/Mohammed and by Sharia. Muslim women also accept that they have half the value of a man and that their entire body is a shameful sexual organ (‘awra’) that must be concealed by veils. They accept that the male head of the family is authorized under Sharia to be judge, jury and executioner within his family in the matter of honor killings. Muslim women are sociologically isolated through cousin marriage, so they accept there is nothing they can do about their lot but submit. Even so, thousands of Muslim women commit suicide every year in order to escape from Islam.

In Islam, women are ‘prisoners’ and ‘domestic animals’ of men. Noncompliant women may thus be culled in the same way a farmer culls rogue animals that exhibit behavioral problems.

Muslim males (and their female co-perpetrators) perceive honor killings as restoring family honor by removing an embarrassing behavioral problem.

Psychological Effect on Muslim Women

While jihadic violence is the initiating cause, the Stockholm syndrome is the psychological effect on Muslim women. Briefly put, jihad’s permanent, Allah-given threat of violence against women produces the astonishing psychological effect of cooperative victims.

One simple definition of jihad is the subjugation of women and ‘others’ using Mohammed’s methods. Mohammed’s methods implant the Stockholm syndrome in women.

Ideal female cooperation with the Muslim perpetrator is illustrated in Mohammed’s official biography, The Sira:

“When the apostle arrived at the home of his family he gave his sword to his daughter Fatima, saying, ‘Wash the blood from it, little one. By Allah, it has been true to me today.’ Ali, too, gave her his sword and said, ‘Take this and wash the blood from it. By Allah, it has been true to me today’. The name of the apostle’s sword was Dhul-Faqar (spine-splitter).” (Ishaq, Chap.14, Uhud)

Mohammed’s daughter Fatima is the perfect example of the Stockholm syndrome: she prepares the weapons of jihad which will in turn subjugate and enslave more women, herself included. She is a co-dependent.

Psychologically, the Stockholm syndrome is a Muslim woman’s attempt to escape from the despair of lifelong incarceration in Islam. Muslim women may be beaten, locked up and even honor-killed. Muslim women accept this abusive relationship because Allah eternally commands it in the Koran, as well as Mohammed in his final sermon. Muslim women give consent to men keeping them as ‘prisoners’ and ‘domestic animals’.

Mohammed’s chauvinistic final commands contained in his final sermon may never be abrogated, so Muslim women cannot be liberated until the end of time.

With 600 million female captives, Islam is a case of the Stockholm syndrome on an industrial scale. Muslim women cooperate in their own captivity because it is Allah’s will that they do so, even to the point of participating in the honor killing of other female relatives or their own children.
Co-perpetrators in Honor Killing

Victims of the Stockholm syndrome accept the violent ideology of their captors. They accept that the captors have the right to take hostages and even murder them in the name of their cause. As the Stockholm syndrome deepens, hostages finally become true believers and even co-conspirators as was observed in the famous case of Patty Hearst.

In Islam, all women are permanent hostages who may be honor killed by their male guardians at any moment. The justification for honor killing comes from Allah’s eternally valid words commanding the murder of apostates who leave Islam (K.18.81).

A Muslim, who refuses to be compliant to Islamic theocracy, becomes a guilty non-Muslim kafir, one who ‘hides’ the fact that Mohammed is right.

Islam’s non-compliant women have become kafirs and traitors to Islam who must be executed. Under the draconian rules of Sharia law, no blood compensation is paid to a family in the killing of an apostate from Islam nor is there any Sharia punishment for the killer (Reliance of the Traveller, o8.4). This means that murdering an apostate is normative Islam. This permanent death threat to all Muslims who rebel —and especially to all women—is the key component of Islam’s Stockholm syndrome.

A Muslim woman has three options: 1) embrace the Stockholm syndrome, 2) wait to be honor-killed or 3) flee Islam (suicide is one way of fleeing Islam).

Tragically, many victims of Islamic honor-killings have first been lulled into a sense of false security by their captors before being betrayed and honor-killed by them. Giving false assurances to victims and luring them into a trap is the sacred example of Mohammed in the Hadiths and Sira.

As lifelong prisoners of men, Muslim women are Islam’s first victims. After succumbing to the Stockholm syndrome, Muslim women endorse Mohammed’s brutal methods. The more they dissociate and identify with Mohammed, the more women act as co-dependents and co-perpetrators.

In spite of thousands of Islamic honor killings each year, Western Feminists have shown little interest in addressing Islam’s industrial-scale misogyny. Western Feminists have instead become pacified dhimmis, unconsciously embracing Islam’s Stockholm syndrome and abetting the perpetrators, rather than live under the constant anxiety of jihad. By their silence, Western Feminists have given up the fight against male supremacism and submitted to Islam.

A Successful Program of Intimidation

The stability of Islam depends on its complete control of women.

The permanent threat of death for non-compliance is the key to understanding Islam’s great psychological control over women and dhimmis. This ‘living under the avalanche’ creates the Stockholm syndrome which gives Islam its enduring stability and power.

The Stockholm syndrome is arguably Mohammed’s greatest discovery and the key to Islam’s success. Mohammed and his followers thought the Stockholm syndrome was a true miracle! But it is no miracle.

Fear transforms Islamic society through the unending threat of violence and death. The Stockholm syndrome is the psychological heart of Islam.

Urban Energy Use Impacts Global Climate

It turns out that urban heat output is far more effective than originally thought and it certainly is in a position to be leveraged by the jet stream just as El Nino is leveraged.  That is still a long was from a complete answer.  That will take decades of observation and analysis to make clear.

It is also the one factor that has hugely modified our temperature collecting protocol and makes our historical data pretty dicey since it is impossible to properly correct with anything other than a fudge factor.

We discussed this several years ago and reviewed quite a bit of heated material.  My sense is that it is part of an envelop of interacting variables that far too difficult to safely resolve into a useful predictive tool set.  Since then we have seen global temperatures flat line for fifteen years completely delinking from the CO2 hypothesis which was fuzzy anyway.  However it flat lined at a warmer state so the present plateau is a plausible half degree above the prior state.  All this fits nicely with out Holocene expectations after our recovery from the Little Ice Age.

It is warmer and that is good news.  The bad news is that it could now get cooler or worse, precipitously cooler as it is wont to do.  If one of my conjectures were to hold up, we are a few centuries away from that.

Study finds energy use in cities has global climate effects

by Staff Writers

Tallahassee FL (SPX) Feb 01, 2013

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Study_finds_energy_use_in_cities_has_global_climate_effects_999.html

The heat generated by everyday energy consumption in metropolitan areas is significant enough to influence the character of major atmospheric circulation systems, including the jet stream during winter months, and cause continental-scale surface warming in high latitudes, according to a trio of climate researchers that includes Ming Cai, a professor in Florida State University's Department of Meteorology.

Led by Guang Zhang, a research meteorologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, the scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change that waste heat released in major cities in the Northern Hemisphere causes as much as 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) of continental-scale winter warming in high latitudes of the North America and Eurasian continents. They added that this effect helps to explain the disparity between actual observed warming in the last half-century and the amount of warming predicted by computer models that only include anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols.

The study, "Energy Consumption and the Unexplained Winter Warming Over Northern Asia and North America," appears in online editions of the journal on Jan. 27. The study was funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office.

Cai, Zhang and Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., considered the energy consumption - from heating buildings to powering vehicles - that generates waste heat release. The world's total energy consumption in 2006 was 16 terawatts (one terawatt equals 1 trillion watts). Of that, 6.7 terawatts were consumed in the 86 metropolitan areas considered in this study.

"The burning of fossil fuel not only emits greenhouse gases but also directly effects temperatures because of heat that escapes from sources like buildings and cars," Hu said.

The release of waste heat is different from energy that is naturally distributed in the atmosphere, the researchers noted. The largest source of heat, solar energy, warms the Earth's surface. Atmospheric circulations distribute that energy from one region to another. Human energy consumption distributes energy that remained dormant and sequestered for millions of years, mostly in the form of oil or coal. Though the amount of human-generated energy is a small portion of that transported by nature, it is highly concentrated in urban areas.

"The world's most populated metropolitan areas, which also have the highest rates of energy consumption, are along the east and west coasts of the North American and Eurasian continents, underneath the most prominent atmospheric circulation troughs and ridges," Cai said. "The concentrated and intensive release of waste energy in these areas causes a noticeable interruption to normal atmospheric circulation systems, leading to remote surface temperature changes far away from the regions where the waste heat is generated."

The authors report that the influence of urban heat can widen the jet stream at the extratropics, or area outside the tropics. They add that the heating is not uniform. Partially counterbalancing it, the changes in major atmospheric systems cool areas of Europe by as much as 1 degree C, with much of the temperature decrease occurring in the fall.

The study does not address whether the urban heating effect disrupts atmospheric weather patterns or plays a role in accelerating global warming, though Zhang said drawing power from renewable sources such as solar or wind provides a societal benefit in that it does not add net energy into the atmosphere.

Zhang said the climate impact this research studied is distinct from the so-called urban heat island effect, an increase in the warmth of cities compared to unpopulated areas caused by land use changes. Such island effects are mainly a function of the heat collected and re-radiated by pavement, buildings and other urban features.

"What we found is that energy use from multiple urban areas collectively can warm the atmosphere remotely, thousands of miles away from the energy consumption regions," Zhang said. "This is accomplished through atmospheric circulation change."

They also find observational evidence indicates that the waste heat can be the "missing forcing" that would account for the discrepancy between the observed temperature change and that is simulated in computer models forced only by anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols. They suggest that the influence of energy consumption should be considered, in addition to heat-trapping gases and aerosols, as necessary anthropogenic factors in computer models to predict the future climate.

Uping the Steaks

This reminds me that the real revolution in cattle has not yet begun.  But this shows us that it is real.  This shows us that industrial beef cannot compete with grain fed beef.  What has kept it out of the market has been costly distribution.  Today, the internet allows the farmer himself to become the direct distributor.  My point is that farm gate pricing can go head to head with industrial beef so long as the farmer processes the meat right up to packaging.

The abattoir is quite happy to slaughter and hang the meat for a fee.  That way he does not tie up his capital in inventory.  The butcher called in will also do it all for a fee.  Most important is that two necessary markups are avoided all related to satisfying the initial capital paid to the farmer.

Far more important is that the farmer controls the product directly to the consumer and can vouch for it.

What the producer is left with are selling costs and that has all changed with the internet and the acceptance of private labeling.  Meat is actually a perfect product for farm based marketing.  First it can be frozen if unsold and it can cut to order in front of the customer at the farm or as packaged product at local stores.

In this manner it becomes possible to keep the premium low.  My friend who operates turkeys supplied packaged cuts and sausages that competed nicely in fresh butchered case.

Upping the steaks: How grass-fed beef is reshaping ag and helping the planet

By Christopher Weber

http://grist.org/food/upping-the-steaks-how-grass-fed-beef-is-reshaping-ag-and-helping-the-planet/

Bartlett Durand is the rare local-food entrepreneur who has no trouble turning a profit: Durand’s Black Earth Meats processes and sells grass-fed beef, and these days grass-fed beef sells like crazy.

Located near Madison, Wis., Black Earth is an abattoir, an old-fashioned butchery containing everything from a slaughterhouse to a retail store. Its sales have doubled in four out of the last five years. Durand expects them to jump again this year, from $6 million to $10 million. Orders have poured in so swiftly that, in addition to artisan butchers, Black Earth had to hire a “chef liaison” to translate orders into cow anatomy.

“Chefs have been trained in the box beef codes and don’t always know where the meat comes from on the animal,” Durand explains. “A chef will say, ‘I want a filet de round.’ My butcher will say, ‘What the hell is that?’”

Grass-fed beef, like “filet de round,” is a concept that eludes people outside the beef industry. So a little background is in order.

In the months after birth, a calf drinks the rich milk of its mother. Once weaned, it might be lucky enough to follow mom around the pasture for a little while, munching grass — but sooner or later, it is customarily sent to a feedlot to be fattened on grain, a process somewhat like tossing an animal on a full-tilt assembly line. Cows left to fatten in the field are the ones that become “grass-fed beef.” They gain the same weight, but more slowly, taking up to 14 months more, and yield a leaner beef. Some farmers of grass-fed beef are purists and leave the cow in the pasture till the day it dies. Others “cheat” by giving the cow a month or two of grain at the end, but in the comfort of the barnyard, not a 10,000-head feedlot. Durand sells both kinds.

Durand is a trim 45-year-old who has deep roots in agriculture. His grandfather was a geographer who studied milksheds. “I was a vegetarian in college because of how meat was raised and handled,” Durand recalls. When he married into a farm family, he started helping out and ultimately quit his job as a lawyer to pursue food full time.

In the $79-billion beef industry, his company is miniscule. Four giant companies control 80 percent of the beef market. “A really big kill for us would be 50 cows in one day,” says Durand. “A small packinghouse processes 1,500 to 3,000 a day.”

Yet his business has the customers to grow. Black Earth buys cows from 78 farmers. To keep up with demand, Durand must convince them to raise more cows on grass alone. He must also lure new farmers to the field. And farmers, though intrigued, are justifiably wary. Is grass-fed beef a fad among chefs and yuppies destined to peter out, or a major new market?

Folks like Durand are betting on the latter. They believe that grass-fed beef — which cuts out both feedlots and the resource-intensive practice of raising grain just to feed cows — can catalyze a great change in American agriculture.

As Fred Kirschenmann, a sustainable farmer and noted agricultural scholar, says: “Putting cattle back on pasture will be the beginning of more resilient, less energy-intensive farming systems that are more likely to survive in our future of higher energy costs, unstable climates, and depleted fresh water and mineral resources.”

Risky business

Because of the farmer’s extra time and investment, grass-fed beef is intrinsically more expensive than feedlot beef. That extra cost gets passed along to consumers. In my neighborhood supermarket, I found conventional round steak on offer for $5.49 a pound. The same cut of steak from Black Earth went for $13 a pound.

Such premium prices represent an economic opportunity for farmers, but only if they survive a risky transition to what remains a rarified, niche market. Tom Martin of Mountain Lane Farm in Wauzeka, Wis., switched to grass-feeding in 2001. More than a decade later, he is still learning its finer points. He has a herd of 125 cows and sells his beef at farmers markets and out of his home freezer.

For Martin, both farming and marketing grass-fed beef have proven difficult. “It’s a work in progress and a learning process,” he explains. “With grass-feeding, there’s a lot of science, but there’s some art to it, too.” For instance, grass-fed farmers must learn to “listen” for the cows to tell them when it’s time to rotate to a fresh pasture.

“Not knowing where the next check is coming from is a little dicey,” he continues. “It’s been a struggle to make the relationships. I feel like locally, people still look at the price and say, ‘That’s too much.’”

Greener pastures

Like other farmers I talked to, Martin made this economic gamble in part because he values the environmental benefits of grass-feeding.

Grazing pastures provide habitat for lots of creatures, not just cows, from big bluestem to prairie chickens. When managed properly, they can store carbon [PDF] in much the same way that a forest does. Finishing cows on the range eliminates the need for concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, which sully water quality fromlittle creeks all the way down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Moreover, a well-managed, ecologically diverse rangeland holds up in drought conditions, according to Greg Judy, a farmer who grass-feeds 300 cows in Rucker, Mo. “We’re going to have enough grass in the fields to graze all winter long,” he says, “even though we had no rain for 130 days this past summer.”

Some folks will protest that the U.S. lacks the land area to switch the beef industry to grass-finishing. While there’s some truth in this critique, it misses the larger point: The beef industry and American agriculture as a whole have a lot to gain from rethinking their approach to land use, according to Fred Kirschenmann.

“We have to remember that raising animals in confinement means we have to raise lots of corn and soybeans to feed them,” says Kirschenmann. “A lot of that land could be used for grazing on perennials and raising alfalfa for forages, which would have significant ecological benefits.”

To hear some apostles of grass tell it, though, grass-fed beef begins and ends with taste. Todd Churchill, a farmer who owns Thousand Hills Cattle Company in Cannon Falls, Minn., and dresses like an extra from The Magnificent Seven, is emphatic on this point. “All the intellectual arguments about grass-fed beef, animal welfare, and environmental impacts — those are great stories, and they’re true. But the only purpose they serve is to get someone to try our product for the first time.”

“This is about producing an eating experience that is so incredible that people will pay more for it,” Churchill says.

But by that logic, even the most immaculately cultivated grass-fed steak becomes an all-or-nothing taste-test that hordes of Americans will fail because they grew up on the uniform, greasy taste of feedlot burgers.

The cows that become those burgers taste the same because, from one feedlot to another, they eat the same thing: industrial feed made from grains and soy. On the other hand, the grasses on rangeland can vary quite a bit, making grass-fed beef much more heterogeneous and thus something of an acquired taste.

“Some people will say it tastes a little gamey,” says Durand. “You may get an occasional wild flavor in there, a little extra flavor. This is what beef was prior to 1960. Once people understand that’s what it tastes like, they love it.”

Beefing up production

No one keeps reliable statistics on the production of the grass-fed beef. One agricultural consultant estimates that in 2009, grass-fed netted $380 million — or 0.005 percent of the total U.S. beef industry.

The hot sales of grass-fed have piqued the interest of cash-starved farmers. Cheap corn is part of what makes feedlots so profitable, and right now, because of the drought, corn prices are sky high. As Churchill notes, “I’ve had several farmers in the last month call and say, ‘I’m tired of losing $100 a head putting my cattle in a feedlot. Tell me about your model.’”

Farmers are drawn to small, boutique beef companies like Thousand Hills or Black Earth because of their established brand and clients. Yet they must make significant changes in their operations for the partnership to succeed.

Black Earth, for instance, refers prospective farmers to an agricultural consultant to help them through the transition. The consultant may recommend fortifying pastures with native grasses, reducing the herd size, adopting new grazing patterns, moving fences, or all of the above.

Durand offers tutorials as needed. “We had a farmer come in who had been growing conventional steers with corn,” he recalls. “He brought us his first grass-fed steers, and they were poor quality. He took them out of the pasture too early. We had to really work with him on different types of forage crops he could grow for the cows. It takes a farmer who will listen and respond.”

“They have to think differently,” says Greg Judy. “There has to be some education teaching them how to stockpile forages and plan through a drought. There’s a lot of management to it.”

Farmers are expert managers — but as such, they tend to eschew big risks. And this is the conundrum that haunts the grass-fed beef industry: Do farmers believe in grass-fed enough to bet the farm?

Ayahuasca Therapy With Graham Hancock

I suspect that Ayahuasa therapy will become a mainstay of psychotherapy rather quickly now. The momentum is almost visible out there. It is not addictive and it has been shown to be profoundly transformitive for victims of mental illness. Thus I suspect that this item will prove quite useful in preparing oneself for such a project.

The drug itself is a natural brew and is not addictive. Critically it has a tradition in place to provide reasonable guidance and even available practitioners able to assist in interpretation. We are not starting with a blank slate and complete ignorance. It reminds me directly of the early days of acupuncture.

Graham Hancock is an experienced observer and is not suffering from any issues, thus his effort here tells us what most can expect. A person with issues, does need an experienced guide to assist. The good news is that the empirical data makes this very promising. It appears possible to objectify issues in such a way that they can leave one's life.

This could be a real curative protocol for mental illness generally.

This is the third of the series of articles I am posting about Ayahuasca sessions I’m presently participating in here in Brazil. Ayahuasca is a visionary brew that marries leaves containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT) with a monamine oxidase inhibitor contained in the Ayahuasca vine itself; these two primary ingredients are cooked together in water to produce a foul-tasting but highly psychoactive beverage that has been drunk for at least three millennia by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest, who value it as a portal to the spirit world. In the past decade it has begun to acquire a global reputation and has been described as “twenty years of psychotherapy in one night.” For those who missed the previous articles in this series I’m pasting them in at the end of this one as they provide context and background for what I have to say here. Meanwhile, since Ayahuasca is a potent psychedelic, and since its effects have a profound impact on consciousness, I’d like to share this short compilation video (in which I make a brief appearance at the end) on the subject of psychedelics and consciousness that was recently drawn to my attention by another poster here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3shL389L2EY.

So our latest session took place on the night of Monday 28 January into the small hours of Tuesday 29 January. This time I drank 80 mililitres of the brew in a single cup – as against three doses of 25 mililitres each on the previous session. With too small a dose of Ayahuasca it is perfectly possible to have no experience at all; with too large a dose it is possible to have an experience that is completely overwhelming – perhaps far more so that you would like. It is not an exact science and it is complicated further by differences in one’s own body chemistry from day to day that can result in widely varying effects.

I’m here together with a group of more than a dozen people and, as in previous retreats for serious work with Ayahuasca that I’ve participated in over the last ten years it is noticeable how close and trusting of one another we have become. The Ayahuasca experience has a very special way of doing this – of opening the heart and breaking down barriers so that you feel intense empathy and a deep connection with others at a level that is near to impossible in the often angry, often competitive, frequently loveless hustle and bustle and grind of daily life. It is a great privilege to be able to know this empathy and connection and reminds me that all of life could be like this should we consciously set out and be willing to do the work make it so. It is not oil, or water, or mineral deposits, or food, or land, or any other economic resource that is truly scarce or precious or “running out” in this bountiful Earth of ours. What we are short of as a global species, what we seem reluctant to manifest, what we are failing to express and act out, is simply love, and in a way this should be the easiest problem in the world for us to solve – for it is within the capacity and the power of each and every one of us to give love if we choose to do so.

It is SUCH a good feeling just to lay down the barriers of suspicion and fear and self interest and trust others completely and know that the trust is shared and that the love you put out is the love you get back.

So, we all gathered round and raised our cups, mine containing 80 mililitres of Ayahuasca, and thanked the spirits and the ancestors for giving us this blessing, and drank. I then went to the bathroom and washed the acrid taste of the brew from my mouth before sitting down on my mattress with my back propped against the wall of our large ceremonial room surrounded by the rest of our group. Our shaman turned off the lights, and put on a CD of the sounds of nature – the ocean, rainfall, birdcalls – and through the open windows came a soft, cooling breeze. Stillness descended like a blessing and for the next half hour or so we all simply sat there staring into the darkness, thinking our thoughts. It is best to sit up at first – some prefer to sit up the whole night – as it allows swifter and more efficient digestion of the brew than can be achieved lying down. Nausea and vomiting commonly accompany the consumption of Ayahuasca but it is a really good idea not to purge for at least an hour to allow full absorption of the medicine from the gut into the bloodstream. Vomit before the hour is up and you will likely need to drink some more brew.

Mercifully as I have become more experienced with Ayahuasca during the past ten years I find that I vomit less and less, and usually not at all – although I do still suffer episodes of nausea.

After 45 minutes I felt I was ready to lie down and stretched out on my mattress. Music is a constant accompaniment of our sessions here – the shaman sensing intuitively the needs and mood and individual journeys of the members of the group and adjusting the playlist and his own instrumentals and vocals accordingly. He practices within the Peruvian, Shipibo tradition (though these ceremonies are taking place in Brazil) and at the point where I lay down he had begun to sing a series of Icaros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icaro), traditional songs that provide an excellent waveguide into the profound meditative state that Ayahuasca can bring, or, equally Ariadne’s threads that can help to lead us out of labyrinths we might prefer not to find ourselves in.

These days I rarely go into an Ayahuasca session without some fear and this has much to do with a terrifying session on pure (smoked) DMT that I had in the United States in 2011 (described here:http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG3.php). The Ayahuasca experience is not the same as the DMT experience, even though DMT is the primary active ingredient of Ayahuasca, but sometimes a strong Ayahuasca journey will plunge me squarely back into what I think of as DMT space. I feel vulnerable there, sometimes unprotected by the kindly, healing spirit of the vine, and my fear derives from this sense of raw exposure to elemental intelligences.

I suppose an hour had passed when I first became definitely aware of the effects of the brew in the form of intense visuals, seen best (even in the darkness) with my eyes closed. They took shape at first, as they often do, as swirling patterns of deep, richly-saturated colours, but almost from the first moment they had the slightly menacing undertones of my 2011 DMT trip. How can I describe them? Patches of colour all joined to one another, here purple, here ochre, here a strange, deep brownish-red, here a luminescent green, here blue – each patch about the size of a human hand and shaped into oblique, rhomboidal geometric forms, and all joined together in a meaningful swirling dance. This was not simply the entertaining pattern flow of a kaleidoscope. The patterns radiated intelligence, sentience, intent, and I felt my fear rise up another notch and at the same time I exercised my will and said to myself “I will not be afraid; I will journey into this without hesitation and see where it leads me.” As soon as I had made that decision I felt my fear subside and I journeyed deeper and then out of the patterns, and – formed out of them – appeared the beautiful, glittering, sinuous form of a serpent seeming to radiate compassion and concern for me and I sensed the presence of the great spirit, mother goddess of our planet, who I think of as Mother Ayahuasca, and I felt her healing energy. She worked on me for some time, swirling around my body, fixing parts of me that were broken, right down to the deepest level of my DNA and of my psyche.

At this point it was all extremely gentle. I saw faces that I did not recognize. A great bird, a raptor of some kind, took wing amidst a nimbus of supernal light. The serpent became a jaguar. And still I was not afraid and I began to think – well, this is going to be fine. My 80 mililitre cup was just right, just enough to enter healing visionary space but not so much that the visions would overwhelm me and swallow me up. And as is often the case with Ayahuasca the visions came and went in waves – sometimes quite intense, sometimes falling away almost to nothingness.

I drifted into thoughts about my relationship with my wife Santha, how I am so blessed to have her in my life, how she is in fact a goddess who has incarnated in human form and how incredibly privileged I am that she permits me to go through this incarnation with her and learn from her how to be a better human being. And I realized how so much of our life together has been very selfishly about ME, about my work, my creativity, my concerns, and it was brought home to me with the force of a revelation that the next stage of our partnership has to be about HER and that my role now is to be of service to her and help her in every way possible to express and manifest her own wonderful creative gifts and to fulfill herself.

I spent some time in the presence of our children – Santha and I have six children between us, all young adults now, and they are a tremendous blessing to us and the light and joy of our lives. And I thought about how wonderful and full of love they all are, and what good people they are, and I reflected on the struggles and challenges they face, and the elegant, generous spirit in which they are all maturing and developing and travelling their own journeys.

Next came thoughts about the state of the world. I found myself dwelling on the terrible, inhuman way the state of Israel behaves towards the Palestinians and of that hideous wall that Israel has built, and about its constant aggressive seizure – in the name of God no less!! – of more and more land on which Palestinian families and communities have traditionally lived. The more power we have – and Israel has immense power – the more it is our responsibility to love and I realized that the great task facing Israel now, even though its people themselves feel threatened and fearful and unloved, is to desist forthwith all acts motivated by hatred and fear and to act instead with love and generosity towards all neighbouring peoples, to dismantle that abominable wall, to stop aggressively expanding settlements, and to carry the entire region forward into a new era based on trust and the mutual benefit of all. It will be difficult, incredibly difficult, and every attack on Israel by those communities that Israel has monstrously abused for so long will be used as an excuse and a justification for more acts of hate and cruelty by Israel itself, but the vicious cycle must be broken and as the most powerful player on the regional stage it falls to Israel to change the destructive, hateful, violent pattern that has been in place for so long. At first acts of love will be rejected, thrown back in Israel’s face, even punished, but love is giving, love is persistence, love is kind and if Israel adopts a policy based on love, and shows as much kindness and compassion towards non-Israelis – and concern for their needs and interests -- as it presently shows toward its own people, then little by little the injuries of the past will heal and a way will be found to bring peace and security to all humans, regardless of their creed, colour, ethnic origin or nationality, whose fate it is to live in that tortured region today.

It would be a good thing, I couldn’t help thinking, if every military leader, every religious fanatic, every president, every prime minister, every dictator presently exercising power in the world today were to be required to undergo ten sessions of Ayahuasca before being allowed to make a single other decision.

By this point in my journey my head seemed completely clear. I thought the visions had stopped. I gave thanks that nothing too terrifying had happened to me and I got up and walked around for a while. As I was walking, however, a new wave of visions descended on me like a storm and I retreated once again to my mattress where the next phase of my night’s journey began.

I was immediately in the presence of the entity I saw when I last smoked DMT in 2011 and who I think of as “the Trickster” or “the Magician” or “the Sorcerer” and whose aura, quite unlike that of Mother Ayahuasca, is entirely male. I do not know who this entity is or where he comes from. It is perfectly possible that he is simply one of the many transformations of Mother Ayhuasca herself – and indeed the healing female spirit that many of us experience through the brew is construed as male by a number of traditional cultures in the Amazon rainforest.

So there was the Trickster, and he was dancing, dancing, his face long and thin, severe and yet sensual, with steep, angled planes as though drawn by Aubrey Beardsley. And he wore a cloak of many colours made up of a patchwork of those same richly saturated rhomboidal forms I had seen earlier in the session. He made elaborate, skillful, elegant arm movements as though he held silver threads in each hand and was stretching these threads out and showing them to me, and it came to me that his dance was the dance of creation and that with each gesture and movement he was bringing reality into being – fabricating, generating and manifesting reality – and that in his dance some kind of immense cosmogenic power was at work.

My feelings of fear were very strong now, quite overwhelming and I wanted to flee, to run away from this scene, to open my eyes wide and stop the visions, but again I exercised my will, placed myself under control and stayed put and let this magnificent, terrifying, cosmogenic dance unfold before me. I could not banish the fear entirely but I began to realize that perhaps there is nothing to be afraid of here and then just as this became clear to me I was overtaken by a giant wave of nausea and had to shuffle round on my mattress and bring up my bucket to my face (we all have buckets) in case I would vomit.

In the event I didn’t vomit and after a few moments the nausea began to subside, and then Santha, who was beside me, suggested that we go out into the middle of the floor and dance. Sensing the change in mood our shaman began to play rhythmic, vital, energizing music and other couples and individuals joined us in the clear area of wooden floor at the centre of the room and I felt no pain whatsoever in my severely osteo-arthritic hip on which I am due to undergo surgery in April, and we danced and danced and were overtaken by joy and the celebration of the magnificent and generous and precious, precious gift of life.

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For those who missed the previous two articles in this series I paste them in below:

ARTICLE 1, SATURDAY 26 JANUARY:

Santha and I are in Brazil after a long flight cramped up in the back of a British Airways 747. The seats seem to have been designed like the medieval torture called “Little Ease” where it is impossible to find comfort in any position. I’m due to have my right hip replaced in April and spent the 12-hour journey in something approaching excruciating pain. What a relief to arrive into the Brazilian summer and be able to stretch my legs!

Now we’re at the retreat where I had the extraordinary experiences in October 2011 that I described here a few days ago in a status update (“Giving up the Green Bitch: Reflections on Cannabis, Ayahuasca and the Mystery of Plant Teachers”). In the coming weeks, together with our shaman and a group of a dozen other people, we will participate in a series of Ayahuasca sessions. As well as drinking the sacred Amazonian brew, and learning the lessons it has to teach me this time around, I will be presenting several talks to the group on various aspects of my work. The other presenter here is the renowned ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna, brother of the late, great Terence McKenna. I first got to know Dennis well during a lecture tour that we did together in Australia last year and am looking forward to renewing the acquaintance and to the further deep connection that shared journeys with Ayahuasca always bring. If you haven’t read it yet I urge you to get hold of a copy of Dennis’s new book, “The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss”, about his life with his remarkable brother Terence, see here: http://www.grahamhancock.com/promotions/McKennaD1/McKennaD1.php.

So yesterday we rested, relaxed and recovered from the long flights we’d all made to get here (the other participants come from as far afield as the Middle East, Australia, and the US). Today, Saturday, the work begins with the first all-night Ayahuasca session. I have some trepidation – as Dennis puts it anyone who approaches deep work with Ayahuasca without at least some trepidation doesn’t really know the brew. But I have made a sincere effort since October 2011 to implement the changes in my life and outlook that Mother Ayahuasca required of me (see here for the status update referred to above which I’ve now posted as an article on my website:

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG3.php).

I am hoping to be handled gently by Ayahuasca this time and to experience beautiful visions, healing, inspiration and love.

Above all love.

That, I know from long experience, is the essence of the intelligence behind the vine.

I’ll report back tomorrow.

• ARTICLE 2, SUNDAY 27 JANUARY:
  
  
  So, Santha and I are in Brazil for a series of sessions with Ayahuasca, the sacred visionary brew of the Amazon. “Ayahuasca” means “the Vine of the Dead” or “the Vine of Souls.” It is given this name for a number of very good reasons. One is that it can allow the experience of contact with those who have passed on. I make no claims here as to the reality status of that experience, although I do have an opinion. Another is that aspects of it are so similar to some of the well-known features of the near-death experience, notably a life-review, that some feel it may provide us with a dress-rehearsal for death itself and for whatever we may encounter when we pass beyond the veil. Again, while I have my own opinion I make no specific claims here as to the “reality” of such experiences. I give some further thoughts on this in my article “Giving up the Green Bitch” posted here some days ago as a status:
  http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG3.php
  
  Last night’s session was very mild, and for many in the group it was not visionary at all. This is sometimes the case with Ayahuasca; one should not go into a session with expectations of seamlessly convincing and overwhelming visions. Often the brew will give you these, but not always, and not reliably. Last night, however, there was an additional factor of uncertainty and this was that the maestros had provided a new batch of the brew that they believed to be very strong and which was indeed thicker and more syrupy than the brew we normally drink here in Brazil. It reminded me in its consistency of the very concentrated brew, sometimes with bits of plant matter floating in it, usually offered by Peruvian shamans (where, accordingly, rather small cups – about 25 mililiters -- are the norm). At our Brazilian retreat on the other hand it is the practise to offer a less concentrated brew but in larger doses and in past visits here I have frequently drunk cups of 100 or 150 and sometimes even 200 mililiters.
  
  
  Because last night’s brew was new, and was said to be strong, our shaman proposed cups of just 25 mililiters or less for each of us and we would then discover its strength, or otherwise, for ourselves. If it was not as strong as expected we could always drink a “booster” cup after an hour and a half or so.
  
  
  The effect was not strong and after 90 minutes almost the entire group queued up for a booster, again of 25 mililiters. Still in my case this had no – or almost no – effect and I began to contemplate a third cup. This is not an exact science and it is never good to be too eager with Ayahuasca. In other words you can go for a booster after experiencing no effect with the first cup only to discover that it was merely slow kicking in and that suddenly, with the booster, you have had more than you want. So I waited a while but when it was clear I was still not entering the Ayahuasca realm I did go for a third cup. So three cups, each of 25 mililiters, making 75 mililiters in total.
  
  
  There was no purging – i.e. (apologies for being graphic) neither I nor anyone else in the group vomited last night. This is most unusual although I have found as the years go by that I do purge far less than I used to when I started out. But within half an hour of drinking my third small cup I did gradually begin to enter visionary space. These visions were mild, and a little “flat” or two-dimensional by comparison with other fully-immersive visions I have experienced in the past. The visions were of intricate geometrical and cursive patterns presented as though on separate individual cards, but when I studied each card the patterns proved to be in movement and resolved into the forms of entities, rather scary in appearance, and I felt somewhat menaced. Go to Google Images, search “Codex Borgia” and/or “Codex Nuttal” and you may get some inkling of the atmosphere, if not the exact details, of these images. I felt myself to be in the presence of intelligence and I tried to focus on that intelligence, rather than be repelled by the menacing images and in due course moved on to the next stage of the journey in which I was filled by powerful feelings of empathy and compassion for my fellow human beings.
  
  
  These feelings began with reflections on the other members of our group who I had begun to get to know, and whose stories I had heard, over the past two days. Often in my daily life I become absorbed selfishly in my own immediate worries and concerns, certain problems and issues that are confronting me which seem to loom large, and matters that are causing me emotional or spiritual pain. I am incredibly privileged and live a blessed life yet still I find reasons to feel victimised or hard done by and sorry for myself! In an instant last night I was shown how ridiculous and self-indulgent and uncalled-for such feelings are as I reflected on what I knew of the difficulties and challenges, and real worries and pain that members of our group, in their own ways are confronting bravely and without complaint in their own lives. I thought of some cases in particular, the strength, the dignity, the good will, the cheerfulness in adversity, of certain individuals, and I felt myself brimming over with compassion and love and admiration for them. And it came home to me in a real and immediate way that each one of us here on earth, not only the members of the immediate group surrounding me in the Ayahuasca session, but every one of the billions of my fellow humans going through this incarnation in this time are bright and luminous individual flames of light – each with his or her own special gifts and creativity and imagination, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses – and every one of us faces challenges and difficulties, and ordeals and pain and is confronted daily by defining choices, some small, some momentous, that write the pages of the stories of our lives.
  
  
  And the only right response is gratitude, gratitude, gratitude to the universe for working the high magic that has made it possible for us to travel the path of human experience, and to learn and practice love.

Shamanism

Shamanism – Other Worlds – Ayahuasca Documentary (Video)

Direct USAF UFO Encounter Witness Report

What I do find interesting here is that a group of men who were not actively bound under the Official Secrets Act or its equivalent got to witness an interaction between an UFO and a team of military personnel. They even got to share the stories with their families without the knowledge of minders. They also knew better than to make noise.

Yet it also could be entirely made up in the here and now simply because we know all this now. However if the witness is for real and we have no reason to think otherwise, the independent confirmation gave him the faith to share this story.

There has been plenty of speculation and hard reports supporting a clandestine US alien collaboration that must produce events such as this. Particularly in the fifties when they were first aired and it was early days. Since then bases have been established and secrecy became easier to sustain.

Greenville AFB, Mississippi UFO / Alien Encounter

http://naturalplane.blogspot.ca/2013/02/just-facts-greenville-afb-ufo-alien.html

/20/1954: My uncle was an electronics specialist and a civilian employee at the Air Force base in Greenville, Mississippi in the mid 50s. One day some military authorities escorted him and several other civilian employees into a large aircraft hangar and ordered them to stay there until they were told they could come out. None of the mens questions about what was going on were answered. The military men closed the hangars doors and left. The men in the hanger hung around the area where the hangars doors came together, and they discovered they could peek outside and see what was going on. A disk shaped aircraft about 40 feet in diameter descended vertically and landed on the tarmac outside the hangar. Several men with cameras filmed the entire incident from an elevated scaffolding. Other cameramen stood on the ground. A door opened on the aircraft and a child-sized alien being walked down a short ramp. The alien used a hand-held computer to communicate with the military personnel. The aircraft was on tripod landing gear with wheels, and several men were ordered to pushed it into the hanger across the way. Once the ailen aircraft was inside the hanger, the men closed the doors. The doors were reopened several minutes later and the same men pushed the alien aircraft back outside and to its original position. The men around the aircraft stepped away from the aircraft and it soon lifted vertically and silently and quickly darted away. As soon as the alien aircraft was gone,some military men opened the hanger doors where the civilian men were standing and told them to carry on.

I was a teenager when I heard this story and my reaction to it was a mix of uncertainty and disbelief. My uncle didnt have any reason to lie about it, but... Years later, I was watching a program about UFOs on television, and a man who saw the same event described it exactly as my uncle had described it years earlier--in every detail. I was amazed, but while I have seen many UFO programs on television repeated several times, I never saw that particular interview again.

I now realize the importance of that event, but my uncle died several years ago, and I imagine that the other witnesses are probably all dead as well. Just the same,I wanted to get this information out there for what it is worth, so here it is. I hope it proves to be beneficial. Our government isnt about to confess that it has lied to us about UFOs since 1949. Doing so would destroy what little credibility it still has.