PayPal as Grand Inquisitor of Censorship?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

 

 

Every so often, a corporation appoints itself as Big Brother Censor of certain types of books. The newest player in this game is PayPal, which currently has a monopoly over Internet cash transactions.

If you recall, they also cut off donations last year to Wikileaks Julian Assange. In fact, there’s an organization called PayPalSucks.com that details why you shouldn’t use Pay Pal for any of your Internet transactions – and part of the problem is their credit card policy. But that’s another story.

According to The Independent: “Last week, without warning, PayPal wrote to every major self-publishing website, announcing that henceforth it will refuse to process payments for clients that sell books which contain certain types of what it regards as obscene content.”

So PayPal has essentially appointed itself as Grand Inquisitor about what is obscene.  Even the U.S. Supreme Court has struggled for fifty years to do that. In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to define hardcore porn this way: “I’ll know it when I see it.” Apparently, PayPal is using that same baseline.

According to this website about obscenity and the Supreme Court’s history in trying to define it, the edicts handed down in 1973 by Justice Burger in Miller v California, are still in effect today:

“(a) whether the ‘average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, one of the largest epublishing sites in the world, says PayPal’s decision has resulted in the withdrawal of about a thousand novels of the 100,000 he stocks. As he told The Independent, “Regardless of whether you or I want to read these books, this is perfectly legal fiction and people have a right to publish it. It surely isn’t for some financial services company to control what is written by an author.”

Take at look at the list of banned books maintained by the American Library Association

Here’s their list of top 10 books banned in 2010:

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson;

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley;

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Lush, by Natasha Friend

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

Amazing, isn’t it?  Here we are in 2012 and a book like Brave New World makes this list. Or The Hunger Games. Or Twilight.

So what’s next for PayPal? Banning cash transactions for movies they think are obscene? For art? Jewelry? In an official statement, PayPal issued a statement that “the decision does not represent an effort to impose a morality on the reading public.”

Really?

PayPal will no longer get any business from me.

 

 

Posted in censorship and paypal, synchronicity | 29 Comments

Music synchros

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

 

 

A friend of ours who lives in NYC  sent us a couple of music synchros. The first relates to the death of Whitney Houston on Feb. 11. Her husband is a filmmaker, who creates music videos, among other projects. So possibly the music link came into play.

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“Immediately thought of you when I was watching a moment of “Glee” last night.  Whitney Houston died on Saturday, as I’m sure you know.  On “Glee” last night (Tuesday), they had a segment of the show where one of the kids on the show sang her hit, “I Will Always Love You.”  Not a big synchro, but definitely one since she just passed and that show aired last night.  Those episodes are shot and scheduled weeks, sometimes months, in advance, so they would have had no way of knowing that they would air so close together.

I had another music synchro up in Maine this weekend.  On Saturday, my mother, Jennifer, and I were driving down Academy Street in Presque Isle, Maine on the way to the nursing home where my great aunt is now living.  I had put on (I think) “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac and looked up as we were crossing Fleetwood Street.

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To take it another level–or I should say, another musical note– that same day, Gypsy had sent a Fleetwood Mac song via Facebook.

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

The Precognitive Chimes

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Trish and Rob

In Synchronicity and the Other Side,  we talked about clocks that stop or batteries that die when a loved one passes. This story about an oak pendulum clock came from Connie – aka fortune 500  and the events ultimately proved to be precognitive.

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We have an oak pendulum clock on the living room wall, like a standing grandfather clock with chimes, only a smaller wall type. A couple of years ago, we stopped putting batteries in the back so that it wouldn’t chime. But there are batteries in the timing mechanism and although the pendulum swings and the clock keeps perfect time, it no longer chimes.

On 2-16 I emailed you that our pendulum wall clock was trying to chime, with no batteries in it, and that at exactly 12 noon it chimed loudly and clearly, twice.  It chimed again at exactly 1:00pm, 4 times, loudly and clearly.  As this was happening, I was psychically smelling an unpleasant odor of something being burned or scorched. My son, Kenny, who was also in the house,  couldn’t smell it, and I am only able to smell psychic odors as Parkinson’s has destroyed my olfactory nerves.

After emailing you and learning you were en route to Toronto, I sent no further emails to you but did make notes in my journal, along with numbers I was feeling urged to do.  The number of ‘death” is 20/2. For some unknown reason at the time, my husband’s older brother, Buddy, came into my mind powerfully, and I did his numbers.  BUDDY is 20/2.

I thought about the fact that on Mother’s day twenty or so years ago, we had given my mother-in-law a replica of this clock, it’s exactly like ours, but hers chimes because Buddy kept the batteries fresh in it.

You may or may not remember, but years ago I told you that my mother in law refused to leave after she died, stating emphatically that she wasn’t going until Buddy passed, because she was afraid he would go to sleep smoking and burn the old homestead to the ground.

Mrs C always sat on the far end of an old ragged sofa in the living room there, even after she had passed.  The sofa was at least 60 years old, and last week Danny, my husband’s nephew, bought Buddy a new sofa to replace the old one. I don’t know how Mrs C, in spirit, felt about this change.

I couldn’t get her or Buddy out of my mind the day the clock chimed and the scorched smell inundated me.  This is in my journal for that day, the 16th, and I wrote, “Is Buddy going to transition? If so, why is the scorched/burned odor so strong it almost takes my breath?”

Late this evening, 2-19, Danny phoned. He found Buddy laying on the floor in front of the new sofa, dead, today.  Apparently he had lain down to nap or sleep, had tried to get up, had fallen, and died. The burning/scorched odor might have been Mrs. C reminding me of her post-death remarks that she wasn’t leaving due to her fear of Buddy burning down the house. So she haunted the place.

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On the 20th, Connie wrote that she had learned that Buddy’s will stipulated that he wanted to be cremated, another possible explanation for the burned smell.  The coroner’s office also informed the family that the body wouldn’t be fit for a viewing because Buddy had died at approximately noon on the 16th, when the clock first chimed, and his body had remained on the floor until the afternoon of the 19th, when Danny found him.

Another possibility about the scorched stench Connie had smelled is that a a small gas heater and a portable electric heater were both on high for the three days his body lay on the floor.

Connie sent us some photos taken in the house, which is over a century old, and in several there are mysterious, misty images of faces and forms, one a child. The photos were taken with a throwaway camera rather than a digital one. So the photos couldn’t be easily uploaded, and unfortunately, when scanned, the details blur.

 

 

 

 

Posted in precognition, spirit communication, synchronicity | 22 Comments

A dog and his bone

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Trish and Rob

A good belly laugh! Thanks to  Nancy for sending it.

Posted in synchronicity | 7 Comments

As above, so below

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an amazing comparison.

Posted in synchronicity | 8 Comments

Rush Limbaugh and the Handmaid’s Tale

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Take a look at this man. Look closely. What do you see?

Here are the facts. Rush Limbaugh has a radio audience estimated to be 20 million. He reportedly makes upward of $35,000,000 a year. He lives in Palm Beach with his fourth wife.  He is the mouthpiece of the Republican party, but has never been elected to office. He has made his millions as a hate monger and his most recent hate speeches have been directed toward women.

Recently, Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, was turned away from a Congressional committee (of five men) when she sought to offer her testimony about a fried who lost an ovary because she was denied birth control pills by her insurance company. As a result of her being turned away from testifying to the committee, the media picked up on the story and she is now something of a spoke person about a heinous movement- the banning of contraception.

Limbaugh called her a “slut” and a “prostitute” for publicly advocating that employers cover contraception in their health plans.  He’s employing the oldest trick in the book – ridiculing the representative of a group –in this instance, a rather large group, women – in an attempt to silence them.

Back in 1692, in Salem Massachusetts, 19 men and women who had been convicted of witchcraft were taken to Gallows Hills, a denuded slope  near Salem, to be hung. Another man of 80 plus years was crushed to death beneath heavy rocks and stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced witchcraft charges, and 88 percent of them were women. Women judged by men.

In retrospect, the Salem trials are often referred to as a case “mass hysteria.” In the 21st century, the kind of incendiary rhetoric against women that has been part of the Republican primary might be compared to a kind of mass hysteria propagated by individuals – mostly men – who are apparently threatened by the foothold women have gained since the 1960s and 70s. It seems to be part of an emerging paradigm – confront these old, profoundly outdated attitudes, deal with them, and move on.

But Limbaugh personifies how the old paradigm clings to what has worked  in the past – hate mongering, trying to instill fear and more fear – and was referred to by one news moderator as “too big to fail.” Heard that one before, right? About the banks.

Limbaugh has an employer – Clear Channel – and they should fire this bovine blowhard. But guess what, one of the primary owners of Clear Channel is  Bain Capitol, the company that Mitt Romney,  Repub candidate and the paragon of flip-floppers – ran for so many years. Romney, though now retired from Bain, supposedly still owns a financial stake in the company.

Clear Channel owns more radio shows in the U.S. – 850 – than any other entity.   They not only host bovine Rush, but all the other hate mongers as well, like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck – who are/were employees of Fox News.

So, if Rush’s radio audience of 20 million is any indication of the numbers that still cling to the old paradigm of racism, intolerance, inequality, and white male, heterosexual dominance (yeah, no surprise, they also denounce gays), then we’ve got a ways to go as a nation.

Fox News owner Rupert Murdock seems on a downward spin with  the dishonesty and amoral practices of his British rags. But how do you counteract someone like Limbaugh? Well, first of all, you laugh, you laugh hysterically at everything he says. A mindset as dark as his can’t endure laughter or ridicule. Then you look within and ask how you can be an agent of change in the world.  You might write to Clear Channel and demand that Rush be fired. Or you might instruct your cable channel to remove Fox News from your package.  Or you might  just ignore the issue completely. After all, when our attention is removed from something, it becomes less powerful.

I’m well past the years of childbearing and would probably opt for ignoring all this rhetoric if I didn’t have a 22-year-old daughter whose health may be impacted by the extreme ideas being put forth by Republicans in many states. Once you grant an insurance company or an employer, pharmacist or physician the right to deny treatment because they are “morally against” that treatment,  you are entering dangerous territory. Democracy goes south, the right to make your own choices about your body is delegated to politics, you are living smack in the middle of The Handmaid’s Tale. No, thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It appears that the Obama administration has responded to Limbaugh. The president also called the young woman.

Posted in politics, synchronicity | 23 Comments

Connecting with Atlantis

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Trish and Rob


Following yesterday’s post about dolphins and the planet, here’s a personal story.

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This experience/synchro is related to Atlantis and was sent by a British woman, Jenny Yemaya Cook. It’s a fascinating tale, which includes references to the ancient Miami Circle, which provides clear evidence that ancient man resided in what is now called the Bermuda Triangle. The letter was originally addressed to Rob and Bruce Gernon, who co-authored THE FOG: A Never Before Published Theory of the Bermuda Triangle Phenomenon.

Dear Bruce & Rob,

I’ve just watched the documentary you did on the Bermuda Triangle aired on Channel 5 here in the UK, where I am from. I felt compelled to write to you and tell you of my experiences in Bimini and Miami.

I first came to Bimini in 1998.  I had read Edgar Cayce’s theories on Atlantis and felt a strong need to visit there. A series of quite extraordinary circumstances finally led me to the island and I ended up living and working there with the wild dolphins for two years. Three weeks into my stay on the island I had a dream that I was back in time thousands of years standing in a stone circle on the edge of a harbour peninsular in Miami, which I knew to be in a direct east alignment with the Bimini islands. There were symbols and artifacts in the circle with me and I was performing a ceremony.

When I woke up from the dream, I asked the people I was staying with if there was an ancient stone circle in Miami, but they said no. This was 1998, and about a month later the Miami Circle was discovered on Brickell Point. The artifacts that were found, the eye carved into the stone on the east alignment and the position of the circle on the harbour entrance were EXACTLY as I had dreamed a month earlier.

Shortly after this dream, I led a group of women on a trip out to the Bimini vortex, about 40 miles NE of Bimini. As we approached the grid coordinates, it felt as if we were entering an area of dense energy, like going through a wall of fog. All of the electrical equipment on the boat broke down and the compass just started to spin back and forth with no direction.

We anchored the boat and although we were advised  to stay out of the water, I entered with snorkel gear. As I dived down it was like a spiraling vortex and I became weightless, and was unable to tell which way was up or down. It was very disorientating. We did a meditation at the vortex and I had an emotional recollection of Atlantis and its destruction.

Later that night, once we were back on the island, I laid outside on a sun lounger, watching the full moon rise. I fell asleep at one point and when I opened my eyes I saw 7 UFO’s lined up in the sky. I had seen a UFO in the UK as a child with my parents, a saucer like the one you described, about 300 feet in diameter.

I now run regular retreats each year on Bimini and am in the process of buying properties on the island and setting up a permanent retreat center there. Here is the link.

 

Posted in dolphins, synchronicity | 12 Comments

Dolphins and Planet Earth

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Sg-ZwGZp0

 

On February 27, several thousand dolphins fled California’s coast, as you’ll see in the video above. The man speaking in the video guesses that some sound or a predator spooked them. Now, that might be true, but from what we’ve seen of dolphin behavior in the past, it may also be true that they are sensing shifting in the planet’s magma.

Here’s a list of quakes for February 29. These temblors aren’t the huge killer quakes that we saw in Japan or Chile last year. These seem to be reminders: a 5.6 near the east coast Honshu, Japan; a 3.9 in the Dominican Republic region; several in the 3s in southern California; a 3.0 in Oklahoma; a 4.8 in Colombia and so on. They’re happening all over the world, but nothing massive.   Coupled with the horrible, devastating  tornadoes in Missouri and Illinois – in February??-  and the generally strange weather that’s affecting certain types of crops, it seems the planet is stressed to the max.

In Texas, drought is affecting rice crops; a mild winter in the Northeast US is affecting maple syrup producers; winter wheat in Russian has been damaged by frost. Nearly 60 percent of the contiguous U.S. is dry and more than 36 percent is in drought conditions.

Here in Florida, we’ve had an unusual winter. Today, February 29, the temperature hit 84. Usually, the temperature at this time of year is in the 50s or 60s at night and in the low 70s during the day.  We’re approaching a drought. In the western area of the county where we live, we’ve gotten less than half an inch of rain so far in 2012. Our county overall is 8 inches of rain below normal.

Then there are the strange sounds that are apparently being heard around the world.  Some of these sounds resemble those of trumpets, so it’s not surprising the phenomenon  have been called a warning of the impending apocalypse. Whitley Strieber has written an intriguing journal entry on these sounds.

Even when you remove the end times stuff from this picture, it does seem as if the Earth is speaking, protesting, crying out. Are we listening?

Apparently the dolphins are listening closely.

 

Posted in dolphins, synchronicity | 26 Comments

On the Rocky path

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Trish and Rob

The day after returning from Toronto, a mini-cool spell followed us from the Northlands. So as the temps dipped toward the high 50s, we decided to build a fire in the firepit in our little courtyard. We were out of wood and Trish said she didn’t see any at the grocery store. So I called up Rocky’s Ace Hardware and was told they had half a pallet of bundled logs.

So off we headed to Rocky’s Ace Hardware. We reached the exit of our development when Trish picked up an e-mail from a friend of ours, also named Rocky. I had borrowed his heating pad months ago after I strained a muscle, and now he’d done the same and wanted it back.

Trish called and said we’d be home in about ten minutes and he could pick it up. We got our wood, and when we got back, it occurred to me that I should deliver Rocky the heating pad. After all, I was the one who borrowed it. So I looked up his number, called him. He answered, saying that he had just that moment pulled into our driveway.

A couple hours later, as we sat by the fire, soaking in the warmth, it occurred to me that we’d experienced a synchro and had nearly missed it. Not only did the two Rocky scenarios come together simultaneously, but each involved heat.

We consider that one an ordinary everyday type of synchro, but nonetheless interesting and another reminder for us that we’re on the path we’ve chosen – even if it’s a rocky one sometimes.

Posted in synchronicity | 14 Comments

Feedback on Dream Symbol

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Here’s the stone that inspired Bruce’s dream, which we wrote about yesterday. Mysterious and enchanting.

 

Here’s the symbol from his UFO dream.   We sent it to several people before the post went up and asked if they recognized it or had any insights into it.

And here’s a sketch of the craft that Gypsy saw last year. Eerie similarities in shape,

but no face!Other people’s insights/impressions:

From Natalie:

Well, I get the feeling it relates to the structure of our belief systems, and how there will be no boundaries and no ‘time/space’ as we know it. I keep seeing a world where everybody is emotionally translucent, and there is only truth, and only Now.

I feel the cross, though simplistic, represents Source and those of a higher, teaching type vibration available for guidance and assimilation during the changeover. Vibrations feel faster, more translucent. Almost like a baby Guppy…. clear with a little dark bit inside. I see this darker bit near the brow chakra. It just feels like the next step to me, and personally, I am looking forward to it. Perhaps a bit like the upper astral realms?

From Debra

The winged bird-serpent on the stone is a symbol of Heaven meeting Earth within the human body: higher and lower natures unified.

This is what Jung called a “Big Dream”. It will continue to unfold and create synchronistic ripples throughout Bruce’s life.

The (Mother)ship is luminous, in the yellow spectrum w/ orange. This means something pure is trying to incarnate, to “come down to earth”. The orange means there is still purification to be done within the earthly nature. Orange is the desire nature. When unchecked it is materialism and greed. Heaven can’t touch earth– yet. The ship moves in a square, which represents Earth. Then it proceeds to move so fast it’s a blurr. It can’t land here –yet This represents the new possibilities that are just out of our sight- until purification. It finally dissolves, leaving the symbol.

Visually, the symbol looks similar to a pyramid viewed from above it’s apex.

This is the point where heaven/sky and earth meet. It is also one half of the Merkabah: a 3-dimensional, 6-rayed star. This represents the human spirit purified. It’s alight-ship that our consciousness can travel with. (It is said in that the old Kabbalistic Masters could build one of these through purification and meditation. They could then travel inter-dimensionally. I am referring to the authentic literature,and not the modern pop-cult.) The symbol also represents an inter-dimensional gateway.

It is orange, yet needs to become yellow, or golden. The 6 little ships represent humans. In this dream we are told that we do not carry the golden light: we are not self-luminous. We can only reflect light. We have to become luminous, become Wisdom-infused bodies. Wisdom creates the “glory” or the luminosity that will light us up from within. We are also told that we can be different. We don’t have to all look or be exactly alike.

The repeated “6” (600 sq. feet, 6 little ships, the implied 6 rayed star) also represents Creator meeting Creation, or Heaven meeting Earth.

So the work here is for each of us to create a space where heaven meets earth, both individually and collectively.

From Math:

In terms of the meaning of the dream itself, my initial thought, that hasn’t changed, is that it wasn’t a “dream” but was, instead, a direct contact experience….either out of the body as it ‘slept’, or an actual in the body experience with the entities in the UFOS. I may have this thought because some of my encounters have happened in such a manner, but were definitely within this third dimension.

Another thought that crosses my mind is that he may have been experiencing Future Memory, or a precognitive message of things to come. Another possibility is that he was actually Time-Traveling to a future experience OR to a parallel dimension where the entities exist. There’s always the possibility that it was a PAST MEMORY and that the symbol was a reminder of something he already knows but has forgotten. But no matter what thoughts come to me in his regard, I do not have any sense that it was a “dream” and was instead a lucid, tangible experience in which he was participating.

 

Posted in Bruce Gernan, markawasi, synchronicity, UFO | 13 Comments