Cleveland Plain Dealer

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Hints of cosmic crash at Serpent Mound
Bill Sloat
Plain Dealer Reporter

Sifting through rocks snagged from twin boreholes punched deep into the planet’s crust, scientists have detected an unearthly substance hidden for eons in Ohio’s basement.

And its presence 1,412 feet beneath the forests and farmlands near Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio — already on par with Britain’s Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids as one of Earth’s most mysterious manmade structures — adds to a puzzle shrouded in legend and lore for centuries.

When scientists peered into the geo-strata that emerged from beneath the mound, they were confronted with pure, weird data. Under their microscope, they saw quartz crystals with flaws like those found at nuclear test sites and in moon rocks brought back by astronauts.

It pointed toward a massive energy burst that left behind telltale traces of a cosmic crash.

Now, those findings are rattling through the world of geology, shaking up long-held conceptions and misconceptions about Ohio’s distant past.

“I think we can say with authority today that this is an impact from a meteorite,” said Mark T. Baranoski, a state geologist. “It affected the region in a spectacular way.”

Rock samples from beneath the mound contain significantly higher than normal concentrations of iridium, an extremely rare metal. Because it is so heavy, iridium seldom shows up anywhere but near the planet’s molten core.

At Serpent Mound, the levels measured were 10 times beyond what is usually present in the Earth’s crust.

Occasionally, volcanoes bring it up in lava. But there are no lava fields in Ohio. So the questions started. Where did the iridium-rich rocks come from?

While iridium is scarce on Earth, the silver-gray metal is common in asteroids and comets.

In other words, it often is a strong sign that the sky has fallen.

Geologists, including researchers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, describe the recent discovery as powerful new evidence that Serpent Mound sits upon a slightly oblong crater created when a massive extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth.

They have reported that the heavy metal find is “good evidence for an impact origin” and that dark, stony material recovered from the deepest borehole has a “significant enrichment” that must have come from outer space.

Iridium is already at the center of another scientific mind-bender – the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

In a widely accepted doomsday scenario, an asteroid the size of Manhattan plunged into the sea off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. The explosion devastated the planet and unleashed a worldwide wipeout that caused 70 percent of all living things to die.

Scientists say they have found an iridium line in the Earth’s crust that few species crossed. Under the great extinction theory, the iridium showered down in debris after the asteroid struck.

Not all scientists accept the doomsday scenario, but many say it does seem to explain why the dinosaurs died off.

A similar event – although without those dramatic global effects – looks to have taken place in Ohio.

The crater touches portions of Adams, Pike and Highland counties, about 200 miles southwest of Cleveland in the state’s rolling Appalachian countryside.

The mound, built about 1,000 years ago, straddles land near the crater’s southwest edge and may have had a religious function, although nobody knows for sure what philosophy and beliefs shaped its origin.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about Serpent Mound’s builders and what they were up to. Some say they were mystics and priests. Others say magicians and soothsayers. Still others see them as prophets.

There are those who claim that the builders were shamans who practiced human sacrifice, while some believe that they were ancient astronomers who were the intellectual caste of woodland America.

Fact is, nobody can say. The mound builders left no written records.

Erosion and Ice Age glaciers have erased most of the crater from the surface.

But underground it’s a far different story, and the boreholes exposed the geologic record.

Fine grains of sand taken from 1,439 feet down appear deformed when viewed under a microscope. There even seem to be particles of soot left from scorched limestone, although researchers say additional work is needed before the strange black material is positively identified.

Still, everything seems to point to a cosmic jolt. While some aren’t convinced, they agree the evidence is piling up.

Mike Hansen, a retired state geologist who runs an earthquake warning system and teaches at Ohio State University, said there is no doubt that the Serpent Mound area was disturbed by some unknown force. But Hansen thinks the stresses were triggered by natural shifts in the Earth’s crust.

Around the time the rocks were deformed, Hansen said, Africa was pushing into North America and the Appalachian Mountains range was thrusting up higher than today’s Himalayas. He said a major tectonic event like that could have created the underground chaos at Serpent Mound.

Still, Hansen concedes that the meteorite hypothesis is gaining adherents among geologists.

The object, if it did strike Ohio, would have been gigantic. Maybe up to three times larger than Cleveland Browns Stadium. Traveling up to 45,000 mph, it would have been moving much faster than a speeding bullet.

The searing heat, blast and shockwaves from such a crash would have instantly carved a 1,000-foot-deep hole and crushed rocks miles below the five-mile-across crater.

That is exactly what samples from the two boreholes show. Researchers have spotted microscopic cracks in quartz crystals far beneath the surface and horsetail-shaped fractures called “shatter cones” in geological formations from the ground on down. The cracked crystals have patterns resembling those appearing after U.S. nuclear weapons tests in Nevada.

Other than iridium, there is no trace of an asteroid or comet.

It would probably have vaporized when it hit 256 million years ago.

“I don’t think we’ll ever find it,” Baranoski said. “It would have gone up in smoke. If anything was left near the surface, it would have been eroded away.”

Doyle Watts, a geophysicist at Dayton’s Wright State University who worked on the international team that studied the core samples, said the impact theory explains why so much of the terrain around Serpent Mound appears jumbled.

Some rock formations rise 1,000 feet above the ground. Others look like they have slid straight down.

Those oddities were first noticed not long after Europeans settled Ohio.

John Locke, a geologist who explored the area in the 1830s, thought he had found a “sunken mountain” and reported that “a region of no small extent had sunk down several hundred feet, producing faults, dislocations and upturnings of the layers of the rocks.”

Even more weird was the 1,348-foot-long Serpent Mound, which looked like an undulating snake atop a plateau overlooking Brush Creek.

Watts said he believes that the Indians saw the strange features in the land and were moved to build the mound, perhaps as a sacred monument. He said the Indians were deeply attuned to the natural world.

“It just begs the questions: Why would Native Americans lug tons of soil and shape it into a slithering serpent? Why would they choose to do so on the scar of an ancient impact when they had all of Ohio and the Midwest?” Watts said.

“My guess is that they could have noticed something strange about the rocks. It has to be more than coincidence.”

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:

bsloat@plaind.com, 513-631-4125

Brazil authorises Indian reserve
By Tom Gibb
BBC News, Sao Paulo

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has signed a decree creating an Amazonian Indian reserve the size of a small country in northern Brazil.

The reserve, Raposa Serra Do Sol, is called “the land of the fox and mountain of the sun” by the 12,000 Indians who live there.

Its hills, rivers and forests cover 17,000 sq km (6,500 square mies).

The move follows 30 years of campaigns by the Indians, which led to bitter conflicts with settlers and farmers.

During that time, human rights groups say at least a dozen Indians were killed in conflicts with miners and settlers.

Parts of the reserve, in the northern state of Roraima, are now planted with rice or grazed by cattle.

The decree for demarcation – the last step in a long process – has been sitting on the Brazilian president’s desk for a couple of years.

Whenever he has looked like signing, it has provoked fierce protests against the reserve from settlers and local politicians.

Justice Minister Tomas Bastos said that over the next year, farmers inside the reserve would be moved to alternative land.

Only roads, a frontier military base, and a small town inside the area have been excluded from the reserve.

Lula, as the president is known, will be hoping the decree will head off anti-government protests planned for next week by Indian groups.

They have been accusing him of not living up to promises over land.

sfweekly.com | The Karmic Kitchen (Printable) | 2005-04-06

From sfweekly.com
Originally published by SF Weekly Apr 06, 2005
©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Karmic Kitchen
Annalakshmi brings karmic dining to San Francisco; a convenience store groupie attends the “University of 7-Eleven.”
OVERHEARD BY JOHN MECKLIN

Imagine walking into an upscale Indian restaurant, its menu filled with delectable-sounding choices like Malabar avocado and coconut soup (made with plain yogurt, cumin, and lemon juice and served with fresh cilantro chutney and whole wheat chapatis) and drinks like the Saffron Sandalwood Fizz (lime juice and pure water, cooled overnight by the light of the moon). You sit down with friends and enjoy a delicious, ayurvedic vegetarian meal, served with a smile. Then you finish, feeling satisfied, and signal for the bill — but none comes. This scenario is not merely a fantasy: At Annalakshmi, you decide what to order and how much to pay.

Inspired by Swami Shantanand — a Hindu monk from Rishikesh, India, who came to Southeast Asia in the early 1970s — the small international restaurant chain operates with an uncommon trust in humanity: that people will pay what is fair because we are inherently good and because it is in our own best karmic interests to give. Although its concept may sound too idealistic to stand a chance, Annalakshmi has been in business for 19 years, and has thriving outposts in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and India. And now it’s geared up to open its first eatery in the United States — in an as-yet-undetermined spot in San Francisco.

Behind the scenes is a 35-year-old Marina District woman named Lalitha Vaidyanathan, who, late last year, quit her job as a co-founder and vice president at SquareTrade, a company that facilitates fair online sales, to pursue the restaurant’s local development full time. “I always felt like Annalakshmi has so much to offer people beyond just food,” she explains. “It really provides a whole new way of seeing the world and its possibilities. I felt that San Francisco would be a perfect place to open one. Why not? I figure if it’s meant to happen it will. I have complete trust in whatever’s meant to be.”

One of the reasons Annalakshmi — named after the Hindu concept of abundance — has succeeded is because it is run mostly by volunteers, called “Annalakshmis.” “People naturally want to volunteer because it allows them to tap into something divine within themselves,” says Vaidyanathan. “The human heart and its inherent generosity is the secret force behind Annalakshmi. There is nothing wrong with making money, but it’s also nice to give in a way that does not seek returns.”

Annalakshmi is actually part of a larger organization called the Temple of Fine Arts International, and is one of its main sources of revenue. TFA, also inspired by Swami Shantanand, exists to provide a variety of services such as pay-what-you-can dance and music courses, free medical clinics, and art galleries and handicrafts that direct proceeds to the artisans, bypassing any middlemen. TFA’s most recent event was an Indian cultural performance at New York’s Lincoln Center, put on without admission tickets.

So how does the restaurant do it? On a trip through Singapore with a friend recently, we stopped by to see for ourselves.

The Singapore outpost is ornate and beautiful, surrounded by exquisite handicrafts. Nearby are TFA’s gallery, medical clinic, and performing arts center. The eatery also has several smaller to-go outlets as well as a thriving catering business delivering lunches to businesses.

Ganesh Krishnan, its operations manager, says, “In any business, the goal is to have satisfied customers. That is our goal as well. When you have satisfied customers, they will return. That is the reason Annalakshmi is always full. Some people will pay less and some will pay more. The important thing is that they pay what they feel is right for them. In the end, it all balances out.”

When asked what happens if people take advantage of the system, Krishnan seems to imply that it’s not much of an issue. One customer, he says, came in and paid only a dime, to test the system. The next night he came in and paid only a dime again. The third night, the same. When he realized that there was no gimmick, he became a regular customer and increased his payments. For Krishnan, personal growth is part of the whole equation.

Another regular customer, who gives her name as Padmeeni, explains why she dines here instead of somewhere else: “I like to eat at Annalakshmi because the food is excellent and I feel good about where my money is going, through the various causes they support.” How much does she pay? The going rate, she says, if not a little more; it gives her a clear conscience.

After investigating Annalakshmi for a little while, we decided to volunteer — cutting vegetables — and it quickly became apparent that running a restaurant is an enormous undertaking for a largely unpaid crew. Still, when the eatery comes to San Francisco, we’ll be back in the kitchen, supporting a worldview built on abundance. (John Silliphant)

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!

HIMvsMRSQUIRREL

Photo by Arthur webmaster Chris McKenna

Senator Threatens to Block Vote on E.P.A. Nominee
April 14, 2005

Senator Threatens to Block Vote on E.P.A. Nominee
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, April 13 – Stephen L. Johnson, President Bush’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, won nearly unanimous approval from a Senate committee today, although one member said he might block confirmation by the full Senate.

The vote of the panel, the Environment and Public Works Committee, was 17 to 1. The lone dissenter was Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware, who complained that the agency had not responded to his requests for detailed analyses of antipollution proposals differing from the administration’s.

Each member of the Senate has the power to delay confirmation of a presidential nominee, and after the committee vote, Mr. Carper did not rule out doing so if he did not receive the information.

Suggesting that the blame lay with the White House, the senator said: “Steve Johnson needs to be unfettered by this administration to do the job as it needs to be done. We need legislation, but to get the right legislation, we need good, timely technical information.”

Last week two other Democrats, Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Bill Nelson of Florida, also threatened to block confirmation. Their objections sprang from a program in Florida, co-sponsored by the E.P.A., in which low-income families would have been compensated to allow research about the effects of pesticides on their infants.

Mr. Johnson, the agency’s acting administrator, agreed on Friday to cancel that study. Yet Ms. Boxer said before voting on Wednesday that she still had “great reservations” about his stewardship. She mentioned concerns dealing with other human testing programs, decisions that the agency’s critics have said are made on the basis of politics rather than science, and financial support for the Superfund program.

“I am going to go with my hopes, not my fears,” Ms. Boxer said of her vote backing the nomination.

Mr. Johnson, who has a background in pesticides, would become the first career scientist to lead the agency. He has held several senior positions there and been acting administrator since Michael O. Leavitt left in January to become secretary of health and human services.

Mr. Carper’s concerns underscore a major division on the committee between Republicans who favor the Bush administration’s approach to reducing emissions from power plants and members who back alternatives that, unlike the administration’s initiative, would set limits on carbon dioxide emissions in addition to those of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. Mr. Carper and Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, have introduced one alternative; Senator James M. Jeffords, independent of Vermont, has offered another.

The administration plan failed to win committee approval last month for the second consecutive year, in part, Mr. Carper says, because the agency has refused to analyze the two alternatives to determine their costs and effectiveness, as it has the administration approach.

In attributing the agency’s reluctance to the White House, Mr. Carper suggested that Mr. Johnson would exercise only as much independence as officials there would allow.

He said he believed that Mr. Johnson “would serve the agency well if the White House would let him,” adding, “Unfortunately, I don’t believe the White House has let past administrators do their jobs effectively, and I don’t believe they’re ready to do that now.”

Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, declined to respond to Mr. Carper’s comments directly, on the ground that confirmation was still pending. But “the president believes Mr. Johnson is the best-qualified individual to lead the E.P.A.,” Mr. Duffy said, “which is why we selected him.”

Why would Jan Kounen, director of “Dobermann,” want to do a documentary on Shipibo Shamanism?

My film “Dobermann” allowed me to express my visceral anti-establishment convictions with a joy usually reserved for bad, little kids. After that, I started thinking that the time had come for me to examine the reality of what has so far been my joyfully chaotic existence and to ponder my place in the universe‚Ķ

Where would I begin ?
Boxed in by our senses, we only see a single dimension of reality. Our eyes only allow us to perceive a minor part of the light’s reflection of the specter of what matter truly is. Our other senses restrict us in exactly the same ways.
I’ve always held the conviction that other dimensions exist, and that our brains and our central nervous systems function as filters for our consciousness. These filters are necessary to grasp the material world, but their makeup is all too often weighed down by cultural, moral and scientific doctrines that provide us with a much too limited image of the Universe.
So I was continuously plagued by the question: “Can we tear away the veil, just for one second?”

Shamanism
With the exception of Buddhism and the Tibetan Dzogtchen tradition, which include terribly constraining techniques, current religions offer little in the way of approaching the “Invisible.”
So I then delved into reading the scriptures by the mystics.
Along the way, I came across Shamanism.
As I read their scriptures, I came to learn about the lives of these men, these Shamans who use plants, meditation, chants and rituals to journey into the Invisible. In contrast to what I had read previously, I learned that Shamans do not provide answers. All they do is record their observations and, based on their own experiences, establish their belief systems. Their role is simply to guide souls on their own, personal quests.

Our Western sensibilities tend to make most of us scoff at Shamans or to consider them with fear or amusement. They are nothing more than witch doctors who use powerful drugs to induce trances, and can not function in reality. Despite all this, I set out to meet them in Mexico. High up in the sierra, I sought out the Huichol Indians, widely known for their active Shamanism and its sources which go back several thousand years.
This gave me the opportunity to frequent Shamans and share their peyote ritual.
This initial experience left me disturbed, but unsatisfied.
We had not bonded on a personal level.
So I set out again. This time I went to the jungles of Peru, where a powerful form of Shamanism exists, using the sacred plant, called the “soul’s creeper.” Following several encounters and experiences with “curanderos” (healers) and “brujos” (witch doctors), I met “Questembetsa.”

Shipibo-Conibos
Questembetsa is a Shipibo-Conibo Shaman, who enabled me to experience Shamanism from the inside. There are 45,000 Shipibo Conibos living together along the Amazon River in Peru. Questembetsa is the spiritual guide of all Shipibo Conibos. He is the Master Shaman who trains all of his people’s Shamans. Questembetsa enabled us to film a summer solstice ceremony, which lasted for three days and three nights. This traditional celebration has never been recorded on film, and justly so. It has not occurred for 70 years and has obviously been seen by very few “non-Indians.”
Using night-vision cameras, we were able to immortalize the shots of these unique moments.

Under Questembetsa’s protective watch, I participated in ceremonies and experienced what can be characterized as a “near death experience.” For me, this was a powerful consciousness experience, where I crossed over, to the other side of the mirror. Once my initiation began, it would continue for over a year. Having experienced this journey of initiation and learning, I am now able to speak about Shamanism.

A consciousness technology
Conceptual thinking is a limited tool when one truly attempts to develop one’s consciousness.
Indeed, human consciousness has a natural tendency to identify with thoughts and reason – stopping there. Shamans use a technology or an outside element, generally consisting of sacred plants. Using powerful psychotropic substances, the Shamans guide individuals, enabling them to “peel away” consciousness from thoughts and reason. The subconscious is gradually unveiled. During these experiences, a different reality appears and is observed through the prism of our consciousness.
Are we remembering who we are, or are we simply discovering who we are?
Without words, this reality is sometimes expressed through terror, suffering and tears. At times it comes in the form of beauty and tears of joy inspired by the magic.
It comes from within one’s being, in the form of archetype images.
Each and everyone’s personal history and culture individually determine this reality.

We all share a universal mythology, which serves as a source for the visions.
Each and every one of us is an infinite universe, where angels and demons make up our thoughts, emotions, memory and our body. My journey deep into the jungle continued when I met scientists from the “Aton Institute” in Norway. The Aton Institute studies consciousness, quantum physics and the molecular chemistry of sacred plants as well as past civilizations.

Sacred plants or drugs ?
Psychotropics are drugs or narcotics. In our culture, the word “narcotic” is synonymous with decadence. In past civilizations such as the Incas or the Egyptians, these hallucinogenic plants were considered instruments of knowledge, magic plants or “master plants.”
Scientists agree and have demonstrated through modeling that the key lies in the DNA, genetic programming, the pineal gland or the famous “third eye,” located between the brain’s hemispheres. They believe that the molecules of the Ayahuasca plant are a molecular nano-technology that activates the consciousness. Angels and demons are the archetype contacts with the negative and positive encoding of our DNA. Presently, Shamans know how to use the Ayahuasca plants. The Shamans consider these plants as instruments made available by the Universe for men to be able to pass through the Invisible and enter into contact with the Universe.

Developments for the documentary

This documentary film will be the testimony of a personal and subjective adventure. It will also show the dangers and risks involved in Shamanism: (1) losing yourself in the light or the darkness of your recently awakened emotions or (2) misinterpreting the feelings or visions. This could lead to schizophrenia in the event these journeys not be guided by competent Shamans or compliant with an unyielding discipline and strict diet.

The film will primarily show the therapeutic power of the Shamans and their plants. This power is a type of ancestral psychoanalysis or human psychotherapy backed by 4,000 years of experience and practice.
The film will allow the Shamans to speak for themselves. It will show how their cultures and their belief systems culminate from their knowledge of the Invisible.
CGI sequences will reproduce the power of the recurring visions and the unfolding of the poetic story I witnessed. We will also convey the humor and terror I felt while experiencing these visions. The film will include investigative interviews with therapists, ethnologists and specialists in molecular brain chemistry. In the interest of understanding the invisible interaction between a Shaman and a “novice,” we will record the brain-wave interaction between Questembetsa and myself during a ceremony this spring. This will enable us to identify them and study their meaning.
Finally, the December 1999 interviews, with Western individuals in therapy, will be repeated. Over a year later, we will compare the results of these two sets of interviews.
My personal experience will be told on the parallel of selective testimony, somewhere between Western science and Indian therapy.

Only recently has Western culture reluctantly come to recognize that Tibetan Buddhism has garnered knowledge of the spirit. The objective of this documentary is to impress upon viewers that these little-known Indians developed veritable cognitive technology through their own sciences of the spirit, thousands of years ago. To me, these men are warriors in the battle to unlock the mysteries of consciousness. Shamans consider the greatest ally and the worst enemy of every individual to be one and the same‚Ķ himself or herself. In conclusion, I personally guarantee this film will not turn out to be a new age Sermon on these Indians and their culture. All “Other worlds” are not worlds of light‚Ķ

Jan Kounen