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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/das2.jpg?resize=215%2C227&ssl=1\" "\\"Daily")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nApropos of Virgo — the sign most often associated with healing — Dr. Joe Mercola published an article this morning reporting data confirming that cell phone use is involved with brain cancer<\/strong><\/a>, something we’ve known for a while (as little as half an hour a day over 10 years can cause tumors; the new information is from a master study reviewing many other studies). Let’s see how many news organizations report this information.<\/p>\n
To me the more meaningful issue is: if cellular phones cause brain tumors, what do they do before that happens? The human body is an electrical device; a subtle one. A cell phone must be capable of sending a microwave signal three miles in any direction, right through your brain and nervous system first. Years ago, I read an article wherein the author warned that we should carry cell phones like a loaded gun; leave them off when not in use; and suggesting many other precautions that now seem warranted. But really; leave your phone off? What about all those text messages that have to come in from moment to moment?<\/p>\n
Another story likely to disappear into the mists of forgotten environmental news is an Associated Press article yesterday that indicated a ‘new’ source of PCBs in schools: window caulking<\/strong><\/a>. This is not actually a new source — it’s a very old one, extant in buildings built between 1950 and 1978 or so. PCBs were used in many industrial processes, particularly things that needed to be supple. I’ll come back to this, but in essence we have potentially a New Paltz-like problem in (taking a rough guess here) about half the schools in the United States. If you have a kid in the United States attending a school built during that timeframe, I suggest you call the principal and arrange to email him or her this article (the top link, on window caulking).<\/p>\n
(Here is a link to an article on New Paltz<\/strong><\/a> taking you to an article in The Ecologist<\/em> that I wrote this year. At the time, a Planet Waves subscriber was the editor, and she invited me to contribute this to the last print edition. Therefore it will be on the stacks of actual libraries, for anthropologists to find in a hundred years from now explaining why we are collectively such whack jobs when it comes to environmental issues.)<\/p>\n
Here is the story that jumped out yesterday, on the theme of “the truth comes out.” Over the weekend, Facebook published a member-produced poll<\/strong><\/a> asking: “Should President Obama Be Killed?” The item was first reported Sunday by the blogger Gotta Laff, at the progressive website called The Political Carnival<\/a>. The writer sent a screen shot of the poll to the Secret Service.<\/p>\n
The item caught the attention of bloggers at other political websites Monday morning, including Pam’s House Blend, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post. The item was up on Facebook for over twelve hours before it was taken down by site administrators. Facebook temporarily disabled its poll application at the site. The Secret Service called Gotta Laff to thank her for her tip, but could not divulge the next steps they plan in their investigation of the incident.<\/p>\n
There seems to have been something of a national uprising about this. Two of my own staff members took it on themselves to phone the incident into the FBI. There must have been thousands of calls and emails to the FBI, the Secret Service and Facebook.<\/p>\n
But what exactly was the nature of “the truth” that came out? I mentioned it in Friday’s edition.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the United Nations last week, President Obama informed us: “No longer do we have the luxury of indulging our differences to the exclusion of the work that we must do together.”<\/p>\n
I could see this making a lot of people nervous. Not only do many folks have to come out of what is literally a comfort zone of a living room and remote control, people they consider beneath them would supposedly be the primary beneficiaries. From Friday’s edition:<\/p>\n
This gave me an instant aha as I saw him say the words: exploiting differences and conflicts is a way to avoid the important work that we as humanity have to do. This is the game of stopping the conversation about health care reform by accusing someone of being a socialist; on one level, all of our red herring arguments amount to the admission of being too lazy to do anything, or too invested in another values system but not willing to admit it outwardly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In my view, if you fancy yourself conservative (truly, a meaningless word if there ever was one; we need a new word), you are mostly likely experiencing yourself as selfish, lazy and\/or scared. Of course, this is not just about “conservatism,” it’s about Western-styled capitalism, which is never friendly to social progress unless it can be turned to temporary profit. But when my father, who has the best health insurance available, paid for by the taxpayers, says he objects to other people having the same thing because he might have to pay for it, that is selfish, lazy and scared. And this is a commonly held viewpoint.<\/p>\n
We are headed into the awareness of being in challenging times (we’ve been here quite a while) that require all of us to grow, devote our resources and work together. We are in high times for anyone who is willing to work to solve the problems we have inherited from ourselves. This is going to take a lot of effort; beware all arguments that amount to, fuck it, it’s easier to leave things the way they are.<\/p>\n
Summing up the rest of the sky: the Moon is in Aquarius, about to conjoin Nessus and work its way over the triple (really, quadruple) conjunction in Aquarius. Nessus, Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune are spaced out across the second half of that sign between 14+ and 24+ degrees. Mercury, now direct, is precisely quincunx Eris in Aries and very nicely quincunx Neptune. This makes it a focal point, which we knew.<\/p>\n
We might ask ourselves, how smart are we, really? Is the issue intelligence, or whether we are willing to put our brains to work?<\/p>\n
Yours & truly,
\n![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.planetwavesweekly.com\/resources\/images\/sign_white.jpg?resize=185%2C45&ssl=1\" "\\"Planet")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friends, Readers: Mercury stationed direct today at 9:13 am EDT (New York daylight savings time), with a surge of activity in the world. A typhoon devastated the Philippines, killing 240 people, and is now headed for Vietnam (thankfully, in reduced form). For that region it’s the worst flooding in a generation. Apropos of Virgo — … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}