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Champlin, MN 55316 ]]> http://jeiishin.wordpress.com/?p=127 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:36:41 +0000 jeiishin http://jeiishin.wordpress.com/?p=127 A trinket was tossed down from the heavens. It was fashioned in the shape of an animal, maybe a giraffe, with a glow and sparkle like cheap crap out of an entrance machine. While still in the air, a young zealot sprang into the sky to take hold of the trinket. In the air, he did a flip, and then stretched out his body with all his might, reaching up so far that his armpit ached until his desperate hand finally took hold of the trinket.

Once he acquired the object, and whilst still in the air, it was as if time stopped. A disturbing holler of excitement come through his mouth as beams of red and pink stars began puking out of both eyes. Time started again, but the stars continued coming out of his eyes and he began descending back to the ground. As he descended, his body was nearly in a seated position, as if he were sitting in a chair. But if the invisible chair were rotating continuously forward, making the man continuously flip.

This continued and the rotations became faster and faster as he came lower and lower. Amazingly, he literally hit the ground running and proceeded to run down the street. He continued running until he reached the other side of the Earth and disappeared.

Rev. Dr William Stukely's image of the serpentine Avebury Complex, published in 1743

From pages of the website, Avebury - A Present from the Past -

Situated in southern England in the county of Wiltshire the village of Avebury is close to two small streams....the Winterbourne and the Sambourne which unite to form the source of the River Kennet. After being re-inforced by a number of springs this beautiful English river rapidly gains in stature as it passes through the North Wessex Downs on its way to Reading where it eventually flows into the River Thames of which it has become the main tributary. The waters of the Kennet therefore pass through London before reaching their ultimate destination in the North Sea.

Around 4,500 years ago, when the site of England's capital was a thinly inhabited marshland, the area around Avebury almost certainly formed the Neolithic equivalent of a city. By coincidence this waterway has become a link between the two largest cultural centres of their day to have ever existed in the British Isles. As London now contains most of England's largest buildings Avebury is the location of the mightiest megalithic complex to have ever been constructed in Britain. This henge with its enormous ditch, bank, stones and avenues survives in a much depleted state but the nearby Silbury Hill which is the largest man-made mound in pre-industrial Europe still dominates the surrounding landscape. The two largest surviving British long barrows of West Kennet and East Kennet are also prominent a short distance away and in recent years the remains of two massive palisaded enclosures have also been found. The quote that antiquarian John Aubrey made of Avebury......"it does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish church" recognises the true importance of what has now been largely absorbed into the modern landscape of Wiltshire. If we could return to the time when the Romans occupied the British Isles it is a sobering thought that we would have to go back as far again to find an Avebury that was already several centuries old.

The history of the modern village is inevitably linked to the prehistoric monuments that surround it. Abandoned for several thousand years the land around the stones became occupied oncemore when people of the Saxon period began to settle in the area. Their arrival and subsequent development of the present village was to have a dramatic effect on the history of the stones. The relationship between the local inhabitants and the monuments has now added an unfortunate dimension to the Avebury story that helps make it one of the most fascinating historical sites to be found in the British Isles if not the world.

It remains a magical place as so many who have been there will agree. A visit to Avebury is a very personal event. It still seems to retain, somehow, the spirits of all those who laboured in its creation or whatever it was that led them to create it. If you have never been there a visit will not be an empty experience. You will come away with a head full of questions and probably a realisation that somewhere over the years modern society has lost something important.

[...]

Trying to successfully solve the riddle of Avebury's purpose is much of what attracts us to it in the first place. I wonder if it would appeal to us in quite the same way if we knew, beyond doubt, the solution to the riddle. Throughout Europe are many magnificent cathedrals which are equally as awesome in conception, construction and demanding of manpower as anything our Neolithic forefathers have left us. However we know what cathedrals are, how they were built and the motive for building them, but apart from being some of the most wonderful examples of what religious belief can drive us to achieve they contain no mysteries. Avebury, though, in common with all of the many megaliths of the Neolithic period, is something that lies outside of our experience, its purpose still demanding an explanation by our modern, scientific minds. These days my personal attitude towards it is merely one of delight that it exists. I'm certain that the people who built it had a perception of life and sensitivity to nature that is now quite alien to us. I like to imagine that they were also very altruistic, a trait that the love of money has largely eradicated from our modern world. Considering these points I now accept that the 4,500 years of history since has probably rendered us incapable of finding a path that would lead us to the correct explanation of Avebury's many enigmas. Our minds are now, in a sense, corrupted with such a mass of knowledge that seeing the world through the eyes of the Neolithic people exceeds even our imaginations......We can go a short way but I think their motivation will always remain beyond our comprehension.

From Kennet District Council's website

It seems amazing to me that we now consider ourselves to be living in the space-age yet we show a total disregard for the awesome beauty of the night sky by first filling the atmosphere with the by-products created by our insatiable desire for power and transport and then floodlighting the resulting pollution with an, often as not, waste of that same power we didn't need in the first place! We now need to travel to the remote areas of the world to obtain a sense of what our ancestors once took for granted and perhaps appreciate the huge influence the ever-changing and complex sky must have had on their lives. It therefore seems natural to assume that Avebury's builders would have been motivated to somehow encode all manner of astronomical alignments into their creations and almost impossible to believe that they wouldn't. In reality, though, any evidence that celestial events were the primary influence on the construction of the megaliths remains elusive. However such evidence isn't totally absent as rudimentary alignments exist at the coves which are orientated towards the solstices. There can be no great surprise in this for at a time when clocks and calendars didn't exist the extreme positions of the sun would have been the events that marked out each year for our ancestors. Some researchers claim significant alignments in the inner circles and evidence that lunar cycles have a strong influence on the monuments but with so much missing it is difficult to advance things beyond theories. The trouble with lines is that they all point to something and the number of permutations that can be derived from the positions of celestial objects and the stones at Avebury allow many options for imaginative research!

Despite our assumption that we are something apart from the animal world the ever increasing contamination of the internet is unfortunate evidence that procreation and its attendant activity remains the fundamental force that drives us all. The part it played in the lives of Avebury's builders must have been no less influential so it would be surprising if there wasn't a sexual component evident in the enigma they have left behind. Indeed this is an aspect of the monuments that is obviously represented and must be considered as one of the primary motives for their construction.

It has been suggested that Silbury Hill is a representation of the huge pregnant belly belonging to a massive Earth Goddess figure....an idea that seems to fit the general ethos of the monuments.  Quite how the megalith builders perceived death still seems vague....Even including the long barrows its signature on Avebury's Neolithic monuments remains ill-defined and difficult to interpret.

From the website, retrobhikku

When theorising about Avebury it is very easy to ignore the huge timespan over which the monuments were built and developed. Six hundred years cover the period from the initial building of the Cove in the Northern Inner Circle to the the final form of the henge when the avenues were added. At a time when the average lifespan barely exceeded 40 years it would seem far more likely that Avebury's construction was a process of evolution rather than the result of some "grand plan" the result of which would never be seen by its conceivers. It can't be discounted that the henge and avenues may have been "operative" in some rudimentary form ( ie.wooden posts) before being consolidated later by the erection of the stones, but any evidence that this was the case has yet to be found.

Many researchers become consumed by the positions of stones but ignore trying to explain the purpose of the immense ditch and bank which must originally have been truly awesome. It is also easy to ignore the existence of the hundreds of other megalithic structures that were constructed throughout the British Isles during the same period and to view Avebury in isolation. So much of what existed in the Neolithic period has now disappeared but each year pieces of the jigsaw are being rediscovered. Despite its importance amazingly little of the henge has ever been investigated and the surrounding fields must still hold many secrets. There is always the chance that something relating to the monuments might yet be found that dramatically alters ideas about them.

The quest for the "Holy Grail" of solving the Avebury mystery will no doubt continue far into the future as it seems a part of human nature to believe only what we want to believe and no matter how seemingly perfect a solution there will always be those who will remain convinced that it was something else. Each "solution", convincing or not, though, adds something to our knowledge of Avebury and it will be a sad day if we stop searching for the truth about this wonderful place....... Perhaps the only truth now is that it is what each of us wants it to be and therein will always lie the power it has to capture our minds.

[...]

Whereas Stonehenge has long been one of Britain's most famous pre-historic sites, Avebury was to remain relatively unknown until recent times. This is easy to understand when one realises that much of the monument we see today had disappeared until Alexander Keiller resurrected it from the obscurity into which time and human behaviour had driven it. Stonehenge has stood upon Salisbury Plain always obvious to the eye and defiant of the weather but Avebury's magnificence lay hidden, vandalised and ignored. Keiller's achievement has allowed it to oncemore assume its rightful role as one of the most important ancient sites in the British Isles.

The Ringstone by Moonlight

Whatever drove our ancestors to such stupendous efforts in creating the Avebury monuments is perhaps beyond the understanding of our space-age minds but those of us who are captured by the incredible legacy they have left can share one thing with its creators - it fulfils a need. In a world that forces us along at a pace few of us want to go it provides an escape from the modern madness we have created for ourselves. It reminds us that there was a time, before money was invented and the destruction of the planet began, that we could achieve great things by mutual consent.  We can indulge ourselves in a great variety of theories to explain its mysteries and as such it has become many things to many people, but no matter how diverse our ideas it remains one thing to us all........a place to dream.

An excerpt from the book, The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo Barbara Mor, copied from the website, Son Eagle Metaphysical -

Avebury, on the Wiltshire Downs in the south of England, was the sacred center of megalithic culture in Britain. Avebury's stone circle is the largest yet found in England. It dwarfs Stonehenge. (There are seventy-seven other stone circles, or henges, dating from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age.) Avebury was built by pre-Celtic people, living in a farming community circa 2600 B.C.

For thousands of years before its construction, the entire landscape of the surrounding area, stretching for about 37 miles, had been seen as the outline of the body of the Goddess. Every hill, mound, stone, and long barrow was believed to form part of her maternal body. The three stone circles at the causewayed camp at Windmill Hill nearby predated Aye- bury by more than six hundred years.

Willow-rag tree at Swallowhead Spring, by Graham Harvey

The Avebury monuments, which include Silbury Hill and West Kennet long barrow, form a “condensed sequence of visual sculpted images within the center of the larger and more ancient presence. They express together journeys of cosmic range and the entire yearly agricultural cycle within the space of three fields.”

The monuments are aligned within the “pubic “triangle of two rivers meeting. These rivers were seen as superhuman bloodstreams gushing from the earth womb of the Goddess.

Here, every year anew, the Goddess was born, grew into maiden and lover, became mother, and finally the old hag of death. The temples were her seasonal reality, and the people moved with her from place to place in rhythm with the changing farming year.

Our solar year is divided by solstices and equinoxes, but in the ritual 1 calendar the quarter-days in between were used as the major days and nights of celebration. To the ancients, the lunar and solar manifestations of these days were equally important. The celebration nights fall in early August, November, February, and May on the appropriate lunar phase nearest to the solar quarter-day. These are the witches sabbats of Lammas, Samhain, Imbolc, and Be]tane. At the August (summer) and February (winter) quarter-days/nights the moon and sun rose and set in alignment with the axis joining the two sacred springs at Avebury.

Avebury circle originally had 98 stones, some up to 18 feet high, enclosing an area of 28 acres. Two smaller circles stand within the large outer one. The earthworks surrounding the horseshoe or circular space are bounded by a ditch, with a bank beyond. Using only red-deer-antler picks and shovels made of ox shoulderhlades, the people raised the earth-bank nearly 50 feet above the ditch bottom, stretching almost a mile in circumference.

Two serpentine stone avenues led into the circle. They were 1miles long, 50 feet wide, and were defined by 100 pairs of stones set at intervals of 80 feet. In shape, the stones were broad-hipped and long forms of the Goddess, alive and powerful in her stance.

The Christian church began its long fight against the Avebury stones in 634, smashing them or exorcising them with the sign of the cross. Both inner circles were destroyed sometime after 1700, and many of the other stones were demolished or simply buried. This was at the height of the witch-hunts, and these ritual stones of the Goddess-just like her priestesses, the witches-were actually “tortured”and “exorcized” by Christian priests: the stones were burnt, chipped, mutilated. The institution of private property finally brought about the end of the sacred stones, with the enclosure of common land by private, wealthy farmers. The emergence of the landless proletariat and the modern notion of individual progress at the expense of the community fittingly coincided with the fall of the Great Mother at Avebury.

Of the original stones in West Kennet avenue, 72 were left in 1722; by 1934 only four were still standing, with nine left fallen. In 1937 a Scots industrialist bought up the land, restored the ditch and earthworks (which had been serving as a rubbish dump!), and dug up and reinstalled 43 of the buried megaliths.

The long Avebury avenues represented the bisexual Snake/Dragon Goddess, female and male in one. The West Kennet avenue originated, at the serpent's tail-end, from the “sanctuary”, once a circular temple-labyrinth of complex timber structures covered with a conical roof. This might have been the puberty temple, where young women of the community were initiated into the mysteries of farming, sexuality, and childbirth in the springtime season of ploughing and preparation of the seed bed. The young women reentered her womb within the sanctuary, which is Silbury Hill at a different season.

Here the Goddess is the hibernating spring-quarter serpent, just reawakening from her long winter death/sleep. On February 1, at lmbolc, the “Feast of Lights” was celebrated, torches carried processionally in the night to help the Goddess return from the underworld and to be reborn again.

At the tail-end of Beckhampton stone avenue, with its more phallic- shaped stones, was the male counterpart to the "sanctuary, doubtless a temple for male initiation.

Avebury circle is where the young women and men met, after dancing and winding their way up the avenues in imitation of the serpent, at midnight of the waxing moon of the May quarter-day. This stone circle forms both an enlarged cunt and a great head, the inner circles forming the lunar and solar eyes. It is also a world island surrounded by the cosmic ocean, and its hidden power and secret is the sacred underground water that seeps into the ditch in the spring. Here the unborn fetuses dwell.

Avebury henge was the Goddess of Love incarnate, the proper place of conception. Here was celebrated the communal yearly May festival- wedding in orgiastic rites, the entire community dancing with upraised arms on the outer banks, in imitation of the horned new moon. This was Beltane.

The maiden becomes a mother, and so the next stage of the cycle was centered at Silbury Hill, the pregnant womb of the Goddess, “the Creation Cone.” Here, as already described, the people gathered on the summit on The Goddess at Avebury in Britain the night of the full moon at Lammas, the August quarter-day/night, to watch the harvest child being born.

With oncoming winter, the Goddess becomes the Lady of the Tombs, the Hag of Death, the Mother of the Dead. Her dwelling is now at West Kennet long barrow, where she retreats into the underworld after Samhain, or Hallowmas. This barrow is 340 feet long and shaped in her gigantic image. The image of the Silbury Mother is repeated within the chambers that represent vagina, birth passage, and uterus-but here is made hollow to receive the dead, who were buried within her in fetal position. The 30 chamber stones of West Kennet might form a lunar monthly count. There is no water associated with this barrow, no spring, no stream; all is dryness and barrenness. There are only rivers of stone.

West Kennet long barrow was built in 3500 B.C. It is a Stone Age horned grave/tomb/womb/temple, and it is older than Avebury and Silbury Hill. The people were buried within it collectively, without distinction of class or hierarchy. It was ritually frequented by the living as well as by the dead.

Megalithic culture is far older than was once supposed. Traces of a megalithic farming community have been found in County Tyrone, Ireland, dating from 4500 B.C. Patriarchal Bronze Age culture was first brought to Britain circa 2000 B.C. by the taller, warlike, and aggressive Beaker people.

In 2600 B.C., the entrance to the West Kennet long barrow was sealed off with huge megaliths (great stones). These stones form the body of an ox. The Goddess was moon and ox, one and bisexual. She is the Ox-Lady. She emerges miraculously out of death through the sacred bull. There was continued veneration of the tomb during late Neolithic culture. On Sam- ham in November-the winter quarter-day-a winter eve ox was sacrificed here on the night of the no-moon. The ox was ridden by the Queen of Death, and this ox is miraculously reborn with the spring.

The Winter Goddess lived on in folk memory as Black Annis. She was remembered as a great mountain builder, and was a gigantic hag. There are also sacred hills in Ireland named for her: the Paps of Annu, or Annu's Breasts.

Pervading all the earthworks and stoneworks of Avebury was the desire to be close to the earth. The people drew strength from her in birth, in life, and in death. The monuments could clearly not have been built with slave-labor, but were the love-labor of farmers, women and men, who were in tune with great psychic-physical powers. To carry through such a task, they lived a peaceful existence. Perhaps natural magic-energy was released from the earth, and used on an everyday basis by the people.

Ancient myths of the dragon-serpent guarding a mysterious and symbolic treasure perhaps refer to lost secrets of crop fertility-a hidden power running in fertility currents through the countryside. The story goes that anyone who tastes the dragon's blood becomes at one with nature, and forever understands the songs of birds. Perhaps this is the bloodstream of the Mother gushing from the earth at sacred wells.

The ancients knew that some wells and stones, drunk or touched or embraced in a certain way, and at certain times of the year, could regenerate and revitalize people and animals. Sacred stones seem to contain and emit a force that periodically waxes and wanes. Beneath each “active” standing stone, there appears to be a crossing of underground water streams, The movement of water through a tunnel of earth-particularly through clay soil-creates a small electrical field, for which the stone acts as an amplifier. When this energy/power emerges from the ground, it does so in the form of a spiral ascending in seven coils, the lowest two beneath the ground. This is not a stable phenomenon, but waxes and wanes, changing polarity every month. After waning it dies away for a few days, and then waxes in the opposite direction; it cyclically increases and decreases until the end of the lunar phase.

The study of the moon's orbit was essential to megalith builders-the people of the moon, the stones, and the Serpent Goddess. The stones might also have functioned as a means of communication over long distances, since the magnetic force that activates the stones also links them in a continuous chain of vibrations. The ley-lines, paths for the force, interlock in a cobweb of stones, circles, mounds, and harrows all over the earth.

But the stone circles would not have been fully activated unless the calendrical events were accompanied by human rituals and dance, sometimes sacrifice, which focused the forces and fixed them in the stones.

Fire, like water, was essential to the workings of the monuments and their hidden power. At May Day/Night was the moment when Beltane fires were lit from hilltop to hilltop, to celebrate the coming of the new moon. On May Day the people drank from the sacred well and circled it nine times.

The May Day sunrise links Avebury in a direct line with Glastonbury Tor some 40 miles away. Glastonbury looks as human made as Silbury Hill, but it was actually shaped by volcanic rock violently thrown into the sky, in an otherwise flat and marshy land. Glastonbury's spiral path, however, was molded by human hands; it is a three-dimensional labyrinth, rising up the Tor in seven circuits. Nearby is sacred Chalice Well, anciently called “Blood Well” because of its miraculously healing red-stained waters.

Not far from Glastonbury is Wookey Hole, an ancient cave where the rites of the Winter/Death Goddess were probably enacted. According to the myth, in this cave lived a terrible and bloodthirsty “witch” who demanded human sacrifice. She was supposedly finally exorcized by a Christian monk from Glastonbury.

The persistent British myth of the slumbering giant Albion, and the return of King Arthur and the Golden Age, is really the legend of the reemergence of the Goddess and her people, the Great Mother and cosmic harmony we lost with Avebury. Today we live truly in the mythic “wasteland” of patriarchy, awaiting her rebirth and return with the spring of reemerging women cultures.

Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around

We talk about it all night long
We define our moral ground
But when I crawl into your arms
Everything comes tumbling down

Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Your face has fallen sad now
For you know the time is nigh
When I must remove your wings
And you, you must try to fly

Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around

Makes: 6 main-dish servings (10 cups)

Prep: 20 minutes

Cook: Low 7 hours, High 3-1/2 hours

Ingredients

1  pound lean ground beef, ground pork, or sweet Italian sausage

1/2  cup chopped onion (1 medium)

2  19-ounce cans chunky minestrone

1  15-1/2-ounce can navy beans, rinsed and drained

2  cups water

1/4  cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese (1 ounce)

Directions

1. In a large skillet cook ground meat and onion until meat is brown; drain off fat.

2. In a 3-1/2- or 4-quart slow cooker combine cooked meat mixture, the minestrone, navy beans, and water.

3. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 7 to 8 hours or on high-heat setting for 3-1/2 to 4 hours.

 Ladle soup into bowls. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese

Ha! Ha! Ha! I don't know who came up with this quote for conviction, but I LOVE IT!  Different is good ~ applying what you know and trying to do the right thing, in the face of all that tell you "no" ~ is the best thing in the world once it is done. 

Shoot this quote even makes me think of the Almond Joy and Mounds commercial.  Hee!

LMAO!  "I ate the nut."  Just kidding ~ Having fun with it ;-)

As an Indian user of high technology products to interface with my top quality and latest Ubuntu Linux PC Desktop or Laptop Computer from high technology companies - I have started REJECTING those peripherals and those companies which have not bothered to release free and open source Linux drivers for their devices. As with the best printers and high performance graphic cards, it is always best to do some research on whether a foreign company well known for manufacturing and distributing.

Many white goods companies are going ballistic in advertising that they sell a ( High Quality ? ) product to Indian users and in Indian markets EVERY three SECONDS. But do these companies sell products that play well with your Ubuntu Laptop ?

Make sure before you buy. Let them WAIT for THREE HOURS before they sell a product to Indian consumers.

Olympus is one of those companies making small and tiny Digital Voice Recorders - (good for sting operations on Indian politicians who excel in buying Votes for Notes for Civil Nuclear Treaty and solving the power and energy crisis of Indians - hamara nara, ghar ghar mein bijli pahuchana .... )

Unfortunately Olympus has not bothered to release free and open source software drivers for their Digital Voice Recorders. As far as I am concerned Olympus Digital Voice Recorder is USELESS till it makes available free and easily downloadable software drivers to work with my UBUNTU Laptop running on BSNL Broadband Internet.

No point buying rubbish electronic junk and e-waste which DOES NOT work with Ubuntu Linux computers in India. And this will be public service of voluntary nature as Indian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has hardly any guidelines for disposing electronic and computer junk and how to penalise those foreign companies which sell outdated technologies in India - Litter packaged up as Glitter . So before investing any rupees in more electronic junk and devices, ALWAYS check if it WORKS well with Ubuntu Linux.

We really should think about where the rest of the millions ands millions of tons of garbage that we produce in this country does end up. It is not a pretty picture when you see where it goes and it certainly does not produce a pretty result. Landfills are everywhere and they are filled with all kinds of things that cause terrible long lasting damage to the ground and the water underneath. There are certain places that are reaping the results of how hazardous these landfills can be. Nearby residents have developed cancers and other ailments directly associated with drinking the ground water that was contaminated over time due to toxic substances found in landfills.

Before the 1970’s, landfills were not monitored nearly as closely as the most of them are today. These old landfills are causing so much destruction to ground water. Many people do not even realize that their ground water is contaminated. These landfills were filled with toxic elements from paint cans, motor oils, insecticides, and other things that are not allowed to be put into landfills today. Today landfills are required to have liners and water filtration systems that help reduce the risk of contaminated ground water.

Old industrial dump sites, private landfills, and forgotten town dumps are slowly being found and tested for contaminated ground water, but this is a very time consuming and costly procedure. Many of these old landfill sites are now overgrown with bush and trees and some younger generations do not even know they are there. Cleaning up all of the careless messes that we have made will undoubtedly take many years and in the meantime we are responsible to see that this sort of pollution does not happen on our watch. Recycling as many things as we can and making sure that anything toxic does not end up in our landfills is essential to the future safety of groundwater everywhere.

HBW, originally uploaded by Michael Sun.

you have to View it On Black

Human rights maybe an issue the west feels China should resolve but this is really not the most pressing issue take a second and think about this air surrounds us we all breathe the same air that travels the world over. That polluted air in China and elsewhere in aisa maybe the air we consider clean. By the time the air travels in our direction the pollution is blown about and has dissipated. Air is cleaned so we think through rainfall but the pollutants must go somewhere right? My guess would be onto the ground/ water /oceans rivers/of the world so we now have cleaner air but we are left with soil pollution this should not be acceptable have we forgotten about the ban on leaded gasoline and what that was doing to our children. How much longer can the continued pollution like we are witnessing in China and Asia go on this cannot be a good thing can it?

Is this need for cheap goods and huge profits at the expense of humanity and the environment ruining the air and land in China my guess would be yes. China has conquered  with its world dominance in manufacturing  just about all the product lines we purchase on a continual basis don't believe me look at the "made in" label and keep in mind there is alot of no label made in china goods. Now this is not meant to be a slight against china as of course the country has a great history and some vary beautiful landscapes and tourist attractions.

Now i realize there are many cities in the world with pollutted air like Mexico, los Angeles, Athens but China's air is so filthy a mask should be worn to protect you from the small particulate matter that is pumped from the many coal plants. These plants produce energy to the local plastics/toy/product factories who inturn pump there own pollution into the air and water so cheap labour can continue and we can enjoy all the products and packaging  purchased from local dollar stores and retail outlets at a extremely discounted price. Is all this sustainable given the impact low wage employment is having in china.

What i am trying to get at is who is really responsible for the pollution in china? Is it you with your need to save that dollar or is it the governments of the world in which we elect.

Our Goverments in the west including Africa and India while working together with China can implement a clean air policy or act unilaterally and i am not talking KYOTO but something that could deliver cleaner air with the use of import taxes. 

Taxes a favourite revenue generating tool of the 20th century and to this day . This tool if used properly could be applied to the benefit of so called emerging economies. Think about it with the amount of trade between North America the rest of the world and China is in the trillions. If products originating from China are taxed pennies on the dollar the combined dollars worldwide could amount to billions. China's (GDP) was worth roughly 3.43 trillion USDin '07. So if you take .20 mulitplied by 3 trillion you get 600 billion. With an environmental levy (import tax) witheld at customs provided to china along with sponsoring government technology could create employment and assist in cleaning up the air and could have a net benefit of opening up a very closed society with co-operation on this most vital front.

   This article will most likely not ever be read by anyone in China as the goverment controls just about everything that is broadcast and printed from the outside world including the Internet is strictly regulated.

As the environment changes we and the rest of the world seriously need to give our heads a shake and re-evaluate how we purchase our goods and give some consideration to the environmental impact these discount goods have on the country in which they are produced remember air today here tommorow just as the wind blows water flows. Our environment is what we make of it does Chernobyl ring a bell.

Lets not forget there are plenty of Environmental Concerns in the world we in western society are no different than our chinese counter parts as the so called developed world have created some of the worst environmental disasters known to man there are many too many to list and they are not talked about.

  Now is the time to assist our developing world neighbours create an economy that does not kill us all in the end. Maybe with elections coming in Canada Harper/Dion and Obama/Mclean in the United States something can be done before we become victims of our own success's however small the cost could be too great for our race to bear after all we are only human and like past societies poised for extinction.

Source..... Rob Paterson

We really should think about where the rest of the millions ands millions of tons of garbage that we produce in this country does end up. It is not a pretty picture when you see where it goes and it certainly does not produce a pretty result. Landfills are everywhere and they are filled with all kinds of things that cause terrible long lasting damage to the ground and the water underneath. There are certain places that are reaping the results of how hazardous these landfills can be. Nearby residents have developed cancers and other ailments directly associated with drinking the ground water that was contaminated over time due to toxic substances found in landfills.

Before the 1970’s, landfills were not monitored nearly as closely as the most of them are today. These old landfills are causing so much destruction to ground water. Many people do not even realize that their ground water is contaminated. These landfills were filled with toxic elements from paint cans, motor oils, insecticides, and other things that are not allowed to be put into landfills today. Today landfills are required to have liners and water filtration systems that help reduce the risk of contaminated ground water.

Old industrial dump sites, private landfills, and forgotten town dumps are slowly being found and tested for contaminated ground water, but this is a very time consuming and costly procedure. Many of these old landfill sites are now overgrown with bush and trees and some younger generations do not even know they are there. Cleaning up all of the careless messes that we have made will undoubtedly take many years and in the meantime we are responsible to see that this sort of pollution does not happen on our watch. Recycling as many things as we can and making sure that anything toxic does not end up in our landfills is essential to the future safety of groundwater everywhere.

CAO BANG — Construction of the VND200 billion (US$12.5 million) electrolytic manganese dioxide factory in Trung Khanh District of Cao Bang Province began on Saturday.

The factory, lauded the biggest mineral processing project in Cao Bang Province to date, will have annual production capacity of 10,000 tonnes. Most equipment and technology at the plant was transferred from Japan’s Tokyo Boeki Steel and Materials Company.

Once operational, 99.6 per cent of the factory’s products will be exported to Japan and European markets, making it the first mineral processing factory in the province to focus production on exports.

Construction of the plant is expected to lay the foundations for a high-tech metallurgy zone, which will help boost economic and social development in the border district of Trung Khanh as well as create jobs for hundreds of local labourers.

The factory is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2009. —