New scandals for the Church reveal the End-times are imminent

popeLeo Lyon Zagami –  After the mass resignation of the Chilean bishops that I wrote about earlier this year, today the Chilean national prosecutor has enrolled 158 members of the Catholic Church in the register of suspects for committing or covering-up sexual abuse against minors and adults.

This is a real catastrophe for the Vatican, obscuring the Catholic church once again, in the eyes of the world. Among the suspects of this massive child abuse case in Chile (either as protagonists or accomplices)  are a large number of bishops, priests and lay people connected to the Church, and these cases go back almost 60 years.The Chilean magistrates have, in fact, opened 144 lines of investigations on cases from 1960 until today, with 266 victims involved.  Of these victims, 178 were children or teenagers and 31 were adults. “The overwhelming majority of the reported facts correspond to sexual crimes committed by priests, parish priests or people associated with schools”, the prosecutor’s office in Chile wrote today. The age of victims was not established in 57 other cases. Continue reading

Kourosh Ziabar ~ Who Appointed The U.S. To Be The World’s Policeman?

The4thMedia  January 25 2014

The fact that the U.S. has been long treating other nations in a derogatory and irresponsible manner and allows itself to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries is a source of frustration for many people, even if the world’s politicians don’t dare to criticize Washington over its arrogant behavior.

The United States, blasted by many critics of its domestic and foreign policy as a newly-emerged police state interacts with the other nations across the world in such a way as if they are all its subordinates and inferiors. The people occupying the different rooms of White House think that they are the owners of the world and that they have a right to look down upon the other nations pejoratively.

The long history of U.S.-led military interventions, wars, coups, covert operations and economic sanctions that have strangulated the livelihoods of the subjugated people in the four corners of the globe and annihilated thousands of lives shows that the United States has not only failed to realize its ambitions for becoming a “beacon of freedom,” as its different presidents proclaim, but that it has also become a rogue regime, that despite the criticism and objections of its people, continues to maintain its imperial and colonial policies and its disdainful approach toward the “unfriendly” nations, and even its close allies, as it was the case in Edward Snowden’s recent intelligence revelations.

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Sacred Chile – The Splendor & Magic Of Patagonia

paine
The stunning vista of Los Torres del Paines incredible sculpted mountains. The incredible crystalline energy park is on the 51st latitude south. This region of South America is then lowest southernmost land mass before Antarctica. It is beyond magical, and has the Southern Hemisphere clockwise spin that balances & aligns with the counter-clockwise spin of the Northen Hemispshere.

Patagonia is mythical, a place of exquisite dream-scape that seems to exist more in the exotic fantasy of imagination as in reality. And that aspect alone makes a trip there feel momentous. One view of the incredible surreal landscape there explains it all, even if you have to pinch yourself. This is the sort of place that seems to come right out of a sci-fi movie. Mountains of incredible jagged peaks, surrounded by a base matrix of wheaten pampas, blue-crystal lakes, and amazing flora and fauna, the type not seen anywhere else on this planet.

In a globally reduced world, where your neighbor visits Nepal, and a friend has just returned from Tahiti, Patagonia still rises above the rarest of expectation, and literally so. Patagonia has somehow retained the mystique of the frontier. The name alone conjures images of a fabled landscape of spiky peaks veiled in clouds, glaciers that extend to the horizon tumbling into electric-vibrant lakes, endless flowing steppes unpopulated for hundreds of miles save for the herds of llama and wandering puma. And it puts you in a mood of wonder and amazement that is vibrantly luminous in the sheer & vast enormity of physical space. Patagonia covers about 260,000 square miles in size, about the same as Texas, spanning a significant portion of lower South America.

And while few places, including Patagonia are no longer uncharted territory, Los Torres del Paine and the surrounding Andes are as close as one comes in the new millennia, to being truly pristine areas of open untouched majesty. For years Patagonia has been on the map of hardy international trekkers, who have found there some of the world’s best unspoiled scenery, and found solace in the solitary existence of some of nature’s finest artistry.

I first saw the sheer granite towers of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park in National Geographic 2 decades ago. Literally stunned at the incredible jagged landscape, I promised myself I would go there one day. I kept that promise in March, 2002. I made another promise when I left…and that was to return one day.

Torres del Paine National Park is an amazing array of lakes, waterfalls, glaciers and jagged peaks at the bottom tip of South America. Its massive 1,000 square mile, 500,000-acre expanse runs from just north of Tierra del Fuego and curls around the Sound of Last Hope in southern Patagonia, Chile. The crowning jewel and namesake of the park are three incredible 9,000-foot violet-pink granite monoliths.

Those looking for dramatic alpine landscapes, glacial fields, astonishing, jagged mountainscapes and a chance to get a look at the stunning spires of pink granite that make the famous towers of Paine are drawn from all over the globe to experience firsthand the wonders of the Torres del Paine circuit in Chile’s Patagonia mountains. It is no surprise, to those that have been there, including this writer, that Torres del Paine has been names one of the ‘Nat-Geo Top Ten’ places to visit in your lifetime by National Geographic. It is also, thankfully, a UNESCO biosphere protected reserve, specifically because of the extraordinarily uniqueness of place: the mountain vistas, pristine valleys, rolling pampas, crystal glacial lakes and its unique wildlife.

A Place Not of this World

I have been fortunate to circumnavigate the world many times over the past 3 decades. I am often asked what place is my favorite. It’s a difficult question, and in many ways, one I truly cannot answer. It unfair to the numerous amazing places, that all stand out in their own merits, for vastly differing reasons. But within the prodigious expanse of Patagonia, Los Torres del Paine is utterly unique, beautiful beyond imagination. And perhaps it is the immensity of limitlessness, this sense of infinite that embellishes the sense of the mystical within Los Torres del Paine. Truly it looks & feels different, a place not of this world.

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Mystery of the Easter Island Statues

from Mysterious Places & Red Ice Creations
October 28 2011

Chile
Easter Island Statue with full body excavated

Almost everyone has seen the iconic images of the Easter Island statues staring silently out from the hillsides. For years I thought these were the only Moai on the island. I knew nothing of the statues erected on ahu or the fallen moai at the other sites. Seeing these pictures many people have come to believe that all Moai faced the ocean while it is the exact opposite that is true. With the exception of Ahu Akivi all erected Moai face inland. It is believed they were positioned that way to watch over the villages. At Rano Raraku the statues face away from the crater.

The fact is these statues were not meant to have stayed in this place. The Moai that you see half buried on the sides of the volcanic cone of Rano Raraku were pieces waiting to be transported to ahu around the island. The Moai that you see sticking up out of the ground have bodies that extend down underground 20 – 40 feet, all the way to the waist. Centuries of erosion from the slopes above have covered all but the tops of these giants – the largest Moai ever constructed. One of the unfinished moai, completely carved but not removed from the crater wall, is a staggering 70 feet in length. Many doubt this statue could ever have been raised successfully. Giving their ingenuity and obsession, I believe they would have eventually.The slopes of Rano Raraku are filled with eye-less moai – several hundred circle the crater in various stages of construction.

Many have a more detailed and finished look than the moai erected on the island’s ahu. There are some that disagree that these statues were finished pieces waiting for transport and believe that they were never meant to be move from the slopes surrounding their birth place. Perhaps it was a “Moai Showroom” of sorts where local leaders could come and pick out their favorite design!

Thor Heyerdahl’s team was given one day in 1987 to excavate and measure the full length of the moai. Its regal head tapers into a long thin body with carved tattoo and loin cloth relief’s on its surface. It has a distinctly phallic shape to it and some have proposed that all the moai were purposely designed around a phallus shaped form.

The interior of the caldera contains many finished and unfinished moai as well. Erosion has covered many nearly completely and it’s possible more lay beneath the ground, covered by hundreds of years of erosion. The potmarked walls from which the moai where carved can clearly be seen in this photo taken of the interior of the Rano Raraku caldera just above the crater lake.