Denver, Boulder, and Grand Junction Monthly Meetings: “GASLAND: Can You Light Your Water on Fire?” Jan./Feb. 2012

Please note that in Denver we will begin at 6:45 PM.

We will present two films this month.

First, in honor of “Occupy the Courts Day,” organized around the nation by Move to Amend, we will show the 15-minute documentary, A Question of Integrity: Politics, Ethics, and the Supreme Court.  (Be sure to join the OTC rally and march in Denver, which will begin at 10:30 AM, Friday, January 20, on the west steps of the Capitol.)

Narrated by actor, director, and activist Edward James Olmos, this film examines the growing concerns about ethically questionable and overtly political behavior exhibited by some Supreme Court justices and explores the need to apply the same ethical standards that govern all other judges in the federal court system as well as those seated on our nation’s highest court.  For example, Justices Scalia and Thomas allegedly attended a closed-door retreat hosted by Koch Industries, a corporation that supported and benefited from the Citizen United’s decision, which recently dismantled campaign finance laws.

Second, we will show the acclaimed film Gasland (1 hour 40 minutes), which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the “Special Jury Prize Documentary.”  This film exposes the devastating environmental effects of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, commonly called “fracking,” a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling techniques used by the oil and gas industry.

Coloradans have become increasingly concerned as the use of fracking has expanded along the Front Range, with thousands of wells planned for areas surrounding the cities of Denver, Longmont, and Colorado Springs, as well as within some of our state parks.

Why the concern?  This is what Gasland makes abundantly clear: [Read more…]

Denver, Boulder, and Grand Junction Monthly Meetings: “THRIVE, What On Earth Will It Take?” Dec. 2011/Jan. 2012

During this season of light and hope, we are honored to present the inspiring documentary film THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take? (2 hours, 12 minutes)

Foster Gamble, Executive Producer, was heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune and was groomed to be a financial leader. Instead, he chose a different path. It all started with a vision he had as a child: a direct experience of universal energy. This epiphany led to a scientific search to figure out how things work.

Eventually, another question plagued him: Why do the majority of humans live in agony and devastation, barely surviving when we could be thriving?

A lifelong search to answer this social question along with his scientific quest into universal energy has led to THRIVE, a master work synthesizing these two seemingly disparate subjects, but as we shall see, not disparate at all. The connecting thread is the desperate human need for “new energy,”–sometimes referred to as “free energy” or “zero-point energy.”

The film’s tapestry connects many suppressed and taboo subjects woven around Gamble’s discovery that there is a pattern of universal energy: the torus. The following are excerpts from the THRIVE website :

Nature appears to rely on one core recurring pattern to evolve life at every scale – the torus. It is a donut shaped energy vortex that you can see everywhere from atoms to galaxies and beyond….

Most torus dynamics actually contain two toruses – called “tori” – like the male and female aspects of the whole – one spiraling one direction toward the north pole and its opposite spinning toward the south pole.

Amazingly, ancient civilizations seemed to know about this universal (free) energy and passed this knowledge on through texts, oral traditions, icons, stone carvings, and various other means. [Read more…]

Denver, Boulder, and Grand Junction Monthly Meetings: Laurie Manwell and Kevin Danaher, Nov/Dec 2011

For this month’s gathering, we will show video footage of two very interesting talks given in different cities on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  Anyone who has felt concern that the truth of 9/11 will never become mainstream (and haven’t we all?) needs to see these talks.  Each in its own way, they demonstrate how incredibly far the 9/11 Truth movement has come.  Scientific study and the compilation of factual evidence will continue, and there was a lot of that at the Toronto Hearings over the tenth anniversary period, but these talks are of a different kind.  Our two speakers demonstrate new dimensions of the Truth movement that have evolved during the last few years, as 9/11 Truth moves into the wider culture.

Also, to learn of some exciting current 9/11 Truth efforts, scroll to end of this message.

SCADs (State Crimes Against Democracy) and Psychological Resistance to Alternative Accounts

Laurie Manwell, Ph.D. Candidate in Behavioural Neuroscience and Toxicology at the University of Guelph, near Toronto

In this one-hour talk given at the Toronto Hearings during the tenth anniversary week, Laurie Manwell helps us to understand how deceptions such as 9/11 and similar crimes enable the state to “sell” what Laurie calls “democracy for the few” to the broader public, and get them to pay for it.  By a sophisticated emotional manipulation, the state portrays American aggression as pro-democratic and aggression by others as authoritarian, thus justifying increasingly aggressive state behaviors.  Social scientists, academics, and experts are clearly catching on to this game, studying how it works in the minds and emotions of the public at large, and exposing its deceptive logic.  This reflects the next stage of the Truth movement, as we become more skillful at unraveling the resistance to the truth in our culture.  But Laurie’s talk is far from a dry, intellectual presentation.  She is as passionate as she is academic.  Citing incidents from her own life and making many connections between our personal and global lives, she provides us with a rousing call to unmask the criminals of 9/11 for who they are.  Laurie also invites the shoddy journalists of our time to wrestle with her over what really happened on 9/11, and warns them that she holds a black belt in kung fu.  (62 minutes including Q/A)

Learning from 9/11

Kevin Danaher, Ph.D., author and anti-globalization activist, co-founder of Global Exchange, founder and executive co-producer of the Green Festivals

Next we will see Kevin Danaher speaking at the 9/11 tenth anniversary event in San Francisco, which was titled “9/11: Reclaiming the Truth, Reclaiming our Future.”   It is simply remarkable to see someone of Kevin’s stature as a progressive activist speaking with profound clarity about 9/11 Truth.  In addition to explaining the role of 9/11 in the history of US empire, Kevin discusses the psychological resistance to 9/11 Truth he has encountered even among his progressive friends.  He relates how activists with whom he has worked for years and with whom he has been arrested doing civil disobedience actions have had a really hard time coming to grips with the truth about 9/11, but that more and more of them are now doing so.  Kevin Danaher combines a great wit with a spine of steel, and you’ll enjoy this talk.  As one of the best known and most respected progressive activists in the world, he is a tremendous ally to the 9/11 Truth effort, and this talk is a great one to share with any of our progressive friends still sitting on the fence about 9/11. (30 minutes including Q/A) [Read more…]