United Nations Declaration (Articles 1 - 30):

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts
Nigerian Minister of the Environment Amina Mohammed, seen in 2015, will be the UN's number two official (AFP Photo/Mireya ACIERTO)

Sustainable Development
"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) -
"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013. They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."
"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


The Declaration of Human Freedom

Archangel Michael (Via Steve Beckow), Feb. 19, 2011

Every being is a divine and eternal soul living in a temporal body. Every being was alive before birth and will live after death.

Every soul enters into physical life for the purpose of experience and education, that it may, in the course of many lifetimes, learn its true identity as a fragment of the Divine.

Life itself is a constant process of spiritual evolution and unfoldment, based on free choice, that continues until such time as we realize our true nature and return to the Divine from which we came.

No soul enters life to serve another, except by choice, but to serve its own purpose and that of the Divine from which it came.

All life is governed by natural and universal laws which precede and outweigh the laws of humanity. These laws, such as the law of karma, the law of attraction, and the law of free will, are decreed by God to order existence and assist each person to achieve life’s purpose.

No government can or should survive that derives its existence from the enforced submission of its people or that denies its people their basic rights and freedoms.

Life is a movement from one existence to another, in varied venues throughout the universe and in other universes and dimensions of existence. We are not alone in the universe but share it with other civilizations, most of them peace-loving, many of whom are more advanced than we are, some of whom can be seen with our eyes and some of whom cannot.

The evidence of our five senses is not the final arbiter of existence. Humans are spiritual as well as physical entities and the spiritual side of life transcends the physical. God is a Spirit and the final touchstone of God’s Truth is not physical but spiritual. The Truth is to be found within.

God is one and, because of this, souls are one. They form a unity. They are meant to live in peace and harmony together in a “common unity” or community. The use of force to settle affairs runs contrary to natural law. Every person should have the right to conduct his or her own affairs without force, as long as his or her choices do not harm another.

No person shall be forced into marriage against his or her will. No woman shall be forced to bear or not bear children, against her will. No person shall be forced to hold or not hold views or worship in a manner contrary to his or her choice. Nothing vital to existence shall be withheld from another if it is within the community’s power to give.

Every person shall retain the ability to think, speak, and act as they choose, as long as they not harm another. Every person has the right to choose, study and practice the education and career of their choice without interference, provided they not harm another.

No one has the right to kill another. No one has the right to steal from another. No one has the right to force himself or herself upon another in any way.

Any government that harms its citizens, deprives them of their property or rights without their consent, or makes offensive war upon its neighbors, no matter how it misrepresents the situation, has lost its legitimacy. No government may govern without the consent of its people. All governments are tasked with seeing to the wellbeing of their citizens. Any government which forces its citizens to see to its own wellbeing without attending to theirs has lost its legitimacy.

Men and women are meant to live fulfilling lives, free of want, wherever they wish and under the conditions they desire, providing their choices do not harm another and are humanly attainable.

Children are meant to live lives under the beneficent protection of all, free of exploitation, with unhindered access to the necessities of life, education, and health care.

All forms of exploitation, oppression, and persecution run counter to universal and natural law. All disagreements are meant to be resolved amicably.

Any human law that runs counter to natural and universal law is invalid and should not survive. The enactment or enforcement of human law that runs counter to natural and universal law brings consequences that cannot be escaped, in this life or another. While one may escape temporal justice, one does not escape divine justice.

All outcomes are to the greater glory of God and to God do we look for the fulfillment of our needs and for love, peace, and wisdom. So let it be. Aum/Amen.


Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit

Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit
Pope Francis laughs alongside US President Barack Obama upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, on September 22, 2015, on the start of a 3-day trip to Washington (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)


Today's doodle in the U.S. celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech on its 50th anniversary (28 Aug 2013)

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'
The White House released this image, of the building colored like the rainbow flag, on Facebook following the supreme court’s ruling. Photograph: Facebook

Same-sex marriage around the world

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'
Reporters Without Borders labels Erdogan as 'enemy of press freedom'

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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

AP IMPACT: Building costs rise at US nuclear sites

Associated Press, by Ray Henry, Jul. 10, 2012

FILE- In this Feb. 15, 2012 file pool photo, the Unit 3 nuclear island where a new
 nuclear reactor will sit is seen before a visit by U.S. Secretary of Energy  Secretary
Steven Chu at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in  Waynesboro,  Ga. Vogtle initially
estimated to cost $14 billion, has run into over $800 million in extra charges related 
to licensing delays. A state monitor has said bluntly that co-owner, Southern Co.
 can’t stick to its budget. The plant, whose first reactor was supposed to be operational
 by April 2016, is now delayed seven months.(AP Photo/David Goldman, Pool, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — America's first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry's hopes for a jumpstart to the nation's new nuclear age.

The Process: From Atom to Outlet
Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.

Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year's meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said. The building slowdown would be another blow to the so-called nuclear renaissance, a drive over the past decade to build 30 new reactors to meet the country's growing power needs. Industry watchers now say that only a handful will be built this decade.

"People are looking at these things very carefully," said Richard Lester, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Inexpensive gas alone, he said, "is casting a pretty long shadow over the prospects" for construction of new nuclear plants.

The AP's review of pending projects found:

Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia, initially estimated to cost $14 billion, has run into over $800 million in extra charges related to licensing delays. A state monitor has said bluntly that co-owner Southern Co. can't stick to its budget. The plant, whose first reactor was supposed to be operational by April 2016, is now delayed seven months.

The long-mothballed Watts Bar power plant in central Tennessee, initially budgeted at $2.5 billion, will cost up to $2 billion more , the Tennessee Valley Authority concluded this spring. The utility said its initial budget underestimated how much work was needed to finish the plant and wasted money by not completing more design work before starting construction. The project had been targeted to finish in 2012, but has been postponed until 2015.

Plant Summer in South Carolina, expected to cost $10.4 billion, has seen costs jump by $670 million; but with lower interest rates and cheaper-than-expected labor; the owners assert the project is still on or under budget. A deadline to put the first new reactor online has been delayed from 2016 to 2017; the second reactor is now eight months ahead of schedule, targeted for early 2018.

Southern Co. and others in the nuclear business say cost overruns are expected in projects this complex, and that they are balanced out by other savings over the life of the plant. Southern Co. expects Plant Vogtle will cost $2 billion less to operate over its 60-year lifetime than initially projected because of anticipated tax breaks and historically low interest rates.

Regulators have been trying to make it easier to build, encouraging the use of off-the-shelf reactor designs that get approval in advance. New construction techniques are supposed to require less in-the-field assembly, making building quicker and reducing human error. Interest rates and labor costs have been down after a bruising recession.

"It's a down environment economically," said Steve Byrne, president of generation and transmission for SCANA's South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., one of the utilities building Plant Summer's reactors. "It's terrible for the country, but it's a great time to be building" a nuclear facility.

But the economy is also working against progress on new construction. The next company in line to build, Progress Energy, has pushed back construction plans for two reactors in Florida because of the economy, low demand and extremely cheap natural gas. It expects its first new reactor to be finished in 2024.

The plants burning natural gas are far cheaper to build than nuclear power plants. But utility executives say they need a diversified mix of power plants, including nuclear, because relying too heavily on a single fuel like natural gas backfires if prices go up.

The rising construction costs hit an industry already under financial pressure, after meltdowns last year at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after a tsunami in Japan. NRG Energy wrote off a $481 million investment in two planned reactors in Texas shortly after the accident, citing uncertainties after the Japanese disaster. Other utilities still seeking to build have said they expect the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will adopt new safety rules in response to the accident; they cannot predict the exact costs.

Industry leaders say the soaring costs could threaten projects that are worth the investment, and send the wrong message to the public.

"It's important to get this project done right because if every time we build a nuclear plant we go substantially over budget, ratepayers will begin to believe we can't do a nuclear project on budget," said Tim Echols, a nuclear power proponent who chairs Georgia's Public Service Commission.

An earlier push to expand the reach of nuclear power in the 1970s was thwarted by a number of obstacles: Electric companies overestimated demand and designed plants they didn't need. They had trouble managing massive construction workforces. Utilities designed nuclear plants as they built, leading to mistakes and slowdowns. Interest rates skyrocketed and the 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania forced plant operators to meet new rules at additional costs.

To win approval to build at Plant Vogtle, Southern Co. had to promise it would build its plant on budget, particularly as state officials remembered the massive cost overruns that occurred when it built the plant's two existing reactors, said Robert Baker, a former utility regulator who has criticized the project.

The utility has been authorized to spend just over $6.1 billion as its share of the estimated $14 billion project, which was tracking under budget at the end of last year.

Southern Co. is about seven months behind schedule, mostly because of the federal approval process for the reactor, according to company executives and filings. Southern Co. also faced delays in getting an important license allowing it to start building the guts of the plant.

Another, less exotic problem at Vogtle: At one point, workers built metal bars straight rather than curved, as regulators had directed, so Southern Co. had to rip them out and replace them. Crews in South Carolina, watching the progress at Vogtle, have halted the construction of those bars.

Plant Vogtle's designers and builders — Westinghouse Electric Co. and The Shaw Group Inc. — want Southern Co. to pay an additional $400 million for the licensing delays, according to a May report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power, which owns nearly half the new plant, denies responsibility for those costs and is negotiating on behalf of all the owners. Financial information divulged by three companies who own 98 percent of the project show $838 million in potential charges.

It is unclear how much this could cost the utility's 2.4 million customers. Southern Co. earlier estimated typical residential customers would see a $10 increase in their monthly bills when both reactors are producing power in 2018. Utility regulators ultimately set the rates.

Similar issues have played out in central South Carolina, where SCANA Corp. and Santee Cooper won permission to build two reactors at Plant Summer, about 25 miles north of Columbia. SCANA agreed to pay $138 million in March to settle claims over licensing delays raised by the companies designing and building the reactor. Santee Cooper will pay nearly $113 million as its share of those costs, company officials said.

In May, SCANA asked utility regulators to raise its base spending on the project by $283 million, which includes the settlement related to licensing delays and extra costs for cyber security and staffing. However, the company said it will stay within its existing budget because it expects other expenses to be lower.

Supplying parts efficiently for the new reactors has also proved difficult. William Jacobs Jr., the state monitor hired by Georgia utility regulators, has publicly questioned whether a factory run by The Shaw Group can master quality control rules and deliver parts on time. NRC inspectors have faulted the facility for failing to maintain accurate records on the qualifications of workers. SCANA Corp. raised similar concerns.

Shaw spokeswoman Gentry Brann said the company has addressed the NRC's concerns.

In Tennessee, internal reviews faulted the Tennessee Valley Authority for not providing enough oversight on the project and for allowing a culture to develop that discouraged the sharing of bad news, for example, site problems that led to delays. Not enough engineering work was finished before construction started, meaning construction workers sometimes did not have enough work to do.

In an embarrassing episode, the TVA temporarily stopped work at the site in January after two mishaps revealed safety problems. No one was injured, and the operating plant did not experience any problems. In one case, workers removed a cable connected to equipment in the working reactor. In another, they cut out valves before getting proper clearance and verifying the system was safe.

Changes have been made to bring the project under control, said Mike Skaggs, who became the authority's senior vice president of nuclear construction in October. He said the TVA has carefully evaluated the remaining work on the reactor, slimmed down its workforce and made instructions to work crews easier to understand.

Skaggs has been involved in building two other nuclear plants and said the project requires constant monitoring.

"If you've got a good estimate, you use the estimate as a roadmap to complete the project," Skaggs said. "What I'm most worried about is the assumptions we've made in the estimate — are they ringing out true?"

Related Articles:

"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) SoulsMidpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Lose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.)

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