There’s some great footage of some truly remarkable craft in this latest monthly “best of” from AnonymousFO.
Click here to view the embedded video.
As channeled by Aisha North – May 01, 2013
http://aishanorth.wordpress.com
The time of your Gathering is fast approaching, and the energies that you have all brought down to this planet via your physical vessels are already starting to announce their presence to you. So you will all have felt this in some way in these last few days, and it will all start to intensify somewhat as the big day draws nearer.
For, as we have already talked about, this is something that in many ways will be like a culmination of something that has been going on for a very long time. For you have already been anchors of light for so long now, and the energies you have been instrumental in pulling in, the strands of light as we have called them, are already here, and now, this weaving and connecting together is in full swing.
This will not come as a surprise to any of you, as you have already felt so much more connected to this beautiful grid of fellow lightworkers, and indeed, also with us who currently reside behind the screens as it were. But now, everything will indeed start to speed up, and as we gather all the threads and continue this complex process of connecting and interconnecting them all, it will be as if portal after portal open up, and you will feel yourself stepping into room after room on this journey towards completion.
So now, the vistas are truly starting to expand in so many ways, but if you yourself have not felt any of this up until now, it may be because you spend a little too much time looking down at your feet, trying to gauge which way the land falls. And that is not strange, for this will in many ways be a little bit like learning to walk, or indeed, learning how to ride a bike. We all know that in order to find your balance, it is indeed best to focus your gaze on a point far ahead, and try to avoid the temptation of looking down at your feet.
It might feel like it is the best thing to do in order to make sure that nothing will trip you up, but in fact, the overall balance is far better achieved if you literally lift your gaze and fasten it on the horizon. That way, not only will your own balance improve, but you will also be better able to see just how far you can actually see now.
For everything is indeed expanding at a rapid rate now, and unless you actually become aware of it, it might be a missed opportunity for your own growth. So let go of the need to keep gazing so intently at yourself, and let yourself open up to be more fully able to take in the awesome surroundings. For they have truly changed so much during these last few days, we guarantee you it will take your breath away if you manage to take in the full scope of it all.
For you are no longer riding inside that dark and dreary tunnel of yesteryear. You have exited at the other end, and there, the vistas are breathtakingly beautiful. So fill your lungs with this fresh air of freedom, and let your heart sing to the tune of this new and improved world that surrounds you. For this is just the beginning dear ones, this is only the first glimpse of what you have in store as soon the train you are travelling on will finally pull in at the station of your dreams.
(From Aisha: you can read more about the first Gathering here: http://aishanorth.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/i-invite-you-all-to-the-first-gathering-around-the-pond/)
Image by Ute Posegga-Rudel, Copyright 2012
As channeled by Ute Posegga-Rudel – April 29, 2013
http://radiantlyhappy.blogspot.co.uk
Dearest friends!
There is a wide-spread misunderstanding about the function of a Guru, especially in the New Age community.
This conversation with our God-Self is aimed to bring greater clarity into this.
But before the actual conversation, it is perhaps first necessary to clarify why I call it “our God-Self”, and not “my” God-Self. Some of you might wonder about it. And I never really discussed this before.
It is simply a matter of definition. The God-Self in my messages is the One Self of all things, beings and happenings, the One Source and Divine Consciousness of all creation, that is paradoxically also appearing AS individual form and consciousness. So if you believe it should be “my God-Self”, then you are coming from the point of view of your own “Higher Self”, which is the Higher Mind of your incarnate identity. As such it is still an individual being, even if appearing in subtle form.
Whereas Source is the “substance”, the alchemists “prima materia”. “The Mother”, from which even the Higher Mind or the Higher Self is arising.
As “Our” God-Self is the Oneness of us all, It naturally can speak to every heart, because it dwells at the core of every being.
I hope this serves your better understanding.
In the following conversation I asked our God-Self about the importance and function of the Spiritual Master. As we know, in the New Age movement Spiritual Masters are no longer “in”, because everybody seems to “know” already that they are their own masters and do not need anybody “outside” of themselves to teach. This is of course very true, in case one is really in touch with their own inner Master or very Source.
But there is often a confusion about mind and feeling, the mental substance that is arising in consciousness, and pure consciousness itself which is the domain of mere feeling or feeling attention.
This confusion can lead to the idea that merely thinking one’s Self is already being in touch with It. But what happens in this case is that one has created an idea of the Self, but which is not the Self Itself.
Many members of the New Age philosophy are making this error. It requires a self-transcending practice (“self” written with a small “s”), deep insight, self-understanding and actual “Self-inquiry” to a degree – to come truly in contact with the Self, that is the Mother of the Higher Self. It emerges only when the mind becomes still. When we release all concepts about ourselves and the world, high or low, and when we stop searching.
Now the conversation with our God-Self begins.
Q: Many people believe that a Guru is not necessary and that he/she is a personality who enforces him/herself on the disciple and makes him/her dependent and weak. Therefore only weak people would be looking for a Guru.
On the other hand it is traditionally said, that God Is Guru.
What does this mean and how does this work, how can an individual be the Unlimited, the Source, the All-That-Is?
A: First of all, please understand that a True Guru is a shortcut. The relationship with a Guru can significantly shorten the time of one’s spiritual process and Self-Realization.
From the ‘point of view’ and Realization of a True Guru He Himself (or She Herself) is not an “other”. This is only the beginner’s perception. For the True Guru only One exists. One Self or One Divine Conscious Light. Guru is a principle, a function, and not a body-mind, although it may appear to the external observer as such.
Guru is Mirror, is the Divine Force that directly appears – seemingly outside – to the Seeker who has not yet found his/her own Divine Truth within. But in truth “inside and outside” is the illusion of the Disciple.
The relationship between Guru and Disciple is deeply mysterious and cannot be understood by the mind. It is based on a Love that is greater than the love between human lovers. And it is based on the truth that Consciousness is primary and body-mind is secondary. Both body-minds, the body-mind of the Guru and the body-mind of the Disciple are arising in Consciousness. Therefore both are sharing Consciousness, although the Disciple is not conscious of it yet, whereas by means of Conscious Realization of the Guru, His/Her body-mind is fully surrendered to the Conscious Light or Energy and is such transmitting It directly to the Disciple.
So a Sacred Spiritual Transmission is taking place in this relationship that is able to awaken the Seeker to his/her own Truth within. However this Truth is not found IN the body-mind. The body-mind only possesses portals that provide an opening into a higher Reality. In this Reality Consciousness and Light or Energy, the male and female aspect of the Divine are One. In the ancient Indian spiritual tradition it is called the Unity of Shiva-Shakti.
Q: How is it possible that the Realization of the Guru tends to continue to influence the Disciple, even when they are physically apart or when the Guru left the body and even returned to Source Itself?
A: It happens by intention of the Guru, based on Grace and Blessing. The Guru magnifies the awareness of Self in the Disciple, and he recognizes therefore in contemplation his own Self in the Guru. If the Recognition is True, it is very powerful as it provokes the Guru’s Spirit Force upon the Disciple which initiates profound and palpable changes in his body-mind while it also alters the DNA and molecular structure. The body-mind of the Guru disappears in the Disciple’s deep and self-forgetting contemplation of the Guru and only the One Self remains. What the Disciple first recognizes in the Guru he discovers ultimately in and as Him-Self.
When the Disciple, by the Grace of the Guru, Who is his own Self, finally comes to understand by direct knowing that there is only One Self, One Radiant Consciousness, and not “two”, he/she acknowledges It as his/her Own. This recognition requires the understanding of one’s own body-mind and the permanent capability to transcend it. Then the Guru has fulfilled His/Her purpose.
But the Love between Guru and Disciple continues eternally.
.~.
Beloved friends, here ends the conversation ~ that was rather an experience of deep-felt awe, great stillness and eternal love.
It is my wish that you can feel it too!
Much love to you all,
Ute
Copyright© 2013. All rights reserved: Ute Posegga-Rudel, http://radiantlyhappy.blogspot.com
Sharing of this message is only allowed together with this information and without changes. If you have questions, please contact me via transformation33@gmail.com. Thank you.
BBC News, 1 May 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22371275
Mr Morales accused USAID of meddling in the affairs of the Bolivian people
Bolivian President Evo Morales has said he will expel the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Mr Morales accused the agency of seeking to undermine his government.
USAID had been working in Bolivia for almost five decades, with the biggest part of its funding going to its counter-narcotics and military section.
In 2008, Mr Morales expelled the US ambassador and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for allegedly conspiring against his administration.
‘Dignity’On previous May Days, Mr Morales has announced the nationalisation of key industries, such as hydroelectric power and the electricity grid.
But on Wednesday he said he “would only nationalise the dignity of the Bolivian people”.
Speaking at a rally in La Paz, the president said that there was “no lack of US institutions which continue to conspire against our people and especially the national government, which is why we’re going to take the opportunity to announce on this May Day that we’ve decided to expel USAID”.
He then turned to his Foreign Minister, David Choquehuanca, and asked him to inform the US embassy of his decision.
The president said the expulsion was in protest at a remark by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who he said had described Latin America as “the backyard of the United States”. It was not immediately clear what statement by Mr Kerry he was referring to.
Mr Morales has threatened USAID with expulsion in the past, saying that its programmes have “political rather than social” ends.
He has also accused it of “manipulating” and “using” union leaders.
Drugs warMr Morales, who heads his country’s union of coca growers, has also been critical of US counter-narcotic programmes in Bolivia, repeatedly stating that the fight against drugs is driven by geopolitical interests.
In 2008, he expelled the Drug Enforcement Administration saying it was aiding the opposition.
Bolivia is among the top three producers of coca in the world, according to the United Nations World Drug report. Coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, has been used in the Andes for thousands of years as a mild stimulant and sacred herbal medicine.
The biggest part of USAID money in Bolivia goes to its counter-narcotics and military programme, according to figures published on the agency’s website.
The remainder is spent on “integrated development, health and sustainable economic growth and economic development”.
The agency cites as its main aims the strengthening of Bolivia’s health system and the provision of “equal access to health care by eliminating social exclusion”, as well as improving “the livelihoods of economically and socially disadvantaged people by increasing income and managing natural resources”.
Evo Morales became Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2005.
He was re-elected by a landslide in 2009 but has since faced protests from indigenous communities angered by the construction of a major road through their territory, and police and army officers demanding better pay.
JPMorgan Chase headquarters in New York. Photo: AP
Stephen: We’re really trekking into the real dirty money trail these days as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) now takes focus on the BIG banks…
By Michael Hudson, ICIJ – April 30, 2013
http://www.icij.org/offshore/jpmorgan-chases-record-highlights-doubts-about-big-banks-devotion-fighting-dirty-money
Money-laundering issues at U.S. and UK financial firms shed light on role of rich nations and elite banks in the offshore world.
In the summer of 2009, Jennifer Sharkey was moving in select company. As a Manhattan-based vice president at JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Private Wealth Management group, she juggled relationships with 75 “high net worth” clients with assets totaling more than half a billion dollars.
Things changed for her, she claims, after she raised doubts about a “suspect” foreign client who had millions stashed in various accounts at the bank.
The client was making questionable cash transfers and concealing who actually owned certain accounts, according to a lawsuit Sharkey is pursuing in federal court in Manhattan. She also found evidence, her suit claims, that the client had falsified financial statements for one of his companies and that he’d been involved in the “unexplained disappearance” of millions of dollars in merchandise in another venture.
After she warned high-level bank officials that the client might be involved in fraud and money laundering, her suit claims, JPMorgan moved to silence her — pressuring her to stop raising questions about the client, assigning her other clients to junior colleagues and, finally, firing her.
“I was just doing my job,” Sharkey said in an interview with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). But for the bank, she said, “it was more important to keep this client than to do the right thing.”
JPMorgan denies it retaliated against Sharkey for pushing the bank to exit its relationship with the client — and it denies that the customer was either a foreign client or engaged in suspect activities. The bank says it goes to great lengths to identify and block money laundering, terrorism financing and other illicit transactions.
Sharkey isn’t alone, though, in raising concerns about the largest U.S. bank’s commitment to fighting the flow of dirty money around the world.
Over the years, JPMorgan Chase and its corporate forebears have been accused of serving as conduits for money controlled by drug smugglers, mobsters and political despots and acting as magnets for “flight capital” from rich tax dodgers from Latin America and other regions. The bank also played a part, lawsuits alleged, in massive tax haven-enabled frauds in the Enron and Madoff scandals.
An examination of JPMorgan’s record in policing suspect cash and offshore deals offers a case study of how big banks deal with dirty money and transnational corruption — and a window onto the decades-long history of the banking industry’s fraught relationship with the offshore world.
When people think about secret accounts and money laundering, they often imagine the Cayman Islands or some other sultry paradise. But the enablers of cross-border corruption aren’t located only in flyspeck island havens, white-collar crime experts say.
Criminals and connivers rely on easy access to banks in the U.S., the UK and other rich nations to hide their assets from investigators and tax collectors and shift money in and out of offshore hideaways.
Without this access, their shell games wouldn’t be possible.
In 2003, New York prosecutors claimed that an unlicensed money-transfer firm in Manhattan directed $9 billion in wire transactions through three dozen accounts at JPMorgan, moving money around the world for drug dealers and other dodgy characters.
In 2011, the bank paid nearly $90 million to settle regulators’ claims that it had violated economic sanctions against Iran, Cuba and other countries under U.S. embargoes.
In January, a consent order from JPMorgan’s main federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, cited the bank for “critical deficiencies” in its anti-money-laundering controls, including inadequate procedures for monitoring transactions at foreign branches.
In the 2003 case, the bank acknowledged it had been “too slow and not forceful enough” in vetting the money-transfer firm, but said it was working to tighten its money laundering safeguards. In the 2011 case, the bank said the sanction violations were isolated incidents. In the wake of the comptroller’s case, the bank told the New York Times that it has been “working hard to fully remediate the issues identified.”
Mark Kornblau, a JPMorgan spokesman, declined to answer detailed questions for this story.
In a brief written statement, he told ICIJ that complying with anti-money-laundering rules “is a top priority for us. We have already made progress addressing the issues cited in the consent orders, which contain no allegations of intentional misconduct by the firm or any of its employees.”
JPMorgan isn’t alone when it comes to taking heat for failing to do enough to stop the flow of suspect cash. Last year U.S. authorities reached settlements with HSBC, Citigroup and UK-headquartered Standard Chartered Bank over alleged money-laundering compliance failures.
HSBC agreed in December to pay more than $1.9 billion to settle an investigation into evidence it shifted cash for rogue nations, terrorists and Mexican drug lords.
U.S. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said a “pervasively polluted” culture at HSBC allowed billions in suspect dollars to flow through the bank. Senate investigators said HSBC ignored warnings from Mexican and U.S. authorities that the gush of money flowing into the bank from Mexico was so large it could only be sustained by the proceeds from narcotics trafficking.
HSBC said in a statement last year that it was “profoundly sorry” for its “past mistakes.”
How well major banks screen customers and cash flows is important because, in a digitally connected world, dirty money no longer travels as stacks of bills stuffed into suitcases. It moves by the click of a computer key. This makes big banks crucial gatekeepers in the financial system, giving them the power to cut off the flow of corrupt cash or allow it to roam free.
The offshore system can’t be reformed, money laundering experts say, without cooperation and compliance from the banking system’s biggest players.
Dennis Lormel, former chief of the FBI’s financial crimes program, says compliance watchdogs working on the payroll of big banks strive to do the right thing, but they’re often locked in losing battles with bankers who are more concerned about booking deposits and doing deals than making sure the money coming in is clean.
“The business culture usually wins,” Lormel says. “The business people take the risks and the compliance people are left to clean up the mess.”
Offshore Players
JPMorgan and other major banks have increased their risks and rewards in the offshore world by weaving a web of branches and subsidiaries across places that have been tagged as havens for financial secrecy and criminal activity.
Secret records obtained by ICIJ reveal how many of the world’s top banks – including UBS and Clariden in Switzerland, ING and ABN Amro in the Netherlands and Deutsche Bank in Germany – have worked to set up their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore locales.
The banks deny wrongdoing.
A 2008 U.S. government report found JPMorgan had 50 subsidiaries in Bermuda, the Bahamas and other places labeled as tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, tied for 11th highest among the 100 largest U.S. companies.
Since then the bank has expanded its reach in some offshore centers. Its tally of subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands grew from seven in 2007 to 20 at the end of 2012, securities filings show. Over that span its subsidiaries in Mauritius — a tiny isle off Africa’s eastern coast that’s been called “a Cayman Islands to India” — grew from eight to 14.
While the bank helps move money around the world via its tax haven subsidiaries, JPMorgan’s international private banking network attracts large deposits to the U.S. from rich customers in Latin America and other regions. Much of this money isn’t reported to tax authorities in the depositors’ home countries, according to a study last year by James S. Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Company and a board member of Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group that favors tighter regulation of the offshore system.
The study estimates JPMorgan’s private banking operations boosted their assets under management from $187 billion in 2005 to $284 billion in late 2010 — ranking it among an elite group of giant private banking institutions whose mission, the report claims, is to “entice the elites of rich and poor countries alike to shelter their wealth tax-free offshore.”
Rich history
JPMorgan Chase is an amalgam of America’s two most storied banks. Historian Ron Chernow called the Morgan banking dynasty perhaps “the most formidable financial combine in history.” Chase Manhattan traced its roots to 1799 and claimed Aaron Burr, the nation’s third vice president, as its founder.
Before the mega-merger that brought the Morgan and Chase empires together at the turn of this century, both played roles in the emergence of tax havens — and in the controversies that grew out of the offshore system’s rise.
Chase and Morgan were early players, in the 1960s, in the growth of the Bahamas as an overseas financial center. Chase was one of the banks of choice for Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah of Iran, strongmen who looted their countries’ treasuries during their decades in power. Relations between Chase officials and the Shah were so close in the 1960s and ’70s, Henry says, that Chase Chairman David Rockefeller was essentially “the Shah’s private banker.”
Chase played a cameo role in an offshore money-laundering thread of the Watergate scandal, serving as a conduit for an illegal $55,000 contribution that American Airlines laundered through a foreign source and funneled into President Nixon’s re-election campaign. Federal authorities fined the airline, but apparently took no action against Chase.
In 1973, a mobster turned informer told a congressional committee that Chase and other firms helped him cook up bogus covers for illegal transactions in stolen and counterfeit securities that had been laundered through Switzerland and Belgium and then brought back to the U.S. The witness testified Chase bankers accepted the “flimsiest of proof” as to his identity when they signed off on documents that made his transactions possible.
In another case, the infamous “Pizza Connection” heroin ring used Chase to channel cash overseas, according to an account in The Money Launderers, a book by former U.S. Treasury enforcement official Robert E. Powis. In July 1980, a bagman for the ring entered Chase Manhattan’s headquarters with four leather bags stuffed with $550,000 in fives, tens and twenties. The bank accepted the money, counted it, then transferred it to a Swiss account, according to Powis.
In June 1985, the Treasury Department fined Chase and other New York banks for ignoring one of the government’s basic safeguards against financial chicanery — the federal Bank Secrecy Act’s requirement that banks report any transactions involving $10,000 or more in cash. Chase paid a then-record fine of $360,000, based on 1,442 unreported transactions totaling $853 million.
“Some clerical people did not file reports here and there,” a Chase spokesman told The Washington Post at the time. “There was nothing willful about this thing.”
Fallen angel
Along with handling money involved in drug smuggling and other underworld activities, big U.S. banks have also attracted deposits from Third World elites who want to hide their wealth from tax collectors. For decades, anti-corruption advocates say, U.S. banks have encouraged this process by dispatching armies of private bankers to solicit flight capital from developing nations.
In the 1980s, Antonio Gebauer was J.P. Morgan & Co.’s top man South of the Border, lauded by a Morgan spokesman as “the most highly esteemed banker in Latin America.” Gebauer specialized in putting together multi-million-dollar loan deals across the region. He also oversaw covert New York bank accounts for a handful of wealthy Brazilians, among them a great-grandson of the founder of Brazilian Republic.
Brazilian authorities later questioned whether the money was unreported capital. Gebauer’s attorney said the accounts had been set up under “the unusual and Byzantine relationships that often exist between bankers and flight capitalists.”
The secret deposits might have remained secret if Gebauer hadn’t been caught embezzling more than $4 million from his clients’ accounts. In 1987, a U.S. judge sentenced him to 3½ years in prison, calling him “a fallen angel of the banking world.”
U.S. media touched on the flight capital issue briefly, and the government of Brazil filed a treaty request asking U.S. authorities to subpoena account details from Morgan officials.
The bank won a court decision blocking Brazil’s push to get more information. And Gebauer’s guilty pleas allowed the House of Morgan to avoid a messy trial that have might revealed “the seamier side” of its Latin American operations, according to Henry’s 2003 book on the dark side of global finance, Blood Bankers.
Post-9/11 World
The issue of dark money didn’t go away after J.P. Morgan & Co. and Chase Manhattan Corp. merged in late 2000, creating JPMorgan Chase & Co.
In March 2001, a U.S. Senate investigation revealed Chase Manhattan had been among big firms that had provided correspondent accounts to offshore banks involved in criminal activity. Investigators found that Antigua-licensed American International Bank moved $116 million through its account at Chase even as it was engaging in frauds in the U.S. and working hand-in-hand with convicted felons.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, tracking illicit cash became a bigger concern for U.S. authorities. Lormel, the former FBI official, says JPMorgan representatives were among the compliance specialists from various banks who pitched in after Sept. 11 and helped efforts to track terrorists.
“Whatever we wanted, within the limits of the law, the bankers were incredibly helpful,” he recalls.
JPMorgan’s post-9/11 record wasn’t spotless, however.
In January 2003, federal authorities raided a business in Brooklyn called Carnival French Ice Cream, a convenience store with a limited supply of food and sundries and two soft-serve ice cream machines. During their search, investigators found paperwork that led them to conclude that, over a six-year period, the store’s proprietor had laundered millions of dollars through a JPMorgan account on its way to Yemen, China and other places.
Some of the money, investigators believed, went to a Yemeni cleric who later pleaded guilty to charges that he had conspired to aid terrorists.
In February 2003, a month after the ice-cream shop raid, investigators for then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau raided an unlicensed money transfer firm, Beacon Hill Services Corp., that maintained dozens of accounts with JPMorgan.
Morgenthau said Beacon Hill was able to wire $9 billion through these accounts because the JPMorgan’s compliance unit “fell down on the job,” ignoring “numerous red flags for money laundering.” A sizeable chunk of the money, he said, came from drug dealers and tax dodgers, and some ended up in the Middle East, possibly in the hands of terrorists.
No criminal charges were filed against JPMorgan in the case.
In the wake of these cases, industry officials argued it wasn’t fair to expect banks to catch every questionable transaction amid trillions of dollars in daily cash flows.
JPMorgan’s general counsel told The Wall Street Journal: “Think if you’re running a railroad, and we say to you, ‘We want you to monitor everyone who takes your train and see if their trip is legitimate.’ ”
‘Uniquely situated’
Questions about how well JPMorgan monitors its customers persisted over the past decade, coming up in lawsuits and investigations relating to the Enron and Madoff affairs and other scandals.
Investors, insurers and federal authorities accused JPMorgan and Enron Corp. of using “special purpose vehicles” based in tax havens in the UK’s Channel Islands as part of a scheme to create disguised loans that allowed Enron to hide its debts and book sham profits. The bank, which denied wrongdoing, shelled out more than $3 billion to settle claims related to Enron’s fall.
After the Madoff case broke in 2008, a court-appointed trustee, Irving Picard, invoked Enron in attacking JPMorgan’s role in the largest Ponzi scheme in history. JPMorgan turned a blind eye to Madoff’s activities, Picard claims, despite its promises to do better after it had been caught “propping up” Enron’s frauds.
JPMorgan, Picard asserted, was “at the very center” Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. As his primary bank for more than two decades, it “provided the infrastructure for Madoff’s deception” and was “uniquely situated to see the likely fraud,” the trustee alleged in a lawsuit in federal court.
The bank held as much as $5.5 billion in Madoff-connected cash and, according to court filings by Picard, earned an estimated half-billion dollars from fees and other revenues generated by Madoff’s billions.
Any concerns within the bank about Madoff “were suppressed as the drive for fees and profits became a substitute for common sense, ethics and legal obligations,” Picard’s lawsuit said.
The suit said the bank ignored a key indicator of money laundering or other financial crimes: frequent wire activity with offshore banking centers and financial secrecy havens. Within Madoff’s main account at JPMorgan, dollar amounts of wire activity with high- and medium-risk jurisdictions increased 83 percent between 2004 and 2008.
In June 2007, a JPMorgan risk officer raised questions about whether Madoff might be running a Ponzi scheme. Other than asking a junior employee to do a Google search, JPMorgan officials did nothing to dig deeper into Madoff’s business model, Picard charged. Madoff’s main JPMorgan account was still operating without restrictions when he was arrested at the end of 2008.
The bank calls Picard’s allegations “blustering” and “preposterous.”
“The trustee’s damages claims demand the absurd inference that JPMorgan deliberately joined with Bernard Madoff in a doomed-to-fail Ponzi scheme so that it could earn conventional banking fees,” the bank said in a court filing.
A judge threw out many of Picard’s claims against JPMorgan, ruling that it’s up to individual victims rather than the trustee to sue the bank. That decision is on appeal. Other claims are still alive in bankruptcy court.
Last month, the New York Times reported that U.S. prosecutors have opened a new front in the case, investigating whether JPMorgan violated federal law by failing to fully inform authorities about suspicions about Madoff.
A bank spokesman told the Times the JPMorgan employees made “good faith” efforts “to comply with all anti-money-laundering and regulatory obligations.”
Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan federal court in 2009. Photo: AP
EL MORGANGATE
Bernard Madoff arrives at Manhattan federal court in 2009. Photo: AP
As the fallout from Madoff’s fraud and the 2008 financial crisis was spreading across Wall Street, JPMorgan was dealing with another scandal 5,000 miles away.
An Argentine newsmagazine, CrÃtica de la Argentina, had run an exposé listing the names and deposit balances of some 200 citizens with JPMorgan accounts in the U.S. — including executives associated with the country’s largest media company.
The headline: EL MORGANGATE.
The issue of flight capital flowing from Latin America to the United States had once again come to the surface. And, once again, JPMorgan was in the middle of the affair, in a case with striking parallels to the Tony Gebauer scandal two decades before.
Hernan Arbizu was a New York-based JPMorgan vice president in charge of some $200 million in accounts belonging to Argentines. Like Gebauer, he was accused of pilfering money from his clients. And as in the Gebauer case, exposure of his wrongdoing was accompanied by questions about his employer’s relationships with wealthy, tax-shy Latin Americans.
Arbizu claims he and other private bankers helped customers launder money and evade taxes in their home countries. “I became a fraudster from the minute I started working in private banking, because if you think about it, I was committing fraud against Argentina as a whole through our activities here,” he told Bloomberg News in 2009.
JPMorgan sued Arbizu in federal court in New York, accusing him of stealing money from client accounts and violating confidentiality agreements by expropriating JPMorgan documents. The bank eventually won a default judgment against him totaling nearly $3.6 million.
U.S. criminal charges pending against Arbizu may never be prosecuted. He remains out of reach in Argentina, protected from extradition by a government that has used his testimony in various legal actions.
JPMorgan declined to answer questions about Arbizu.
Model effort
In 2010, anti-money laundering specialists at JPMorgan became concerned about a series of multi-million-dollar wire transfers involving a San Antonio, Texas, businessman. When bank officials confronted the businessman, court affidavits say, he told them he was acting as a front for his brother-in-law, the former treasurer of the Mexican border state of Coahuila.
The bank alerted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, helping spark official investigations of the ex-treasurer, who now stands accused in Mexico of embezzling millions of dollars from his state’s treasury.
In 2010 and 2011, anti-money laundering experts at the bank joined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the agency’s fight against human trafficking.
Homeland Security and JPMorgan officials developed a detailed M.O. for the banking habits of businesses involved in human smuggling for prostitution and other forms of forced labor, according to John Byrne, executive vice president of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists. One of the red flags: businesses that booked lots of round-number credit card payments — say, $200 — after midnight.
Byrnes’ group honored JPMorgan and Homeland Security with its Private-Public Service Award. The collaboration, Byrnes says, was an example of good-faith effort by JPMorgan and other banks to fight corruption and money laundering.
Byrnes acknowledges big banks have made mistakes, but he believes these problems don’t add up to a picture of an industry that puts profits above compliance.
The banking industry, he says, “works very, very hard to keep illicit funds out of institutions. The commitment comes from the top — from senior management.”
‘Rare incidents’
Around the time JPMorgan was helping Homeland Security and the DEA zero in on human smugglers and the former Mexican official, it was under fire from another U.S. agency.
The Department of the Treasury was investigating evidence that JPMorgan had ignored legal bans on doing business with Cuba, Sudan, Liberia and Iran.
After the department subpoenaed information about one suspect transaction, the bank claimed, repeatedly, that it didn’t have key documents that in fact it did have, the agency said. Only after the agency provided a detailed list it had obtained from another financial institution, the agency said, did JPMorgan cough up the documents.
Treasury officials found that the bank committed multiple violations of U.S. economic embargoes between March 2005 and March 2011. Among the violations: 1,711 transfers totaling $178.5 million to Cuban citizens and the transfer of 32,000 ounces of gold bullion, worth more than $20 million, to a bank in Iran.
The agency charged that bank managers and supervisors knew about the law-breaking and but did nothing to fix the problem.
After the $88.3 million penalty in the case was announced in August 2011, a JPMorgan spokesman said the matter involved “rare incidents” that were “unrelated and isolated from each other. The firm screens hundreds of millions of transaction and customer records per day and annual error rates are a tiny fraction of a percent.”
Criminal history
That settlement hasn’t wiped the slate clean for the bank when it comes to problems over its handling of suspect transactions and clients. Other investigations and lawsuits are still in the works.
In federal court in Minnesota, JPMorgan faces claims that it allowed corporate financier Thomas Petters to run a $3.7 billion Ponzi scheme that raised money through investment funds based in the Caymans.
Petters moved more than $83 million in Ponzi cash through his JPMorgan accounts between 2002 and 2007, a court-appointed trustee, Douglas Kelley, claims in a lawsuit. JPMorgan accepted his deposits, loaned him huge sums and worked with him on his $426 million purchase of Polaroid Corp., the suit says, even though it knew or should have known that he had a shady business plan — and a shady backstory.
Petters had a record of convictions for forgery, larceny and fraud and his chief fundraiser in the Ponzi scheme had done time in prison for cocaine dealing and offshore money laundering.
In court records, JPMorgan says Kelley’s charges are “long on innuendo” and full of “largely irrelevant allegations.” It says it engaged in legitimate, arm’s-length transactions with Petters and that Kelley is trying to overcome the facts and the law “by talismanically invoking the term ‘Ponzi scheme.’ ”
Kelley, a former federal prosecutor, said in an interview that his court filings in various lawsuits relating to Petters’ frauds are “filled with specific facts” that show that JPMorgan and other banks that did business with Petters “turned their heads aside and didn’t ask questions they ought to be asking just because they were making money hand over fist.”
“If you’re a banker and start to see a number of these red flags crop up,” Kelley said, “you have a duty to ask questions — and you have a duty not to accept answers that are not facially candid.”
Rebecca Gozales – Photo Tim Gilpin via Bloomberg
Stephen: This totally-out-of-alignment figure is a global one and it’s now gaining ever-increasing mainstream coverage. For me personally, its stories like this that help me decide which companies I’ll never patronise.
By Elliot Blair Smith & Phil Kuntz – April 30, 2013
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/ceo-pay-1-795-to-1-multiple-of-workers-skirts-law-as-sec-delays.html
Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) no longer employs either.
The similarity ends there. Johnson, 54, got a compensation package worth 1,795 times the average wage and benefits of a U.S. department store worker when he was hired in November 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gonzales’s hourly wage was $8.30 that year.
Across the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of companies, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, the data show. The numbers are based on industry-specific estimates for worker compensation.
Almost three years after Congress ordered public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the numbers remain unknown. As the Occupy Wall Street movement and 2012 election made income inequality a social flashpoint, mandatory disclosure of the ratios remained bottled up at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which hasn’t yet drawn up the rules to implement it. Some of America’s biggest companies are lobbying against the requirement.
“It’s a simple piece of information shareholders ought to have,” said Phil Angelides, who led the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which investigated the economic collapse of 2008. “The fact that corporate executives wouldn’t want to display the number speaks volumes.” The lobbying is part of “a street-by-street, block-by-block fight waged by large corporations and their Wall Street colleagues” to obstruct the Dodd-Frank law, he said.
Brand-Name Opposition
The leading opponent of mandatory pay-ratio disclosure is a Washington-based non-profit called the HR Policy Association, which represents top human resources executives at about 335 large corporations.
“We don’t believe the information would be material to investors,” said Tim Bartl, president of the group’s advocacy arm, the Center on Executive Compensation. Accounting for country-to-country differences in wages and benefits at global companies would be costly, time-consuming and all but impossible, he said in an interview.
The group has brand names behind it: 17 companies on HR Policy’s board of directors have CEO pay ratios in the top 20 percent of S&P 500 corporations, Bloomberg data show. They include General Electric Co. (GE), with a ratio of 491; McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), at 351; and AT&T Inc. (T), at 339.
Growing Ratio
These multiples are based on CEO pay for either the fiscal year ending in 2011 or 2012, as disclosed in the companies’ most recent filings before noon on March 26. Because most companies don’t disclose their average workers’ pay, Bloomberg used U.S. government data on worker compensation by industry. The average ratio for the S&P 500 companies is up from 170 in 2009, when the financial crisis reduced many compensation packages. Estimates by academics and trade-union groups put the number at 20-to-1 in the 1950s, rising to 42-to-1 in 1980 and 120-to-1 by 2000.
“When CEOs switched from asking the question of ‘how much is enough’ to ‘how much can I get,’ investor capital and executive talent started scrapping like hyenas for every morsel,” said Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, in an interview. “It’s not that either hates labor, or wants to crush their lives. They just don’t care.”
Johnson’s Multiple
J.C. Penney’s Johnson, who was replaced on April 8 after less than 18 months on the job, had the highest pay multiple, based on $53.3 million in compensation reported in the company’s 2012 proxy. The former retailing executive at Apple Inc. (AAPL) took the top job after agreeing to walk away from unvested Apple shares valued at about $80 million.
Former JC Penney CEO Ronald Johnson
“The money I earned at Penney’s in 2012 was entirely to replace money earned at Apple,” Johnson said in a telephone interview. “If Penney’s had waited until April 2012, they wouldn’t have had to pay me a penny. The board wanted me to start sooner.”
Comparing his earnings to the $29,688 average compensation for a department store worker is the equivalent of stacking the length of a loaf of bread — give or take a few slices — against the height of the Empire State Building.
Johnson, who says he resigned, was replaced on April 8 after less than 18 months on the job. Six days earlier, the Plano, Texas-based chain filed its 2013 proxy reporting his most recent annual compensation as $1.9 million, with no bonus, stock, options or incentive pay. The company declined to comment, said Joey Thomas, a spokesman.
Worsening Morale
Pay-ratio supporters, led by activist investors and trade unions including the AFL-CIO and the $52.4 billion United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, say mandatory disclosure would help inform shareholders on advisory say-on-pay votes at companies’ annual meetings.
“Executive pay at some companies is excessive and leads to a number of risks, in particular the risk of damage to the company’s social license to operate and the risk of worsening employee morale,” said Tim Macready, chief investment officer of the Christian Super pension fund in Australia, which has about $700 million under management. The pay ratio is a “useful metric in identifying and dealing with both of these risks.”
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF), the clothing retailer, and Simon Property Group Inc., the real estate investment trust that owns and manages shopping malls, had the second- and third-highest ratios. Ninety percent or more of the CEO compensation at each company was in stock or option awards that vest over time — in Simon’s case, eight years — yet are required to be reported in the year granted. If such multiyear awards were reported in the years they vested, the ratios would drop.
Say-on-Pay Votes
Both companies lost say-on-pay votes last year, getting 24 percent and 26 percent of voting shareholders’ support respectively, according to proxy solicitor Georgeson Inc. Typically, more than 90 percent of voting shareholders back the non-binding resolutions at S&P 500 corporations.
Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries got $48.1 million, according to the New Albany, Ohio-based company’s 2012 proxy. That’s 1,640 times the average clothing-store worker’s $29,310 in pay and benefits. Jeffries’ stock-appreciation rights — valued at $43.2 million in the proxy — had no realizable value as of April 25 because the share price fell.
His next compensation report won’t include any equity awards and “will be a fraction of the number reported in 2012,” Phil Denning, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail.
At No. 3, Simon Property Group, CEO David Simon’s $137.2 million in compensation for 2011 was 1,594 times the average pay of $86,033 among employees of funds, trusts and other financial vehicles.
Method Criticized
Investors thought the package “too large,” according to the company’s April 4 proxy. In response, the CEO and the board compensation committee reduced the amounts he qualified for in the early and final years of the eight-year agreement. The committee also tied annual incentive awards more closely to a performance measure called funds from operations and created a peer group of companies for comparing results.
Simon Property’s latest proxy, filed after the cutoff for Bloomberg’s analysis, reported the CEO’s 2012 compensation at $17.2 million, which would have reduced his pay ratio to about 168.
Hugh Burns, a spokesman for the Indianapolis-based company, criticized Bloomberg’s analysis as outdated. It “creates a completely misleading result that grossly overstates and inaccurately portrays David Simon’s compensation and makes any comparison meaningless,” he said.
Dodd-Frank Differences
Bloomberg’s ratio is based on the SEC-required summary compensation table that companies publish in their shareholder proxy statements. It includes the CEO’s salary, bonus, perks, changes in pension accruals and the current value of stock-based awards made in the disclosure year.
The ratio differs from what Dodd-Frank requires in at least two respects: It’s drawn from government pay-and-benefits data aggregated by industry instead of from each company’s actual payroll; and it compares CEO pay to the average for all non- supervisory employees in the U.S. The law calls for the ratio to be based on the median of all employees worldwide, including managers and executives other than the CEO.
Bloomberg’s method is similar to one the Center on Executive Compensation suggested as an alternative to Dodd- Frank’s in a Nov. 11, 2011, letter to the SEC.
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who authored Dodd-Frank’s pay-ratio requirement, heard little objection when he proposed it in March 2010, said Michael Passante, a former legislative aide — “except for one group,” the center.
Five Meetings
Since then, HR Policy Association representatives have conferred with SEC officials on the pay-ratio rule at least five times and the center has addressed at least four letters to the agency opposing it, the regulators’ records show.
The non-profit group shares offices and staff with the Washington law firm of McGuiness & Yager, which lobbies Congress and federal agencies on compensation and benefits issues. Senior partner Jeffrey McGuiness is listed as the association’s CEO. Bartl, at the compensation center, is a partner in the firm.
McGuiness didn’t respond to requests for comment. Bartl declined to answer questions after an initial interview.
HR Policy took in $7.2 million from members and conferences in 2011 and turned over $1.2 million to the compensation center, according to its 2011 tax filing.
McDonald’s Chair
Richard Floersch, chief human resources officer of Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s, has chaired the board committee that oversees the executive-compensation center, according to an entry that appeared on HR Policy’s website earlier this month. It has since been deleted.
Former McDonald’s CEO James Skinner, who retired in June, was No. 66 on the Bloomberg list with a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 351 in 2011.
“We’re proud that more than 40 percent of McDonald’s leadership, including three former CEOs, started their careers working in our restaurants,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hary in an e-mail.
Honeywell International Inc. (HON), No. 16 on Bloomberg’s list with a ratio of 633, joined HR Policy’s board this year. The association “discusses a wide variety of topics, not all of which Honeywell supports and not all of which are relevant to Honeywell,” said spokesman Rob Ferris in an e-mail.
The SEC, which has so far written 39 of 94 rules called for under Dodd-Frank, has no deadline for completing the pay-ratio provision. In February, Commissioner Luis Aguilar suggested that companies voluntarily disclose their ratios until the agency can develop its rule.
Repeal Sought
“Companies that can justify the amount that they are paying their CEOs and employees shouldn’t be fearful of the ratio,” Aguilar, a Democrat, said in an interview. Bartl, at the compensation center, responded with a letter asking Aguilar to “retract” his statement.
SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, who took office this month, and the three other commissioners declined to comment.
U.S. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican, is sponsoring legislation to repeal the pay-ratio requirement. It “doesn’t do anything other than play politics,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t lend any useful, helpful, analytical type of information.”
The bill reprises one filed in March 2011 by former Representative Nan Hayworth, a New York Republican, who lost re- election last year. Political action committees associated with companies on the HR Policy board gave $78,416 to Hayworth’s 2012 campaign. Her contributions from the same companies totaled $22,000 in the 2010 cycle, Federal Election Commission records show. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Registered Lobbyists
Seven companies with pay ratios in the top 20 percent of all S&P 500 corporations registered to lobby on the measure: Tyco International Ltd. (TYC), GE, Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI), Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU), McDonalds, AT&T and Lowe’s Cos. Each was also represented on HR Policy’s board last year. Except for McDonald’s, none responded to requests for comment.
Pay-disclosure rules have been controversial since the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 imposed requirements for regular reporting of executives’ compensation on public companies.
The rank and file were sure to seethe with discontent, wrote National Biscuit Co., later Nabisco, in a 1936 petition to the SEC. Only “criminal curiosity” underlies such interest, wrote Congoleum-Nairn Inc., a manufacturer of linoleum flooring. The comments are cited in a history of the era’s corporate-pay debates by Harwell Wells, an associate law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Suggestion Rejected
James Cotton, a retired securities attorney for International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), may have been the first to propose mandatory disclosure of the CEO pay ratio. He said it would have “a significant impact by either lowering the excessive executives’ compensation or raising the average compensation of employees and managers” in a 1997 article in the Northern Illinois University Law Review. He got the idea shortly after joining IBM in 1970, Cotton said in an interview.
The young attorney, an Army captain during the Vietnam War, said he was listening to managers discuss how to handle the company’s cash when he proposed giving out raises.
“They looked at me like there was something wrong with me,” Cotton recounted. “They said, ‘We can’t do that.’” For years after that, he said, he kept an eye on the CEO’s pay and IBM’s cash holdings, both of which increased.
Informing Workers
Cotton said he mailed his law review paper to the SEC, members of Congress and some unions, including the AFL-CIO, and then forgot about it. Now retired at 73 and almost blind from glaucoma, he didn’t know until recently that the ratio’s disclosure was included in the Dodd-Frank Act.
The ratios will help inform workers, he said. “‘Am I going to get ripped off? Or am I going to get a fair price for my labor?’ If there’s anything I want to happen, it’s that.”
Nowhere was the pay multiple higher last year than at J.C. Penney, where Rebecca Gonzales made $13,797.15 at a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to her 2011 wage and tax statement.
One month after Johnson joined the company as CEO, during the December 2011 holiday rush, Gonzales fell over a box of hangers at work, and said she couldn’t immediately stand up.
“All I remember is seeing black,” she said.
A doctor at an urgent care clinic ordered her to stay off her swollen knee, she said. When she returned to work, she ran a cash register from a chair until a manager took the seat away, she said. Unable to work, she filed a claim for temporary disability benefits in state Workers’ Compensation Court in February 2012. She’s the sole wage earner for her disabled husband and two school-age children.
Thank-You Note
A month later, the company warned she’d lose her job if she didn’t return within 30 days, according to a letter she received. Two weeks later, it wrote again.
Earlier at Bloomberg: McDonald’s $8.25 an Hour Man and $8.75 Million CEO Show U.S. Pay Gap
“Your employment with jcpenney has been terminated,” the letter stated. “Thank you for joining the jcpenney team!”
A judge ordered the company to pay Gonzales $1,516 for the temporary total disability. She filed a wrongful-termination claim in federal court seeking at least $75,000 more. That suit is pending.
Hers was one of 43,000 jobs the company cut last year as Johnson’s retailing strategy failed to take hold. The share price fell by half between the time he took the CEO post and left it.
In January 2012, Johnson sold almost half the 1,660,578 shares he’d been granted, for $32.2 million. He still owned almost 893,000 shares, with warrants on 7.3 million more, as of J.C. Penney’s April 2 proxy. He made the sales “entirely to pay taxes,” Johnson said.
Top Six
In all, the company awarded six top executives $190 million for the fiscal year that ended in January 2012, according to its proxy. All subsequently left the company.
Johnson’s predecessor, Myron E. Ullman — who received $34.6 million in pay and retirement benefits in his final year — got $1 million to come back, a recent filing shows.
“The irony of the CEO pay ratio is that most people’s experience of J.C. Penney will be the people who are paid the least, and treated most like commodities,” said Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana.
For now, Johnson and Gonzales are unemployed. The former cashier says she’s looking for work.
By Suzanne Lie – April 30, 2013
http://suzanneliephd.blogspot.co.uk/
Mytre Speaks from the Ship:
I am very concerned about Mytria. She is, indeed, awakening to some of her experiences on the Ship. But it appears that as Mytria is remembering more about the Ship, she is actually forgetting more about me. I know that it is selfish of me, but I am afraid that I have lost her.
When she comes aboard the Ship at night now, she appears to be fully human. She no longer interacts with her friends from the Ship and stays with the other humans who believe they are having a dream. I am happy that her human guise has awakened to the Mission. However, it appears that the more she fulfills her Mission, the less she remembers her real SELF.
It is as if she has gone so far into her human Earth vessel that she can no longer remember me, her Divine Complement, or her true SELF. My deepest concern is that she is working her Earth vessel too much. I can see that she falls into bed exhausted each night because she is doing too much during the day.
I fear she is overcompensating for some inner reason that I cannot determine. Clearly, she is lost in her human and perceives her visits Home to our Ship as interesting dreams. However, she is doing so many things with her Blog and her meetings with others that she is greatly depleting her human Earth vessel.
She seems to have forgotten the warning we received that if we “died” while in our Earth vessel, we may not remember our true SELF even then. In that case, we would enter the Wheel of Birth and Death that surrounds that planet rather than return to our true expression here on the Ship or on our Homeworld.
Mytria is actually sharing the Earth vessel of the human. This agreement was made before the human’s birth. The Mytria on the Ship has been in deep meditation and holding the energy so that she can continue her bi-location, and I have been checking her life-signs that are displayed outside of the cubicle.
In fact, this human is a component of Mytria’s myriad expressions of her Multidimensional SELF. But the human has all the limitations of a third dimensional being. We were also warned before we took this Mission that human limitations are very infectious. Hence, we could begin to believe human illusions while we wore that form. I am concerned that this has occurred with Mytria.
So far her life signs are consistent with her Pleiadian self. However, if they become consistent with her human Earth vessel, then she could become trapped in the illusion of her humanity. I must speak with the Arcturian about my concerns. I am so happy that the Arcturian decided to join us on this Mission, as “becoming human” is very dangerous. Mytria so wanted to perform her duty that she has put her SELF in great danger of forgetting who she really is.
Suddenly the Arcturian appeared in front of me as if IT had been listening.
“Mytre, we are aware of your concerns. In fact, we share them with you. Mytria entered very deeply into the consciousness of the parallel reality of her human expression. Through her Mytria SELF, she has been communicating with this human for many decades. However, the human could not bring that information into her conscious mind.
“Hence, all of the human’s communications with Mytria have been stored in her deepest subconscious. Now that the higher Light is entering the human’s form, which is now shared by Mytria, there is a growing perceptual awareness and an expanding state of consciousness.
“However, the human consciousness (in which Mytria is becoming increasingly intertwined) cannot directly experience this shift yet, as it is occurring within her DNA. Nonetheless, these changes are shifting the perceptual field of the Earth vessel that Mytria is sharing with the human. Even though the process of perceptual shift is still unconscious to the human’s daily thinking it is creating many uncomfortable emotions.
“You are correct in your concern that Mytria has become lost within the consciousness she is sharing with the human. Mytria has indeed forgotten much about her true SELF aboard this Ship and perceives herself as the human form she is wearing.”
At this point, I became extremely agitated, which the Arcturian instantly sensed.
“Mytre, your concern is not helpful to Mytria nor to the Mission. You are to be Mytria’s anchor in the higher planes, and whether or not she is aware of it, she does feel all your emotions just as she has always done. Therefore, a part of her uncomfortable emotions are because she can unconsciously feel your concern.”
This statement made me quite disturbed. Thus, I knew that I would have to dedicate myself to having more faith in Mytria’s abilities. She was a Keeper of the Violet Flame on our planet, thus I must trust her innate power.
“Yes, Mytre,” the Arcturian said in response to my thoughts. “It is vital that you remain calm and confident, so that she can find her own calm confidence. If she is to assist the humans, she must experience what they are experiencing. Mytria is becoming the human that she is wearing in order to fully understand how to transmute that form into its higher expression. She is very brave to do this and needs you to be confident and supportive.”
I thanked my Arcturian friend. I did understand how my concerns could easily bleed into Mytria’s consciousness. On the other hand, I also understood how a growing shift in her perceptions of reality could be quite disturbing to the third dimensional thinking which had temporarily taken hold of Mytria’s consciousness.
In order to shift her perceptual field into the higher frequencies of her reality, she must first become aware of the lower frequency fear-based emotions that tie her attention to that frequency of perception, and thus that frequency of reality. Mytria’s challenge was to show the humans that the reality they live is the reality they perceive.
I must remember that within the NOW of the reality Mytria is visiting much of humanity is experiencing extreme emotional shifts within a short period of time. Furthermore, time itself is shifting in nature. As the frequency of Earth reality continues to shift into the higher dimensions, third dimensional time changes into fourth dimensional time, which is much faster. A more gradual shift in their perception of time is very helpful to diminish humanity’s fear of change.
“Yes,” thought the Arcturian as It joined in with my thinking. “Becoming the master of ones fear is the greatest challenge in the Now that Mytria is living. Her human expression with whom she has merged had battled fear for most of her life. It was the unconscious influence of Mytria within her human form that initiated a great shift in the human’s consciousness.
“However, we do agree that we must watch the life signs of our Mytria on the Ship. We are fully aware that you are doing so on a regular, somewhat obsessive basis. When you go to check on her, stay there for a while and talk to her Pleiadian SELF. In this manner you will assist her to remember her SELF more than you may think.”
I was very happy to receive that information from the Arcturian and tried not to run to Mytria’s meditation cubicle. Because she was in a very deep trance, she was fed intravenously and constantly monitored. I had not considered the component of Mytria that was aware of my concern and how much I may have been harming her. I wanted to instantly run to Mytria’s cubical, but my duties made it impossible to visit her until much later.
Mytria Speaks:
Because of my deep connection with Mytre I can feel his thoughts. That is, when I am not too absorbed in my human life. I have to admit that it is getting easier and easier to become lost in the turmoil of my human life. There, do you see? I just owned that human vessel as “my life”. Mytre is correct to be concerned. I am of no use to anyone if I become lost in this human vessel.
In the briefing for this Mission we were warned regarding the power of illusion on this world. Now I must admit to the arrogance I had that illusion would never fool me. Becoming lost in this vessel greatly concerns me, as well. Perhaps it would be good if just I, without my human consciousness, visited the Ship. All right, I will admit it. It is not the Ship I wish to visit, but Mytre.
If I could be with Mytre again and feel his body around mine, it may be easier to maintain my SELF in the midst of wearing this Earth vessel and living this challenging Earth life. There is a growing hope on Earth that I can feel, even though there are still so many that are totally asleep and completely unaware of what is most important.
So many humans are so stuck on surviving. Others are having glimpses of a new reality, but they cannot maintain that vision. Some of them can remember that possible reality while in their night-body such as I am doing now. But I must not judge them, for my sense of self is becoming more and more human and less and less Pleiadian.
I have had to move very deeply into the consciousness of the human to assist her to awaken and to act upon her awakening. I am very happy that her Blog is well read and she is doing a great deal of research about multidimensional realities and higher expressions of SELF.
However, she is still unable to own the fact that SHE is multidimensional and SHE is her own higher expression. Actually, that SHE is ME because she is one of my myriad Earth expressions. However, when she is unconscious about my living within her, it makes it very difficult for ME to remain conscious inside of HER.
Oh, she is waking up now. I will think of Mytre and the Ship so that I can better remember my SELF.
The Contact Person Speaks:
I had a very interesting dream last night in which I was a very tall and quite beautiful alien. I will have to search the Internet to find where this being is from. I think it was a female, but she looked so different from me. I mean, she looked like a human, but she was very tall, with light skin and long blond hair. I knew she was not human by her eyes.
They looked much like human eyes, but the centers of the eyes were not black like human eyes. The centers of her eyes were white, as in white light. Her eyes were very hypnotizing, and she appeared to be looking into my Soul at the same time that I was looking into her face. It was a very unusual and somewhat upsetting experience.
I do not understand what is going on with me. I enjoy my Blog and love my new Internet friends. But I still feel like something is missing. No, actually, I feel like some ONE is missing. I know that this alien has a mate. I can feel it just as I can feel it when someone is in a happy relationship. Yes, this alien is in a relationship, but her happiness seems a bit tainted by sorrow. What does sorrow have to do with an alien?
If she really wants to feel what sorrow is, she should come to Earth!