Jaguar S Shadow

When the nature writer Richard Mahler discovers that wild jaguars are prowling a remote corner of his home state of New Mexico, he embarks on a determined quest to see in the flesh a big, beautiful cat that is the stuff of legend--yet verifiably real. Mahler's passion sets in motion a years-long adventure through trackless deserts, steamy jungles, and malarial swamps, as well as a confounding immersion in centuries-old debates over how we should properly regard these powerful predators: as varmints or as icons, trophies or gods? He is drawn from border badlands south to Panama's rain forest along a route where the fate of nearly all wildlife now rests in human hands. Mahler's odyssey introduces him to unrepentant poachers, pragmatic ranchers, midnight drug-runners, ardent conservationists, trance-induced shamans, hopeful biologists, stodgy bureaucrats, academic philosophers, macho hunters, and gentle Maya Indians. Along the way, he is forced to reconsider the true meaning of his search--and the enduring symbolism of the jaguar.

Description Reflections on Life is a collection of poems which describes the life experiences of the author who has lived with the personal legacy of child abuse, followed by the descent into mental illness (schizophrenia and OCD) and alcoholism. The poems carry a message of hope by exploring the complex mental landscapes of co-morbidity, dual diagnosis, psychosis, childhood, the power of ideas, emotions, thoughts, pain, loss, actions and relationships. The poems invite the reader on a journey through a world where the experience of mental distress has carved a creative channel through the darkness and loneliness of illness and points to a way forward. The author has experienced mental health problems since early childhood (OCD at five, schizophrenia since his teens). He has experienced stigma and discrimination from family, school and society but has learned to forgive along the way through the medium of poetry. The author has lived with severe and enduring mental illness, suicidal ideation, a plethora of psychotic symptoms, voices and perceptual aberrations, as well as the efforts of a sometimes unhelpful and clumsy mental health system. He has learned from the experience of others and how to put his own suffering and distress into a broader social context. About the Author The author was born on 22 October 1964 in London and, with few exceptions, has lived and worked in London all his life. He is the younger of two brothers born to Polish emigre parents who arrived in the UK in the late nineteen forties, after experiencing traumatic childhoods separated from their own parents and witnessing conflict and war in some of the major theatres of the Second World War. The author lives in Ealing, west London which has a vibrant Polish community and is educated to university level. He is currently a postgraduate student at King's College London. The author's childhood was spent in a family home with a number of lodgers which, by any means, was overcrowded. There were many people in his life from early on; each with different, sometimes difficult, personalities which did little to fuse the immediate family unit into a secure base from which a child could thrive. Soon after starting school, the author began to experience cognitive, behavioural and emotional problems. These went unrecognised for many years, during which the author suffered in silence and fell back on his own resourcefulness in developing coping strategies. The author has had obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) since about the age of five and this had a devastating impact on home life and school. At first it was an obsession with numbers and letters of the alphabet. There was much confusion and anxiety in the young child's life. Soon the obsessions multiplied and mutated into more physical aspects of movement (going in and out of doorways, walking up and down pathways and stairs, opening and closing, repeating things aloud) which were accompanied by thoughts and feelings of doom. On many occasions, the stress was so great that the author's young mind would switch off and become empty of thought and fixed in a void but with the recognition that things had to be put right, sorted out and put back in place.

Originally published by Chipmunkapublishing, and now thoroughly revised, Assignment Yggdrasil is a groundbreaking novel about how far governments can go in the fight against bioterrorism. Set during the presidency of George W. Bush and the height of the War on Terror, the United States Department of Defense has secretly garnered intelligence confirming that, within a decade, groups intent on mass murder will possess bioweaponry capable of annihilating either the USA…or the entire human species. A special operation, Assignment Yggdrasil, has begun in an attempt to avert the so–called ‘Ragnarok,’ doomsday. Although they appear human, subjects have been genetically converted from human to transhuman, given immunity to all biological pathogens known to infect humans, as well as special abilities from other species. Only the new species, the transhuman, is predicted to survive the bioterrorist Ragnarok. The government has staked its bets on these transhumans, hoping they will rebuild American democracy in the resulting chaos. Yet the government is performing this transhumanism covertly, infecting thousands of citizens with the virus through their food, drink, and medicine. Some test subjects have died unwittingly under experimentation and the government is hiding everything. An equally furtive resistance has formed, led by various radical groups who dispute the bioethics of the operation. In a precarious showdown with the government, the rebels question whether the removal of humanity is really a gift and if the end justifies the means.

SEEK AND DESTROY... The massive invasion force of Operation Serpent has descended behind enemy lines. Their mission is to obliterate the military power of Clan Smoke Jaguar and seize the homeworld of Huntress. Commanding this historic assault is General Ariana Winston of the elite Eridani Light Horse mercenary brigade. After a year's voyage through deep space, they have arrived. OR BE DESTROYED... But the battle has just begun. The dangers are more far-reaching than Winston ever feared. And the Jaguar garrison is far more cunning than the troops of the Inner Sphere ever believed. For now, emerging from the shadows, a new threat is bearing down on the Serpent armies. The greatest danger to humanity's future is right in their midst. And it is about to ignite the fires of a war to end all wars.

This important book offers an ambitious and interdisciplinary vision of how private international law (or the conflict of laws) might serve as a heuristic for re-working our general understandings of legality in directions that respond to ever-deepening global ecological crises. Unusual in legal scholarship, the author borrows (in bricolage mode) from the work of Bruno Latour, alongside indigenous cosmologies, extinction theories and Levinassian phenomenology, to demonstrate why this field's specific frontier location at the outpost of the law – where it is viewed from the outside as obscure and from the inside as a self-contained normative world – generates its potential power to transform law generally and globally. Combining pragmatic and pluralist theory with an excavation of 'shadow' ecological dimensions of law, the author, a recognised authority within the field as conventionally understood, offers a truly global view. Put simply, it is a generational magnum opus. All international and transnational lawyers, be they in the private or public field, should read this book.

Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon tells the life story of Mandu da Silva, the last living jaguar shaman among the Baniwa people in the northwest Amazon. In this original and engaging work, Robin M. Wright, who has known and worked with da Silva for more than thirty years, weaves the story of da Silva’s life together with the Baniwas’ society, history, mythology, cosmology, and jaguar shaman traditions. The jaguar shamans are key players in what Wright calls “a nexus of religious power and knowledge” in which healers, sorcerers, priestly chanters, and dance-leaders exercise complementary functions that link living specialists with the deities and great spirits of the cosmos. By exploring in depth the apprenticeship of the shaman, Wright shows how jaguar shamans acquire the knowledge and power of the deities in several stages of instruction and practice. This volume is the first mapping of the sacred geography (“mythscape”) of the Northern Arawak–speaking people of the northwest Amazon, demonstrating direct connections between petroglyphs and other inscriptions and Baniwa sacred narratives as a whole. In eloquent and inviting analytic prose, Wright links biographic and ethnographic elements in elevating anthropological writing to a new standard of theoretically aware storytelling and analytic power.

In the Shadow of the Shaman is about the importance of connection to the deepest power of Nature. It tells you how to use natural objects from the shamanic worlds -- Plant, Mineral, Animal, and Human -- to help make this personal connection with Earth energies. In doing this, you are able to reconnect with the center of your own power. Because the shamanic path is such a personal one, often not able to be shared, this book has been designed so that it has the experiential quality of the shamanic journey traditions. The author is also careful to present the information in a clear, organized manner. In doing so, she blends the deeply personal wisdom of a shamanic path with the shared, community wisdom of a medicine path. This represents an ideal for Aquarian shamanism. But this book is not simply about shamanism -- it shows, through techniques, exercises, meditations, and rituals, how anyone can become a shaman. You will learn how to attune yourself with the shamanic worlds of Nature, and with the Higher Self, for self-healing and self-empowerment. You will learn to develop shamanic balance, to become the living tree, and you will do this by using such tools as stones, crystals, feathers, masks, drums, and incense. Book jacket.

Here's an animal lover's one-stop source for in-depth information on jaguars! What do they eat? How do they behave? Are they at risk? This book also includes loads of fun and fascinating facts about jaguars, as well as maps, charts, and wonderful photographs of these powerful creatures.