Archive | May, 2011

Japan’s distinctly un-American brand of heroism – Japan Earthquake – Salon.com

15 May

In speaking with young people in various parts of Japan, I was struck by the fact that no one said they trusted their government. They did, however, trust each other. Thirty-year-old Tomoko, who lives in Iwaki City, which is 25 miles away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, put it best. “I am not afraid, because the workers at the nuclear power plant, the fire department and the defense department are working around the clock.” There is an invisible web of community support, and it is in this that most Japanese place their faith.

via Japan’s distinctly un-American brand of heroism – Japan Earthquake – Salon.com.

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Rare Species Of Frog May Hold Cure To…Ah, Never Mind, It’s Extinct | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

15 May

Rare Species Of Frog May Hold Cure To…Ah, Never Mind, It’s Extinct | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

That title says it all. The lives of our children and their children depend on biodiversity. We need all the species, alive and well.

Peak Oil: A Chance to Change the World | Common Dreams

15 May

Peak Oil: A Chance to Change the World | Common Dreams.

Richard Heinberg to graduates of Worcester Polytechnic Institute:

ExxonMobil is inviting you to take your place in a fossil-fueled twenty-first century. But I would argue that Exxon’s vision of the future is actually just a forward projection from our collective rear-view mirror. Despite its high-tech gadgetry, the oil industry is a relic of the days of the Beverly Hillbillies. The fossil-fueled sitcom of a world that we all find ourselves still trapped within may, on the surface, appear to be characterized by smiley-faced happy motoring, but at its core it is monstrous and grotesque. It is a zombie energy economy.

From the Whitehouse it’s Drill, baby, drill!

14 May

I thought the Democrats won the 2008 Presidential Election. But they’re taking policies from Republicans. Guantanamo’s still in business, Wall Street fat cats are looking fat and sassy, war’s been ramped up in Afghanistan and we’re messing around in Libya. And now Obama wants to expedite oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters. Since when did the commons become the private profit preserves of the corporations?

The New York Times reports that Obama is responding to critics who say “he has shackled domestic energy development at a time when consumers are paying near-record prices at the gas pump.” And yet “the policies announced Saturday would not have an immediate effect on supply or prices, nor would they quickly open any new areas to drilling.”

Hmmm?

Meanwhile “the president noted in his address that the Justice Department had formed a task force to look into potential market manipulation or excessive speculation in oil, and he repeated his call for a repeal of the $4 billion a year in tax incentives the oil industry receives.” Well, a task force is nice. All they do is make reports. What will the report say, and will anything actually be done? And what’s the loss of $4B in tax subsidies to an industry that pulls in profits of $4B a week?

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The People vs. Goldman Sachs

12 May

Here’s the kicker for Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone:

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

And here’s the first paragraph:

They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Yep. What’re the chances that they’ll get more than a slap on the wrist, if that? The answer to that depends, in part, on how much We the People kick up a fuss. And even then, it’s iffy if anything more than a wet noodle will be used to slap those wrists with the gold handcuffs.

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Truth and Traditions Defined

12 May

What do we mean by Truth with a capital T?

The Republican Party is based on a growing cluster of denials, distortions and outright lies that some of us will not forgive or forget. Dennis Kucinich put together a list of 35 impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors that included the particulars of lies that pushed us into very costly (in innocents killed and a trillion borrowed dollars) and unwinnable wars. Both the admitted and the unconfessed spying activities which invaded the privacy of millions of Americans, plus the manipulation of intelligence and intelligence gathering agents — go read the list of 35 articles and weep for the shredded Constitution and Bill of Rights, the lost 9th Amendment rights to privacy and to a clean conscience as a citizen. The Declaration of Independence was trashed too. In 8 years of Bush/Cheyny building up their personal wealth with war operations, we lost everything of quality, every virtue, that America ever stood for: morality, integrity, honesty, humility, rule of law., freedom, justice — all out the window.

That’s one inconvenient truth: our loss of everything good we ever stood for.

The inconvenient truth of climate change is another. The inconvenient truths of peak oil now, peak drinkable water now, peak everything on the horizon, as far as the eye can see. The many, many ugly truths of war and waste have been systematically unexamined by our corporate owned mass media who stand to profit by ignoring news unfit for them to print or speak.

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Flashmob at Bank of America: Pay Up!

11 May

US Uncut, in collaboration with The Ruckus Society and Brass Liberation Orchestra (BLO), kicked off Tax Day weekend (Friday afternoon 4/15/11) in San Francisco with a flashmob at Bank of America and told them to “PAY UP!”

Bank of America is the #1 largest bank and the 5th largest corporation in the U.S., but it pays less in taxes than the average American household! If they and their corporate tax dodger friends paid their fair share of taxes (like the rest of us), we wouldn’t ‘need’ to slash community services in the budget.

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Fukushima #4 leaning to the right

10 May

Starting at roughly 3:20 in this video you can see reactor #4 leaning to the right:

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Iris

10 May

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Green Branding: Authenticity Matters

10 May

Green marketing expert Jacquelyn Ottman remarks on a recent NYTimes piece reporting

… that green brands launched in recent years by mainstream marketers such as Clorox (Green Works) and S.C. Johnson (Nature’s Source), had experienced sharp sales declines during 2009 and that introductions of green brands were off during that period, too. And then I perked up. The article went on to report that, in stark contrast —even during the recession—brands like Seventh Generation and Method experienced double-digit growth and market share gains, too.

She goes on to observe: “It’s easy for consumers to tell that Green Works and Nature’s Source are made by the same companies that produce the ‘brown’ products consumers are trying to shift away from.” Perhaps the green community actually cares about deep company values and  genuine commitment to sustainability.

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