Category Archives: weather

Helping ourselves

by

commondreams has this up.  Be sure to look at all the videos–well worth the time.

The idea is so simple it’s like “duh!”

I have a quibble, though, with Klein saying that it’s up to the Left to “seize the moment”.  There are those who are NOT in the Tea Party on the Right who also need and want to find a solution to the crashes around us.  I say this because the Left has not been of the same mind — I was shot down on a progressive website when I advocated buying American so we could put people back to work.  I knew that Washington wasn’t going to get off its collective duff and do anything about the job loss.  (NAFTA being a good example of monumental job loss.)

I just don’t think people have been given the skills or knowledge to feel confident enough to take over a business if the owners want to sell out.  I think it may be a case of learned helplessness?  Not believing in yourself can be such a huge obstacle that one stops before even getting started.

Perhaps the “teach-ins” of 2013 should be “Business 101:  how to own a business without going belly-up nor bankrupting the environment on your way to the bank…”

The Native Americans learned this a loooong time ago–nature was not a second thought.  They did not separate their actions from nature.

It’s still so incredibly stupid that business has ignored the laws of nature, as if we could exist without clean water, clean air and chemical free food…

Well…exist is probably a bad word choice…since we are existing right now…perhaps thriving  is the better word.  All one has to do is look at folks’ skin and see that we are not thriving, but existing.  The skin is such a barometer of what’s going on in the insides…not doing too well by that account.

Anyway, Washington isn’t going to help us…most likely profiting off of NAFTA…so, it’s up to us if we want to save ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Blackwater, Monsanto, and Gates Foundation

by

In keeping up with all the dirty little deeds the Gates Foundation promotes….here is an article on the link between Gates, Monsanto, and Blackwater.   Really disturbing.

The article mentions The Nation with Jeremy Scahill—while looking for the Scahill article, I happened upon this with a scathing reply by the authors:

We agree that it will ultimately be up to farmers to decide what is best for them. Our concern continues, however, to be that the choices farmers face is systematically skewed, with some ideas being amplified over others. Any policies that involve redistribution–such as land reform–are off the Gates agenda, despite being a live concern to many African farmers’ movements. This demonstrates our broader point. Despite the foundation’s best efforts to be accountable once the policy has been laid down, the Gates Foundation’s interventions reflect, at heart, the undemocratic vision of a single very powerful and ultimately unaccountable organization.

Sincerely,

RAJ PATEL
ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
ANNIE SHATTUCK
www.foodfirst.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(italics are mine.)
Jeremy Scahill’s article here.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Another fracking/nuclear/oil toadie on CSPAN

by

Michael Levi was on CSPAN this morning…he was vague in his assertions, but reading between the lines, I saw “fracking toadie”.

He has written a book on energy that they were highlighting on CSPAN.  It has the words  “battle for  America’s future”  ….words that are emotional and raise an immediate red flag.

Brookings Institute fellow—another huge red flag.

From the wiki page on it:

Funders

At the end of 2004 the Brookings Institution had assets of $258 million and spent $39.7 million, while its budget has grown to more than $80 million in 2009.[64] Its largest contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard C. Blum, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the governments of the United States, Japan, Qatar, the Republic of China, the District of Columbia, and the United Kingdom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Gates Foundation.  ExxonMobil. Republic of China.  Bank of America.  All giving money…for what payback…because these folks play to win and they don’t throw their money after something without expecting something in return.

And why is our government contributing to a think tank??

Here’s another piece I found on the Brookings Institute and their treatment of Diane Ravitch.  Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?  I don’t know why they are considered liberal?

~~~~~~~~~

And the fact that Levi is a doctor doesn’t necessarily impress me–Mengele and Freud were also doctors who skewed things towards their point of view.  It’s especially troubling that his doctorate is in War Studies.

He was advocating “clean energy” another industry catch phrase that actually means “keep on doing what we’ve always been doing, but keeping our dirty business out of the public eye as much as we can…”  (as seen by the non-coverage of the Arkansas oil spill.)

He was also stating that fracking should be done, and concern for the environment should be a priority. Sounds good, eh?  But then….he states further in the interview that the *only* problem was what to do with the contaminated water once they had extracted the natural gas…um, yeah, he totally ignores that there is a HUGE problem with the chemicals traveling through the earth to people’s wells, contaminating them.   My blog on that here. And here. And here.

There was a male caller making outrageous statements about green energy and allowing even more leasing to oil/gas companies…and he was not characterized as emotional…

…but when a woman caller called in and raised the earthquake question and the contamination from the chemicals…whoa…she was *cough*  “emotional”.  (I can’t remember if that was Levi’s exact wording, but the meaning was the same.)  In other words, even though she brought up facts, she was discredited as being emotional.  ::don’t worry your pretty little head, darling, we men folk will take care of this important stuff::   Grrrr.

So, my conclusion from the above is the Michael Levi is an energy industry toadie.  He’s dirty.

 

Another one hits Oklahoma

by

CBS news has this up.

We watched the weather channel last night as they covered the clean up live.  The path through was just absolute devastation.  Brick buildings and homes usually can make it through severe storms but not this time…it was stunning to see all these places flattened.  It was really hard to hear about the schools being hit and that children had died.  Schoolteachers covered the kids with their bodies to protect them…you know, those rotten, self-serving teachers who don’t give a crap about the kids. /snark

CSPAN was covering it this morning.  I was glad to hear from some Oklahoma residents who are blasting their own senator for voting against more aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy.  They are afraid that it is going to come back on them.

 

The Stingray

by

I have a gorgeous photo of a group of Golden Stingrays on my calendar this month–somewhat similar to this.

National Geographic has this piece describing them.

A nice video here on them:

Ocean Conservancy has this up on the possible threat to rays.   There are some species that are endangered, according to this.   I guess the question is…does it make sense to keep pushing the envelope until a species is endangered, or is it better to pull back and not push it to the edge?  Why is it so hard for us to keep the balance?

 

Earthships in Haiti

by

I have been meaning to get back to this–earthships has a presence in Haiti.  Absolutely wonderful the work that they’re doing….it’s sustainable, and helps them to help themselves…I’m  in awe of the ingenuity of the design, as always.

I have questions, however, of the tires being used as a collection of the sewage water.  As the solids break down, which takes some time, won’t that bring the toxic chemicals of the tires with it as it leaches back into the soil and the plants?

Parts I love–the hand crank rock crusher (using something without electricity) and  the artsy design (of course).

I’m uncertain from reading this page whether they’re still in Haiti…I hope so.    Also, there is a donate button on the right of the page for Malawi, Africa.

 

Sea Otter

by

My nature calendar has the Sea Otter for this month’s animal.  They are just too, too cute. 

The article mentions that they are threatened by pollution.  Here’s the National Geographic page on them–explaining in a little more detail.

~~A side note~ they had the link to the manatee/sea lion deaths on the National Geographic page, so I thought I’d post it, too.  The poor manatees have been endangered for awhile–I used to vacation in the Sarasota, Florida, area, many years ago, and it was a problem for the manatees to get hit by boats, killing them or injuring them severely.

What this article doesn’t explain is how the cat feces is making its way to the oceans…is it the flushable kitty litter that enters the waterways?  Is it trash that contains kitty litter being dumped in the oceans?  It would be easier to address the problem if we knew the cause and made people aware of it.

I also think it is much, much more than the kitty litter.  The mercury/heavy metal poisoning is a problem, too.  And one has to consider that if they are finding prescription drugs in our water supply, it is likely to have made it to the oceans, as well.  According to this, they have made it into the other bodies of water. More here.

Here’s a more up to date article on marine pollution.  Would one say that selfish shellfishers are troublemakers? (sorry couldn’t resist).

As the article states, the sea otters help the kelp forests by controlling the feeding populations.  Without kelp, we humans would be in serious trouble as kelp is a natural source of iodine and other minerals.  The Native Americans would make trips to the oceans (if they were not along the coastline) to gather the seaweed because they knew of its value.  Our thyroids don’t function without iodine.

(And that picture is just gorgeous, too)