In an agonizingly disingenuous oped, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently made the case that America urgently needs a “second” political party. His argument is that the GOP has become so “captive to conflicting ideological bases” that there can be no agreement on basic policy issues within the party that is sufficient to form a majority with which the Democrats — a “real” political party — can do the nation’s business. Here “we” are, Friedman worried, six months from the GOP nominating convention, and still no agreement on its candidate for president. A real political party, Friedman suggests, would be like...
Recent discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally a “new Persian Gulf” in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches could as well spell a geopolitical curse of staggering dimension.
Long-standing Middle East conflicts could soon be paled by new battles over rights to oil and gas resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean in the Levant Basin and Aegean Sea. Here we explore the implications of a...
This is a guest post from Thomas Naylor, founder of The Second Vermont Republic. Their mission statement can be found here.
From the very outset I was an enthusiastic supporter of Occupy Wall Street. To me it represented the reawakening of the political left after four decades of uninterrupted slumber. Maybe the radicalization of America had finally begun. Americans might soon opt for jobs, health insurance, social security, better education, and a cleaner environment rather than drones, Navy Seals, and Delta Force death squads.
...
When the Pentagon released its budget materials and press releases last Monday, the press dutifully reported the numbers. The Pentagon's "base" budget for 2013 is to be $525.4 billion, and with $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere added, the total comes to $613.9 billion. (See the two DOD press releases: DOD Releases Fiscal 2013 Budget Proposal and Summary of the DOD Fiscal 2013 Budget Proposal)
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I’m continually stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.
Some of those who believe in perpetual growth are out-and-out nut jobs, like the economist and former...
The misalignment of politics and reality threatens to scuttle both major parties, but it's especially gratifying to see the Republicans sail off the edge of their own flat earth on the winds of religious idiocy. For forty years it has not been enough for them to just be a conservative party. They had to enlist the worst elements of ignorance and reaction, and they found an endless supply of it in the boom regions of the Sunbelt with its brotherhood of TV evangelist con-artists and a population fretful with suburban angst.
Now, in the last hours of the cheap oil economy, the forty...
A great video that covers most of the big issues around small food production (in this case raw milk) Infuriating and inspiring all at the same time. Please take 20 minutes to watch it.
Recently I was taking off from Rutland Airport. As you know, Vermont's taxes against the middle class force many middle class Vermonters to seek work elsewhere, or just plain leave. It had been foggy before dawn, but the day dawned clear and bright. About to take off, clearance from Air Traffic Control was abruptly revoked... they said that Rutland Airport was fogged in! So, for an hour, I just sat there with engines wasting fuel, polluting, polluting... because of some incompetent weather broadcast.
In the old days we had Flight...
As the profit margins sink for the Military Industrial Complex a new profit center is developing in Asia. On the tiny Korean Island of Jeju a missile base is being constructed to guard against the Chinese threat. Will China be obliged to aim some missiles at the U.S.? The prospect makes the war mongers on Wall Street giddy. A new threat more ominous than the Soviet Union will emerge. By God there are billions of those yellow bastards and they control our economy. (Racist military speak)
Jeju is a jewel in the China Sea. I have been there. Although it is a tourism spot it does not appear like...
Plato, author of The Republic, asserted that leaders create crises. Which in turn lets them do whatever they want. If ever there were a manufactured crisis in Vermont, it's the 'Vaccine Crisis'.
Rutland, Vermont Sen. Kevin Mullin's $20 thousand dollars in campaign contributions from outside Vermont made Rutland a 'safe seat', Mullin made multiple trips to DC with Governor Shumlin, according to a...
If we don't stop Climate Change, we'll break the sky and humans will go extinct. That is what the science says. Runaway Climate Change means planet death. If one hasn't had a terrifying vision of human extinction from runaway Climate Change, one doesn't understand the science.
Climate activists have been reluctant to motivate people with grim visions of planet death, lest they get too depressed to get involved. Climate scientists tend to talk in sleep-inducing language that doesn't convey the emergency. We've been under-scaring the children. I understand not wanting to...
"Finance today achieves what military invasion used to do in times past so the new mode of warfare is financial not military"
The most important question is not whether Vermont Yankee will close; it will certainly do that. The most important question is not even when it will close. The single, overwhelmingly important question is how it will close.
There are two ways a power plant can shut down. One is planned retirement. The other is unplanned failure. Which way depends to some extent on how it is run.
If its operating mode is run-to-retirement, it has a chance of retiring as gracefully as it can. When a plant is retired, the employees, community, and other stakeholders can be prepared for the...
What can happen in 2012 to further the objective of uniting the 99%? Or, as I wrote in my first “Uniting the 99%” column, how do we bring together the 70-75% that “potentially, could come together in support of a broadly-based, independent, progressive popular movement?”
Let’s start with how we will NOT, absolutely not, further that objective:
-Cutting back on independent, non-electoral organizing and independent, visible, demonstrative actions. I might argue differently if there was a powerful, multi-racial, multi-issue, “third force” mass movement that had come together and was running strong progressive...
Money power runs America. So do lobbies representing all corporate and other interests. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) represents dozens of influential companies. They include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Bell Hellicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Goodrich, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hill & Knowlton, and many more promoting unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology.
Against targeted countries, drone warfare is America's newest sport. From distant command centers, operators kill by remote control. They use...
Progress. Got some excellent help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund after taking their course on Community Rights Organizing: the CELDF helped me with a Town Ordinance against Smart Meters, which acts on a local level to prevent the corporate-controlled Legislature in Montpelier from shoving smart meters down the throats of residents. Here's the plain English version,...
Picture an activist, or maybe just a human being. Pretend this person is disturbed by the close cooperation of government and industry, and recognizes the harm this cooperation does to the possibilities of democracy, unions, human rights, and a healthy natural world. Perhaps this person is deeply outraged by the atrocities—against both humans and nonhumans—committed by government and industry. How might this person respond to these atrocities?
Well, literally several times a week I receive emails from people telling me things like, “After all these years, it’s time for a change: I’ve left...
I am pretty sure that it was history in the making, local history anyway. And who knows? Maybe Mount Shasta, California’s example will encourage other towns around the Country to take similar action.
Last week, concurrent with the first snow of the season, a meeting took place between Shasta Commons, the area’s Transition Town movement, and the South Siskiyou Tea Party. While sleet and ice pounded the windows outside the building, warmth and understanding predominated in the meeting room inside.
Over the years, there have been some misunderstandings between these two groups. Actually, that is an...
Saturday February 18, 2012
House Chamber of The Vermont State House
Montpelier, VT
12 noon-3pm
Peace – Love – Liberty
Join us as we fire up the Ron Paul 
in Vermont and respond to the status quo, party line rhetoric with REAL CHANGE: the message of liberty, freedom and a return to the Constitution...
Transcribed Talk from January 13, 2012 at “The Hive” in Vancouver, BC.
Thank you for such a warm welcome. I’m quite amazed actually. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to this large a crowd that was just here for me. I’ve spoken to more people at conferences, but that wasn’t just for me. Part of me doesn’t even believe it. Especially because last year I gave a talk by the exact same title in New York City and 6 people came.
That makes me realize how much of this is really a gift. I’m not really doing anything differently. I didn’t make this happen. I didn’t try harder or exert more effort and that’s why...