Energy
The New Urbanists held their big annual meet-up for four days last week and I stomped a big carbon footprint flying down to West Palm Beach for the doings. I don't know who exactly picked West Palm, but it was at once peculiar, disheartening, instructive, and exhausting.
The Congress for the New Urbanism has been throwing this yearly fandango since its founding in 1993 as a fire-eating reform movement dedicated to transforming the horrifying and toxic human habitat of America. Hopes were lofty in the early days that the US public would recognize the self-evident benefits of ditching suburban sprawl for walkable towns, but it didn't...
The following blog entry is by Sarah at the Healthy Home Economist. Thanks, Sarah!
The vaccine industry went home with its tail between its legs after suffering an enormous and...
Finance, Business, Economics, Foreign Policy, Elections, Military, Politics, Environment, Energy
Europe may soon be choking on that plat du jour of government a la Hollandaise with the side of chopped Greek salad. The whole world, in fact, has got something like a giant hairball stuck in its craw. The hairball is composed of filaments of lies wound over a core of supernatural indebtedness. The lies are promises that the debt will be paid back.
For two months the financial markets have gone sideways on a cushion of the European Central Bank's Long term Financing Operations and the hot air of austerity chatter. The illusion of remaining airborne may dissolve now with the Hollandaise denunciation of Franco-German team...
MONTPELIER- A rainy Tuesday morning was not enough to deter the huddled masses yearning to breathe free as more than 500 people marched on the state Capitol to collectively demand that legislators “Put People First.”
Organized by the Vermont Workers’ Center, a coalition of organizations such as Migrant Justice, 350.org, the Vermont...
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise. -Aldo Leopold
Rachel Carson’s first book was titled, The Sea Around Us. In Silent Spring, published in 1962, she proclaimed that humanity now lived in a “sea of...
The world gave the appearance of doing nothing and going nowhere over the past month - apart from the sensational liaison of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, which, some believe, augurs a dazzling speed-up of the much prayed-for economic recovery, return to full employment, $2.50 gasoline by summer, and the selection of Jesus Christ as VP running mate by Mitt Romney - but, in fact, so much trouble is roiling under the surface all over the world that it makes you feel seasick on dry land.
It is true that the European financial fiasco is a story of such fantastic mystifying complexity that the public can't...
A very large rally in support of Vermont's democracy and sovereignty in the face of Entergy Corporation's defiance is just winding up as I post these photos. Speakers included Vermont Governor and Windham County native Peter Shumlin, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont Attorney-General Bill Sorrell, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Brattleboro native Jody Williams, State Senator Jeanette White, State Rep. Sarah Edwards, and Citizens' Awareness Network executive director Deb Katz. A message from US Congressman Peter Welch was read. All spoke out against Entergy's untrustworthiness and recalcitrance in opposing the will...
The Occupy Movement has been characterized by, and criticized for, its lack of focused objectives. Originally gathering around issues of economic inequality and debt, it soon ballooned to include every progressive issue under the sun, and then some. Yet amid the cacophony of proposals and messages, we could always detect a hint of a unifying theme. We sensed that all of these issues are somehow connected; we sensed that we were protesting something. What was that thing? What is it now? What is it about current actions to, say, stop the excavation of Alberta's tar sands that makes them Occupy actions? What does ecosystem destruction...
Activism, Finance, Currency, Food, Governance, Transportation, Farming, Elections, Environment, Education
It appears we were just one more meeting (and 2 pizzas, one growler and a nice Beaujolais...) away from finalizing our new COOP mission statement. Our Board members think this statement very nicely distills what we are trying to do here. If you agree that our goals are laudable and viable, please join our merry band and help us 'shrug off' the burdens of Empire.
Vermont Commons News Cooperative Mission Statement:
The Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence COOP provides an organizational news model that is transparent and equitable, one that balances crowdsourcing of actions, access to...
Pages
