“I have long argued that we need to bypass electrical utilities if we want to build a low carbon society.
Utilities, even if they are publicly owned, have an inherent economic incentive to use cheap and dirty coal or gas, as they then earn the generating revenue. With distributed solar panels at homes and business the customer earns the revenue and the utility becomes a dumb pipe. Heard that argument before? Just as we had to bypass the telephone company to build the global Internet we will need to bypass the utilities to build the future Energy Internet.
Currently the entire electrical grid is built around an architecture of large centralized generating stations. A low carbon electrical grid will need an entire different architecture – and it already exists. It is called our roadway system. With electric vehicles we can use them as a store and forward packet technology to deliver renewable energy from roadside solar panels or windmills. Not only does this enable delivery of renewable energy to homes and businesses bypassing the utilities and existing electrical grid, it also provides a clean and efficient transportation system that complements our western lifestyle.”
This clip from TV Asahi is a lucid explanation of the biggest ongoing news story in the world today: The catastrophic consequences if an earthquake strikes the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 power plant before its spent fuel rods are moved to safe storage place, a process that will not even begin until December 2013, and could take years. It aired March 8, 2012 on “Morning Bird,” a mainstream Japanese news and information TV program.
NOTE Click the CC button at bottom right (first one from left to right on right side) to show English subtitles!
I made a transcript from the video subtitles (created by tokyobrowntabby), since this interview received no (zero, zip, zilch, nada) coverage in our famously free press, and I’d also like people to be able to quote from it, and search engines to find it. If you just read the transcript, and play the whole video through, at least play the presenters’ reaction shot at [5:04 – 5:07]; “the end” is impactful. The reporter is Mr. Toru TAMAKAWA. The expert is Dr. Hiroaki KOIDE, Research Associate at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. I’ve marked material from other presenters PRESENTER.
Phi Beta Iota: Now that it has been clearly established that governments commit more crimes than organized crime, and that Wall Street crime is vastly greater and more harmful to society than organized crime, one has to look on such reports as somewhat naive. We underestimated the degree to which the US Government would betray the public trust across the board. We underestimated the degree to which Wall Street could corrupt to the bone the two party tyranny whose elected and appointed officials have committed high crimes and absolute treason for all too long.
Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over forty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.
Click on Image to Enlarge
She has spent a lifetime investigating Story as a form of knowing and healing. As a writer, she asks: Who do we have to become to find the forms and sacred language with which to meet these times?
She conducts training groups on the spiritual, creative, political and ethical aspects of healing and peacemaking, individual, community and global, drawing deeply on alliance with spirit, indigenous teachings and the many wisdom traditions. One focus is on uniting Western medical ways with indigenous medicine traditions.
With her husband, writer/healer Michael Ortiz Hill, she has introduced the concept of Daré, meaning Council, to North America. The Topanga Daré relies on Council, alliance with Spirit and the natural world, ancestor work, indigenous and wisdom traditions and teachings, music healing, dream telling, divination, kinship, and story telling to achieve personal transformation, community healing and social change.
She is the author of many books, including most recently, the novels La Negra y Blanca andFeral; Ruin and Beauty: New and Selected Poems; From Grief Into Vision: A Council; Doors: A fiction for Jazz Horn; Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing; The Other Hand; Tree: Essays and Pieces, A Sabbath Among the Ruins, Looking for the Faces of God andWriting For Your Life.
As the campaign against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) heats up, it's important for the opposition movement to understand just how many companies directly or indirectly support the legislation (i.e. through a trade group). Here, the complete list of CISPA supporters.
During the week of April 23, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA). And starting on Monday, a variety of organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, The Constitution Project, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Reporters Without Borders, Techdirt, and TechFreedom plan to launch a “week of action” campaign against CISPA, a bill they believe remains dangerously broad in its language, which could result in abuse by the government, and damages to our civil liberties.
Click on Image to Enlarge
While many are comparing CISPA to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the two bills are entirely different for a number of reasons. First, CISPA is a cybersecurity bill that pertains to the sharing of information between the government and private companies. SOPA was an anti-piracy bill that sought to block access to “foreign rogue” websites that illegally distributed copyrighted material. Second, SOPA was opposed by many of the technology and Internet industry’s biggest players. CISPA, on the other hand, effectively has the support of hundreds of technology and Internet companies — a key difference that could drastically affect whether the anti-CISPA crowd can successfully block passage of the bill.
To give you a full picture of just how much political firepower the CISPA has in Congress, we’ve listed most, if not all, of the companies and organizations that have voiced either direct support for CISPA (by writing a letter, or otherwise expressing support for this specific bill), or indirect support through the direct support of a trade group. The organizations or companies listed in bold have voiced direct support. Those companies not in bold have not necessarily given direct support (though quite a few have), but have supported the bill through the trade group, which is listed in bold. The links go to the .pdf files of the letters the company sent to the House Intelligence Committee to express their support of CISPA.
As you can see, the list of CISPA supporters is massive, and should give anyone who thinks this will be an easy political fight a dose of reality. Not that CISPA can’t be stopped but, well, scroll down and you’ll see what we mean.
The attached essay by investigative journalist Robert Parry is an excellent — and important — summary of the trashing of the Iranian nuke deal in 2010. CS
Exclusive: Iran is resuming talks over its nuclear program with leading international powers – the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany – with the prospect of an agreement to swap some enriched uranium for research isotopes. But a similar plan was torpedoed by U.S. neocons in 2010, recalls Robert Parry.
Two years ago, Washington’s influential neoconservatives – both inside and outside government – shot down a possible resolution to the Iranian nuclear dispute because they wanted a confrontation with Tehran that some hoped would lead to their long-held dream of “regime change.”
In the ensuing two years, the cost of that confrontation has been high not just for Iranians, who have faced harsh sanctions, but for the world’s economy. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent escalation of bomb-Iran rhetoric contributed to the spike in gasoline prices that seems to be choking off the U.S. recovery, just as job growth was starting to accelerate.
