Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1080
May 12, 2018
One chart shows an energy revolution is coming — #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani
The cost of producing solar power is rapidly declining: it now costs $US50 to produce one megawatt-hour of solar power, according to a new analysis. Coal, on the other hand, costs $US102 per megawatt-hour to produce.
One simple chart shows why an energy revolution is coming — and who is likely to come out on top
Jeremy Berke May 9, 2018, 2:18 AM
• The cost of producing solar power is rapidly declining: it now costs $US50 to produce one megawatt-hour of solar power, according to a new analysis.
• Coal, on the other hand, costs $US102 per megawatt-hour to produce.
• This recent change could be a sign that the world is on the verge of an energy revolution.
The cost of solar power is decreasing so rapidly, it’s now cheaper than coal, based on a new analysis.
A recent report from Lazard shows how the costs of producing electricity from various sources are changing. Energy from utility-scale solar plants – plants that produce electricity that feeds into the grid – has seen the biggest price drop: an 86% decrease since 2009.
The…
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The General Motors Conspiracy to Destroy Public Transportation in the US
Taken for a Ride
Directed by Jim Klein (2014)
Film Review
Taken for a Ride is about a conspiracy initiated by General Motors to destroy America’s public transit system. At a time when only one out of ten Americans owned an automobile, the first president of General Motors Alfred P Sloan started National City Lines (NCL), with the explicit goal of shutting down the country’s popular, world class electric trolley lines.
With the financial support of Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone and Mack Truck, NCL bought up every trolley company in the US s systematically shut them down. This was despite widespread public opposition – the NCL buses that replaced the trolleys were far slower and more polluting than the trolleys.
Once they had a monopoly on city transit, NCL gradually raised fares and cut services until city buses were so unprofitable they had to be taken over by city government.
In 1946, after intensive investigation, the Justice Department filed suit against GM for conspiracy to monopolize public transportation. After finding them guilty, the court fined them a mere $5,000.
GM Also Behind Interstate Construction Conspiracy
In 1932, Sloan also founded the National Highway Users Conference, a consortium of oil and auto companies that would ultimately become the Highway Lobby – for decades the most powerful lobby in Washington. When Eisenhower was elected in 1952, GM president Erwin Wilson became his Secretary of Defense (and convinced of the need for superhighways – to move tanks as Hitler had done in Germany) and Francis DuPont (DuPont was the largest GM shareholder) as the Commissioner of Public Roads. Under Eisenhower, Congress enacted a federal gas tax to pay for the massive federal Interstate highway system his administration created.
There was strong public opposition in many cities to Interstate construction that threatened to displace entire neighborhoods and close down businesses, schools and churches. A national coalition – blocking urban Interstate extensions in 50 cities – but most went ahead as planned.
Sam Alito Exposes GM Conspiracy
In the 1970s, a strong grassroots environmental movement formed to address the growing problem with superhighway gridlock* and auto-related air pollution. A high point of this film is footage of a 1974 Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in which Los Angeles mayor Sam Alito reminds senators of the GM conspiracy to shut down LA’s public transit system.
Following the hearing, Congress relented and allowed cities to use federal gasoline taxes to rebuild their public transport networks. This would enable Washington and San Francisco to build subway systems and Baltimore, Portland, Seattle and other cities to begin plans for light rail (the modern term for electric trolleys) systems.
When this documentary was made in 2014, public transportation was in major crisis in most cities, due to budget cuts stemming from the 2008 global economic crash. At the time, Congress had just passed a bill to build a new national highway network four times the size of the current Interstate system.
Fortunately this plan has been shelved due to federal budgetary problems and the wholesale rejection of the private automobile by the millennial generation.
*Did you ever notice that TV ads never depict their cars stuck in highway gridlock – but on lonely stretches of country road?
May 11, 2018
The People Made the First New Deal. Can the People Make Another?
In our memory Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the standard bearer of the New Deal but it did not start that way. FDR was a reluctant reformer pushed into progressive action because millions of people were willing to experiment with radical solutions.
Massive Protest and Organizing Created the New Deal
The kind of electoral victories we need will take far more than standard electioneering and Facebook debates. Let’s look at what it took to create the New Deal so we can see just how challenging the task ahead is. During the Great Depression massive organizing efforts and protest movements were necessary just to reform the two-party system. New Deal history strongly suggests that the current dementer v. demexit debate is largely a waste of time until we organize movements powerful enough to upset the existing order.
In our memory Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the standard bearer of the New Deal but it did not start that way. FDR was a reluctant reformer pushed into progressive action because millions of people were willing to experiment with radical solutions.
Mass movements, third parties and revolutionary parties, labor upheaval, agrarian unrest, powerful populists, discontented veterans, and Democratic congressmen
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US Collapse – the Spectacle of Our Time
Rather than accepting the fate of demise, the US is aggressively resisting by denigrating China and Russia’s power as somehow illegitimate. It’s the classic denial reaction of a sore loser.
By Finnian Cunningham
Source: Axis of Logic
May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese proverb. Few can doubt that we are indeed living in such an interesting time. Big changes are afoot in the world, it seems.
None more so than the collapsing of the American Empire.
The US is going through an historic “correction” in the same way that the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago when the latter was confronted with the reality of its unsustainable political and economic system. (That’s not meant to imply, however, that socialism is unviable, because arguably the Soviet Union had fatally strayed from its genuine socialist project into something more akin to unwieldy state capitalism.)
In any case, all empires come to an end eventually. History is littered with the debris of countless empires. Why should the American Empire be any different? It’s not. Only arrogant “American exceptionalism” deludes…
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Is the US Determined to Become a Rogue State?
A global empire will keep pushing and pushing until something snaps. The leaders of empire become convinced of their invincibility right before the end, and the U.S. is no differen
Let me cut to the chase. Every single world leader knows Trump’s full of shit. Even more importantly, the citizens of their nations also know it. Everyone with a functioning brain understands that pulling out of the Iran deal has nothing to do with terrorism, nuclear bombs or any other fairytale propagated by U.S. neocons. This is simply about the existence of a non-U.S. client state in a key strategic region sitting on massive oil reserves. It’s about empire — global games of power and money fueled by a desperate attempt to hold on to a unipolar world where the U.S. bosses everyone around.
A global empire will keep pushing and pushing until something snaps. The leaders of empire become convinced of their invincibility right before the end, and the U.S. is no different. Given the rise of China economically and militarily, as well as Russia exerting its influence in…
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May 10, 2018
Where Your Clothes Really Come From
Our clothes — the stuff in our wardrobe right now — are the result of a reckless industry, responsible for some of the worst pollution and most horrific human rights violations on the planet.
There is no easy way to say this to a Western audience.
Our clothes — the stuff in our wardrobe right now — are the result of a reckless industry, responsible for some of the worst pollution and most horrific human rights violations on the planet. Pressured by fashion’s largest name brands, textile factories and garment manufacturers consistently cut corners to increase annual profit margins, at any cost. The modern fashion industry, currently making upwards of $3 trillion a year, is simply unsustainable. Here’s why:
Next to big oil, the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world and is responsible for the most the detrimental toxic waste dumping, ground water contamination, and water consumption of any industry.
The unrelenting waste of retailers and typical Western households has far exceeded the capacity of global landfills. Americans alone throw away over 14 million tonnes of clothes every year; annually…
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Mammograms: Radiation and Other Serious Risks
Safer radiation free methods of detecting Big C are ignored, suppressed, denied or attacked. Why is that?
AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites
The squeezing of the breast in the machine also increases the risk and can spread cancer cells, which also increases the risk. Safer radiation free methods of detecting Big C are ignored, suppressed, denied or attacked. Why is that?
This investigative journalism article dives into the highly profitable world of Big C screening, diagnosis, research and treatments. It details the shortcomings, cover ups and real world dangers plus negative side effects of the medical industrial complex, specifically around breast cancer.
Some root causes of Big C are explored, and sustainable solutions are offered, which do no harm to this or 7 future generations.
Hidden History: The Prehistoric American Civilizations Destroyed by European Settlers
America Before Columbus
Directed by Cristina Trebbi (2009)
Film Review
Although this documentary acknowledges the arrival of Europeans diminished the Native American population by 90%, it omits any mention of the massacres, enslavement or land expropriation that were the primary cause of their demise. For some odd reason, it makes it appear as if they died out due to accidental exposure to small pox, measles and influenza and European pigs that destroyed their crops.
That being said, the film gives a reasonable depiction of the great civilizations along the Mississippi River and in Central and South America that were destroyed by Europeans. It also accurately portrays how the introduction of corn and potatoes to Europe was far more important than New World gold and silver in the rise of capitalism and the flowering of European civilization.
May 9, 2018
The Varicella Vaccine, Skyrocketing Shingles and CDC Chicanery
Chicken pox vaccine causing increased rate of recurrent shingles outbreaks in vaccinated children. Studies the CDC is busy trying to cover up.
“Collusion” is the word du jour, and the practice’s very characteristics—deception, fraud, misrepresentation and secrecy—often prevent collusive acts from coming to light. In the scientific research community, would-be deceivers draw on a variety of tricks to slant their message, including manipulating data, employing other questionable research practices, not disclosing conflicts of interest, harassing whistleblowers and engaging in outright censorship.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is no stranger to any of these tactics, but eventually, as Shakespeare once predicted, the “truth will out.” Critics and senior scientists, in growing numbers, have been pulling back the veil on the CDC’s unethical modus operandi, arguing that questionable practices have become “the norm and not the rare exception.” Adding to this emerging picture of a public agency captive to “rogue interests,” a March 2018 article in the Annals of Clinical Pathology describes…
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New California Building Code = more insulation, energy-efficient windows and, yes, rooftop solar panels
The new California Energy Commission building code — the first of its kind in the US — will require (in all new homes) rooftop solar panels with enough energy efficiency measures like insulation and better windows that all new single-family homes and low-rise apartments will use net-zero electricity. This means that their solar array should offset all electricity use for cooling, plug-in equipment, and lighting on an annual basis. The fifth-largest economy in the world runs right past the rest of the United States – once again.
Wakeland Housing and Development Corporation
❝ How would you like living in a home with a dramatically reduced electric bill? That will be a reality for most new homes in California starting in 2020, thanks to a new building energy code adopted today by the California Energy Commission. The updated code — the first of its kind in the nation — will combine rooftop solar panels with enough energy efficiency measures like insulation and better windows that all new single-family homes and low-rise apartments will use net-zero electricity. This means that their solar array should offset all electricity use for cooling, plug-in equipment, and lighting on an annual basis.
❝ The groundbreaking decision to make these new homes net-zero electricity, coupled with major savings from more efficient lighting required by the updated code for commercial buildings, will save Californians more than $1.7 billion in net energy savings over the next…
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The Most Revolutionary Act
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