Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1085
April 25, 2018
Angry and Frustrated, More Australian Customers Quit the Grid
By Giles Parkinson on 24 April 2018
It seems that even big users of energy and the owners of residential mansions are choosing to cut their links with the main network, and go off-grid. Installers and energy consultants tell One Step Off The Grid that the numbers of consumers choosing to go off grid is rising quickly, in response to rising cost of grid energy, and the hopeless political environment.
And it’s not just small or energy conscious households making the shift.
Recent data shows that the number of off-grid installations is increasing rapidly, a combination of new homes that don’t bother connecting to the grid, and an increasing number of on-grid homes that have had enough.
The official data, however, may not capture the scale of what is happening now as solar and battery storage options become more attractive. . .
via Angry and frustrated, more customers are quitting the grid — RenewEconomy — Antinuclear
Jeff Bezos Booed By Amazon Workers
Last week, Amazon finally disclosed its workers’ median annual salary, which at a paltry $28,446 put Amazon on par with Hershey, slightly above retailer Home Depot, and almost ten times below the $240,430 median annual comp at Facebook, according to recent proxy filings.
Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, has made Amazon shareholders extremely wealthy and happy in recent years, but when it comes to Amazon’s 566,000 employees, it’s a vastly different matter. Last week, Amazon finally disclosed its workers’ median annual salary, which at a paltry $28,446 put Amazon on par with Hershey, slightly above retailer Home Depot, and almost ten times below the $240,430 median annual comp at Facebook, according to recent proxy filings.
This will hardly come as a surprise: after all, most of the roughly half-million blue-collar, part-time employees at Amazon don’t make six figures while spending their workdays writing code, and instead unload trucks, drive forklifts and walk miles collecting products to fill orders—all for around the same pay as workers in other companies’ warehouses. Due to their menial, repetitive task, they are also rapidly being replaced by robots.
Which explains why Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos…
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Why the Democrats are Fighting Wikileaks – Not Wall Street
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By Norman Solomon
Vía Consortium News
Rather than take stock of why they lost in 2016 and address demands of ordinary Americans, the Democratic Party continues to scapegoat Russia and WikiLeaks in a misguided lawsuit, says Norman Solomon in this commentary.
Exactly 200 days before the crucial midterm election that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress, the Democratic National Committee filed a 66-page lawsuit that surely cost lots of money and energy to assemble.
Does the lawsuit target purveyors of racist barriers to voting that block and deflect so many people of color from casting their ballots?
No.
Well, perhaps this ballyhooed lawsuit aims to ensure the rights of people who don’t mainly speak English to get full access to voting information?
Unfortunately, no.
Maybe it’s a legal action to challenge the ridiculously sparse voting booths provided in college precincts?
Not that either.
Announced with a flourish by DNC Chair Tom Perez, the civil lawsuit—which reads like a partisan polemic wrapped in legalisms—sues the Russian government, the Trump campaign and operatives, as well as WikiLeaks and its founding editor, Julian Assange.
It’s hard to imagine that many voters in swing districts—who’ll determine whether the GOP runs the House through the end of 2020—will be swayed by the Russia-related accusations contained in the lawsuit. People are far more concerned about economic insecurity for themselves and their families, underscored by such matters as the skyrocketing costs of health care and college education. . .
via Why the DNC Is Fighting WikiLeaks and Not Wall Street — peoples trust toronto
April 24, 2018
America is Disneyland
10% of Disneyland’s employees are homeless, many more are on food stamps, and 75% struggle to make ends meet.
Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth! Millions of families visit the theme park every year to enjoy the magical place of rides, spectacular shows and cheerful cartoon figures. Everything is clean, perfect and joyful. Unless … you realize that Cinderella might actually be homeless. That’s right, 10% of Disneyland’s employees are actually homeless, many more are on food stamps, and 75%struggle to make ends meet.
Does this ring familiar? Think of America. Behind the façade of being the greatest country on Earth with the largest GDP and the wealthiest billionaires, there are tens of millions of Americans who are left behind just like Disney’s employees.
This neo-feudalistic model isn’t isolated to Disney or Walmart, it’s systemic. For example, the bus driver at Apple – which has $280 billionin cash – is forced to sleep in a van because he can’t afford the Silicon Valley rent…
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Two Women Who Took on South African Government Over Nuclear Energy Win Environmental Prize
South African Activists Makoma Lekalakala and Liz McDaid Awarded 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize, For Fight Against Nuclear Power Deal
Two Women Who Stopped Internationl Nuclear Deal
The World Today, by Sally Sara
Liz McDaid and Makoma Lekalakala have been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for their role in stopping a controversial nuclear deal between South Africa and Russia. Now […]
via Two women tooki on the South Afric an government – and won their anti nuclear fight — nuclear-news
Vietnam War Series Ends with Load of Sentimental Claptrap
The Weight of Memory, Episode 10
The Vietnam War
Directed by Ken Burn and Lyn Novick
Film Review
I found the final episode of the Vietnam War series, shown on Maori TV earlier this week, extremely disappointing. The first half contained some good historical detail and valuable commentary by North Vietnam and Vietcong fighters. The last half was a load of sentimental claptrap about the Vietnam War memorial and other efforts to “heal” the Vietnam experience. It was totally devoid of any political analysis, eg the role of banks, oil companies and defense contractors in strong arming three administrations into pursuing an unwinnable war at great cost to the American people. Even more disgusting was the failure to identify obvious parallels with the illegal US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have lasted even longer than Vietnam.
The filmmakers also totally gloss over the reality that for the Vietnamese, the war was purely a war of independence against foreign invaders.
Episode 10 covers March 29, 1973, when the last US troops left Vietnam, through April 30, 1975 when Saigon collapsed. The US evacuation had scarcely ended in 1973 when the Watergate scandal superseded all other national news. It was all over for Nixon once Congress learned that he had tape recorded all his Oval Office conversations. The tapes would provide undeniable proof of his participation in the Watergate burglary and cover up.
On August 9, after the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment, Nixon resigned. On the same day, Congress halved military aid to the (puppet) South Vietnamese government. The result was the virtual economic collapse of South Vietnam. Massive pay cuts would lead South Vietnamese troops to desert at the rate of 20,000 a month.
This episode includes very moving coverage of South Vietnamese who collaborated with the US occupation desperately trying to flee Saigon in front of North Vietnamese troops. Only a few were airlifted via helicopters that evacuated US embassy and security personnel. Many launched themselves into any vessel they could find in the hope of being picked up by US freighters.
Once North Vietnam took control of the south, the blood bath that had been predicted never eventuated. Roughly 1,000 South Vietnamese collaborators were killed in revenge killing and roughly 1.5 million were forced to participate in compulsory re-education.
The Vietnamese economy was a virtual shambles for a good ten years after the war ended. The filmmakers blame this on the privatization of Vietnamese industry and forced collectivization. A better explanation, in my view, is that the US war of aggression totally destroyed the country’s infrastructure and poisoned its farmland with Agent Orange.
Dire economic conditions would lead 1.5 million Vietnamese to flee Vietnam in small and medium-sized boats between 1978 and the early 1990’s. A good number drowned, but most ended up in refugee camps in other Southeast Asian countries. About 400,000 eventually made it to the US.
April 23, 2018
Your bus is running approximately 100 years late
The first London electric buses ran between 1907 and 1910. It’s taken more than 100 years to get them back.
Clean and quiet, London once boasted a fleet of 20 electric buses. They were more efficient and reliable than their petrol equivalents, and operated on battery power. Mounted under the bus, the batteries had a 60 km range and could be removed and swapped for a fresh one in just three minutes.
This was in 1906, and the bus looked like this:
The London Electrobus Company ran a bus service between Victoria and Kilburn from 1907 to 1910, the world’s first fully operational electric bus route. Their buses were popular with the public, and the company had ambitious plans for expansion.
Unfortunately, they also had a couple of crooks at the helm of the company. They failed to pay the engineering firms that had developed their battery technologies. They raised money on false pretences, including fake patents. Investors’ money was siphoned off by the owners of the company, which duly…
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THE TSARMAEV BROTHERS ARE INNOCENT OF THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING! HERE IS THE PROOF!
The US government continues to withhold details of brother Tamerlan’s mysterious activities in the years leading up to the bombings — declaring them “classified.”
YOUR PERCEPTION IS NOT REALITY
As the fifth anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing comes and goes, we can’t help but wonder what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might have to say for himself — if he were allowed to speak.
For one thing, we’d like to ask him if he could fill in some details about his brother Tamerlan’s mysterious activities in the years leading up to the bombings — much of which the government continues to withhold as “classified.”
Dzhokhar is being held at the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado — known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” — under extreme confinement conditions called Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015 for his role in the bombing near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Tsarnaev is appealing his federal death penalty conviction. (All death penalty convictions are automatically appealed.)
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/04/17/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-still-gagged-as-death-penalty-appeal-grinds-on/
Proof That Craft or Blackwater Agents Did…
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Antidepressants not a cure for lost connections
People who are depressed are not victims of bad brain chemistry – they’re depressed because they are disconnected from things that make life worth living.
Journalist Johann Hari said in his new book that people who are depressed are not victims of bad brain chemistry. They are depressed because they are disconnected from things that make life worth living.
They are disconnected from meaningful work, meaningful values and meaningful relationships with other people, from status and respect, the natural world and a secure or hopeful future.
In LOST CONNECTIONS: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—And the Unexpected Solutions (2018), Hari walks the reader through the scientific research that shows how people suffer when they are disconnected from the things they need, and how they can heal when they recover those connections.
Depression and anxiety are big problems. Hari said psychiatric drugs are being taken by one in five American adults, one in three French adults and an even higher proportion in the UK.
The death rate in the United States is actually increasing, driven by
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April 22, 2018
Trump Changes Course On Legal Marijuana
Just months after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new effort to crack down on legal cannabis in the United States, the Trump administration has changed course, deciding to defend states’ rights to form their own cannabis policies instead.
Source link
By Victoria Kim
04/17/18
A senator’s vow to block DOJ appointments reportedly led to an unexpected reversal from the Trump administration.
Just months after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new effort to crack down on legal cannabis in the United States, the Trump administration has changed course, deciding to defend states’ rights to form their own cannabis policies instead.
The move came about after U.S. Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, vowed to block Senate confirmation of appointments to the Department of Justice in protest of the attorney general’s decision to rescind the Cole Memo, an Obama-era policy that effectively left alone states that have legalized cannabis in some capacity.
In January, Sessions announced a “return to the rule of law” under his directive, with the intention to enforce the federal prohibition of cannabis in all 50 states.
By rescinding the Cole Memo…
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