Hundreds of thousands of people in different parts of the US continue to be affected by power outages as temperatures soar to record highs.In California, where temperatures reached 50C (122F) in places, the heat was blamed for at least four deaths.
The power grid was unable to cope with the increased demand for electricity, leading to widespread cuts.
More… ➡
SACRAMENTO, California (AP) — Californians braced for more sweltering heat Sunday, a day after triple-digit temperatures smashed records across the state, strained air conditioners and prompted scattered power outages.
No relief was expected until at least midweek from a weather front that sent temperatures soaring even along the normally cool California coast and brought Midwest-style humidity into the usually arid Central Valley.
Records were set or tied Saturday at all five of the National Weather Service’s recording locations in the Central Valley: 109 degrees in Sacramento, 111 in Redding, and 112 in Red Bluff, Stockton and Modesto.
More… ➡
Copyright 2006 by Linda Moulton Howe
“The average temperature for the continental United States from January through June 2006 was the warmest first half of any year since records began in 1895.” – NOAA
July 18, 2006 Asheville, North Carolina – The following is the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Agency’s summary of America’s “record warm first half of year, widespread drought and northeast record rainfall.”
NOAA report on July 14, 2006: “The average temperature for the continental United States from January through June 2006 was the warmest first half of any year since records began in 1895, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Last month was the second warmest June on record and nationally averaged precipitation was below average. The continuation of below normal precipitation in certain regions and much warmer-than-average temperatures expanded moderate-to-extreme drought conditions in the contiguous U.S. However, much of the Northeast experienced severe flooding and record rainfall during the last week of June. The global surface temperature was second warmest on record for June.
More… ➡
This is an excellent piece of writing from Steven Lagavulin’s Blog, Deconsumption.
The world is quickly ramping-up toward a full awareness of the various fundamental crises affecting our way of life (peak oil, economic collapse, religious/resource wars and strife, climate shift), and on the coat-tails of that might even come the larger awareness that our problems actually extend beyond mere individual “issues”–that in fact it is our entire culture which has teetered beyond the tipping-point of sustainable progress. So whether we’re ready for it or not, the veil of illusion about our way of life is about to be ripped away for a great many people, regardless of whether they’re immediately affected by these issues or not. But as many readers of this site are doubtless already aware, that experience of disillusionment, in and of itself, can be extremely distressing.
Yet for some reason those of us who might be considered analysts of the impending collapse rarely speak directly about this initial period of “culture shock”–although it’s a shock most of us have personally had to struggle through. And I think it’s crucial that we do talk about it, since how (and whether) we cope with this anxiety determines how (and whether) we will be able to embrace the life-changes that are being demanded of us.
In this respect I thought I’d offer my own thoughts on the subject, and if other readers choose to share their experiences as well then we’ll have preserved on the internet at least one little reference–maybe a kind of virtual support-group–for those who are suffering from culture-change anxiety.
More… ➡
I’m not sure what category to put this item under. It fits ‘Politics – How not to do it’ if you consider what the Chinese authorities are doing. But, on the other hand, it fits ‘Politics – As it should be’ if you focus on what Amnesty is advocating here. And, finaly, if you think about what Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are doing by bending to the Chinese authorities for the sake of money – then I don’t think I have a category to hold that though perhaps I should. Read it for yourself and you decide.
Associated Press 07:34 AM Jul, 20, 2006
BEIJING — Amnesty International accused Yahoo, Microsoft and Google on Thursday of violating human rights principles by cooperating with China’s efforts to censor the web and called on them to lobby for the release of jailed cyber-dissidents.
The London-based human rights group also called on the internet companies to publicly oppose Chinese government requests that violate human rights standards.
“The internet should promote free speech, not restrict it. We have to guard against the creation of two internets — one for expression and one for repression,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty’s U.S. branch, in a statement.
The companies “have violated their stated corporate values and policies” in their pursuit of China’s booming internet market, the statement said. It appealed to them to “call for the release of ‘cyber-dissidents.'”
More… ➡
One of the elements in the ‘Perfect Storm’ of problems converging on our future is the ever growing U.S. budget deficit.
The problem is that the United State’s debt load is getting too large. Yes, we’re still paying our bills as regular as clockwork and yes we are still politically stable and have a strong economy. But that’s like saying, “Yes, Bob’s paying his bills every month and he’s got a good steady job and a stable personality, but….” The fact is Bob can’t just keep taking on more and more loans. The fact is that at some point, folks will stop loaning Bob more money because it’s obvious that sooner of later he’ll be in over his head. If Bob pushes the situation too far, he’ll begin to get a bad credit rating even though he’s paying everything on time. And once his credit rating’s suspect, folks will be a lot less inclined to give him new loans and those who already have loans out to him will be feeling nervous and wondering how they can recover them.
This scenario has been unrolling for a long time and many of us are just waiting for the other shoe to drop and hoping it won’t.
———–
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country’s central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
More… ➡
1 in 4 girls in Cameroon suffer this abuse to protect against rape
Not long ago, on a private E-mail thread, several of us discussed cultures at length. I asserted that some cultural practices simply have no place in today’s world. Others defended Multiculturalism and said it was the height of arrogance that someone from one culture should be so brazen as to judge the practices of another.
This is, of course, a very slippery slope and it would be impossible to draw a line and assert that on this side are acceptable cultural practices and that on the other side are practices the world should do away with.
I don’t have the logical answers to resolve this debate – but I do believe that some practices are so repugnant that only those who have grown up steeped in them and invested in them as a normal part of their culture and their life could find them acceptable.
When you ask people of all spiritual faiths if they think there are any ethical universals, they will usually cite, “Thou shalt not kill.” I believe there are others. You may argue that I am just a product of my own culture and therefore as biased as anyone else. Perhaps – that’s a hard charge to defend against since none of us are free of cultural influences.
But to counter, I’d say that some of us have been thinking for some time about what a conscious intentional humanity might become if it looked long and hard in the mirror of introspection and questioned all of its behaviors and beliefs. Certainly, after such a review we would chose to retain some things and reject others.
Along this line, I think that men and women are equal and should have equal rights in all matters. My apologies to those who think differently – but I think you are wrong. And I believe that practices like female genital mutilation are wrong as well. This list could go on but this is not the time or place for such an enumeration.
The story, below, is another cultural practice that I think is utterly wrong. Read it and judge for yourself if all cultural practices should be equally defended.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (Reuters) — Worried that her daughters’ budding breasts would expose them to the risk of sexual harassment and even rape, their mother Philomene Moungang started ‘ironing’ the girls’ bosoms with a heated stone.
“I did it to my two girls when they were eight years old. I would take the grinding stone, heat it in the fire and press it hard on the breasts,” Moungang said.
“They cried and said it was painful. But I explained that it was for their own good.”
More… ➡
In 1994 we spent three weeks in India and Nepal. I was deeply struck then with the disparity between the Hi-Tech image India was projecting into the world and what the actual reality on the street was like.
While we were there, an outbreak of the Black Plague occurred. For a week or two, countries adjoining India closed their borders to her. It caused us some grief because our travel arrangements required us to be in Nepal by a certain date and our flights were canceled. I still remember well the all-night cab ride across the boonies to reach a Nepalese border station where they hadn’t yet received the closure news. We ended up reaching a small airport in eastern Nepal just minutes before the connecting flight to Katmandu took off.
When news of the plague first broke out, we were in New Delhi. We called the American Embassy and learned that just $2 worth of Tetracycline Antibiotic each, obtainable at any pharmacy, was the answer. In the unlikely case that we saw any symptoms in ourselves, we just had to take it and the problem would be handled. We got some of course and went on about our business.
But, it turned out that $2 was beyond the spending horizon for most of India’s poor so they just had to wait and hope for the best.
A rather large scandal broke when we were there over all of this. 10 years or more earlier, the government had established a series of local heath clinics in preparation for events as this. When the newspaper reporters went out the see these health clinics in action, in most cases they simply found the empty shells of buildings and the rubble within. The clinics had simply been forgotten by the Indian bureaucracy and had died on the vine without anyone noticing – until the day came when they were needed.
In Calcutta, I still remember the local guide in the cab telling us how wonderful and advanced Calcutta was as we rolled through a late afternoon miasma of smoke as thick as fog. Garbage was piled up on the sides of the road as tall as a man with people sitting and lying upon it. Starving women clutching scrawny babies would step out the fog and try to pass the babies into us through the cab windows. Eventually, after listening in disbelief to this fellow and watching the insanity for 15 or 20 minutes, we turned a sharp corner, went up a short alley through a gate and entered a five-star hotel in the midst of the city. A very plush hotel that didn’t seem to have any windows.
So, I can relate to the story, below. Poverty is perhaps understandable but denial on this level is not.
I’ve categorized this story under ‘The Perfect Storm’ because the rising disparity between the haves and the have-nots is, indeed, one of the growing factors of destabilization in this world. And I’ve also categorized it under ‘Politics – How not to do it’ with obvious reference to the Indian government.
———————
By PANKAJ MISHRA – in the NY Times
INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story.” So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India’s leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, “The Global Indian Takeover”: “For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom.”
This sounds persuasive as long as you don’t know that Mr. Mittal, who lives in Britain, announced his first investment in India only last year. He is as much an Indian success story as Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, is proof of Russia’s imminent economic superstardom.
In recent weeks, India seemed an unlikely capitalist success story as communist parties decisively won elections to state legislatures, and the stock market, which had enjoyed record growth in the last two years, fell nearly 20 percent in two weeks, wiping out some $2.4 billion in investor wealth in just four days. This week India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy “Western standards of living and high consumption.”
More… ➡
It amazes me that in an age where virtually everything of significance that we use from TVs to electricity to computers to cell phones is the product of science and the scientific method, we still find ourselves defending scientific findings like evolution. This story about one teacher’s struggles in small town Georgia illustrate this quite nicely.
DAHLONEGA, Ga.
OCCASIONALLY, an educational battle will dominate national headlines. More commonly, the battling goes on locally, behind closed doors, handled so discreetly that even a teacher working a few classrooms away might not know. This was the case for Pat New, 62, a respected, veteran middle school science teacher, who, a year ago, quietly stood up for her right to teach evolution in this rural northern Georgia community, and prevailed.
She would not discuss the conflict while still teaching, because Ms. New wouldn’t let anything disrupt her classroom. But she has decided to retire, a year earlier than planned. “This evolution thing was a lot of stress,” she said. And a few weeks ago, on the very last day of her 29-year career, at 3:15, when Lumpkin County Middle School had emptied for the summer, and she had taken down her longest poster from Room D11A — the 15-billion-year timeline ranging from the Big Bang to the evolution of man — she recounted one teacher’s discreet battle.
More… ➡
Research credit to John – thx
I wrote a five-part book report for some friends in December of 2004. It reviews and compares the following five books.
What these books have in common is that they all, in one way or another, focus on the coming global ecological and climatological crisis and offer their author’s ideas for how we (humanity) should deal with these problems.
1. Plan B – Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown
2. One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future by Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne H. Ehrlich
3. Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis – and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster by Ross Gelbspan
4. Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment by James Gustave Speth
5. The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
This five-part book report can be found here… ➡
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
I am making such material available in my effort to advance
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.
I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted
material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this
site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for
purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.