Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: When a third of our youth have been arrested by 23 there is something wrong with the law, not the people. This, of course, is just another negative consequence of our cynical and semi-psychotic war on drugs. Another consequence not mentioned in this report is that when nearly a third of young people have been arrested the social level of contempt for the government goes up significantly. The trend that really matters is that increasingly the American government and the American people seem to be on two different courses.
Nearly one in three Americans will already have been arrested by the age of 23, recent research suggests.
A study analyzing data from the federal government’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that 30.2 percent of 23-year-olds reported being arrested for something more serious that a traffic violation.
It’s the first time since the 1960s that researchers have tried to determine how often young people are arrested. A similar study in 1965 found that only 22 percent reported being arrested by age 23.
‘I was astonished 44 years ago,
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Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
JONATHAN BENSON, Staff Writer - Natural News
Stephan: Over and over, as long-time SR readers know all too well, I argue that change begins at the individual level, because the tiny mundane daily decisions people make collectively create the trends that shape much of our world. Here is a wonderfully clear case study of the principle. Also I thought it was very funny -- a little trend-watcher humor.
An inexplicable butter shortage in Norway that authorities and the media are blaming on the growing popularity of low-carb, high-fat diets has left the wealthy Scandinavian country scrambling to find other sources of the precious cooking ingredient. After all, the Christmas season is upon us, which means that millions of Norwegians need this natural cooking fat to produce a multitude of butter-rich baked goods that have long been a staple of the Norwegian Christmas tradition.
But it looks like many Norwegians may have to skip the baked goods this year after all, since the butter shortfall is expected to last until at least January 2012. In the meantime, many stores throughout Norway have reportedly had to put up signs explaining why there is no butter on their shelves, which has led to an increase in online butter purchases and even butter smuggling.
Norway has high tariffs that discourage imports of things like butter, which is why some people have been compelled to try to smuggle it in from other countries. Officials allegedly stopped a Russian man at the Norwegian-Swedish border, for instance, who was trying to smuggle nearly 200 pounds of butter from the nearby country.
‘Margarine just isn’t the same,’ said one […]
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Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
DARRYL FEARS, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is why the United States is going to do nothing about climate change. We see here displayed the level of citizen stupidity that elects the corrupt idiots we have in Congress, and that is going to block any attempt to actually deal with climate change. I am from Gloucester County, Virginia -- mentioned in this piece -- where part of my family arrived in the 1600s. I know the tenor of the population -- perhaps that is why I live on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest. But even I could hardly credit the tin-foil hat reasoning portrayed here. These people, of course, will be screaming for help from the government as their water front properties return to the sea. I''d estimate about 10 years before their piteous cries are heard.
Over his long career as a public planner, Lewis L. Lawrence grew accustomed to the bland formalities of planning commission meetings in Virginia’s Middle Peninsula, where forgetting to cover one’s mouth while yawning through a lecture was about as rude as people got.
But lately, the meetings have gotten far more exciting - in a bad way, said Lawrence, acting executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. A well-organized and vocal group of residents has taken a keen interest in municipal preparations for sea-level rise caused by climate change, often shouting their opposition, sometimes while planners and politicians are talking.
The residents’ opposition has focused on a central point: They don’t think climate change is accelerated by human activity, as most climate scientists conclude. When planners proposed to rezone land for use as a dike against rising water, these residents, or ‘new activists,
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Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
ETHAN A. HUFF, Staff Writer - Natural News
Stephan: This, like the story in SR the other day about the town that feeds itself, is an example of what can be done working at the local level, which is the leverage point where real change can occur. This is very good news and could be done in your town. Remember this little town has only 2,600 residents.
Developing a renewable energy system that creates energy independence and even a considerable new source of revenue is not some sort of sci-fi pipe dream. BioCycle reports that the German village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, has had such incredible success in building its renewable energy system. Wildpoldsried generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it uses, and it now sells the excess back to the national power grid for roughly $5.7 million in additional revenue every single year.
By utilizing a unique combination of solar panels, ‘biogas’ generators, natural wastewater treatment plants, and wind turbines, Wildpoldsried has effectively eliminated its need to be attached to a centralized power grid, and created a thriving renewable energy sector in the town that is self-sustaining and abundantly beneficial for the local economy, the environment, and the public.
You can view some amazing pictures of the Wildpoldsried village at:
(http://inhabitat.com/german-village…).
Possessing admirable vision for the town and strong motivation to see the project as a whole succeed, Mayor Arno Zengerie has led the way for many years in making Wildpoldsried’s energy independence efforts a success. As far back as 1997, the village has been investing in building and promoting new industries, maintaining a strong local economy, generating […]
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Monday, December 19th, 2011
BARBARA EHRENREICH and JOHN EHRENREICH, - Mother Jones
Stephan: I think this is a good assessment of the process whereby we became the strange America we are today.
Barbara Ehrenreich, TomDispatch regular, is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (now in a 10th-anniversary edition with a new afterword).
John Ehrenreich is professor of psychology at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury. He wrote The Humanitarian Companion: A Guide for International Aid, Development, and Human Rights Workers.
Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.’-E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
The ‘other men’ (and of course women) in the current American class alignment are those in the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution-the bankers, hedge fund managers, and CEOs targeted by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have been around for a long time in one form or another, but they only began to emerge as a distinct and visible group, informally called the ‘superrich,’ in recent years.
Extravagant levels of consumption helped draw attention to them: private jets, multiple 50,000 square-foot mansions, $25,000 chocolate desserts embellished with gold dust. But as long as the middle class could still muster the credit for college tuition and occasional home improvements, it seemed churlish to complain. Then came the financial crash of 2007-08, followed by the Great Recession, and the 1 percent to whom we had entrusted our pensions, our economy, and our political system stood revealed as a band of feckless, greedy narcissists, and […]
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