Elizabeth Grossman, - Earth Island Journal
Stephan: Food and water. Both severely impacted by climate change. Both negatively affecting tens of millions of Americans. As part of the world wide effect which will affect billions. You would think that the U.S., would see this as at least as important as terrorism. Why don't we? I think that is a question everyone should be asking.
The same effects of climate change that are hurting food production are also highlighting the vulnerability of food distribution systems that rely on long-distance transportation, centralized wholesale markets, and the often concentrated food production sources.
Credit: RustyClark (hottnfunkyradio.com), on Flickr
This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an investigative journalism non-profit focusing on food, agriculture and environmental health.
By now there has been a steady stream of news about climate change’s impacts on food production. Heat waves, drought, and wildfire are damaging harvests in California, Australia and Brazil. Warming and acidifying oceans threaten seafood stocks. Rising temperatures are causing declines in crops as different as wheat and cherries, while extreme precipitation and floods have destroyed crops across the US and Europe. Increasing temperatures and CO2 levels are reducing […]
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CHRIS BUCKLEY, - The New York Times
Stephan: In this extraordinary article below
Robert Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University, is quoted in a telephone interview as saying: “I don’t think the Dalai Lama would mind if you saw this through the prism of Monty Python.” I agree. This is culturally mediated spiritual geopolitics. In the West we could have this fight, but not in this form.
The Dalai Lama has hinted that he might not be reincarnated, angering Beijing.
Credit Sanjay Baid/European Pressphoto Agency
HONG KONG — Chinese Communist Party leaders are afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife. Worried enough that this week, officials repeatedly warned that he must reincarnate, and on their terms.
Tensions over what will happen when the 14th Dalai Lama, who is 79, dies, and particularly over who decides who will succeed him as the most prominent leader in Tibetan Buddhism, have ignited at the annual gathering of China’s legislators in Beijing.
Officials have amplified their argument that the Communist government is the proper guardian of the Dalai Lama’s succession through an intricate process of reincarnation that has involved […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2015
Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies - Reader Supported News
Stephan: I am heartened that we are beginning to see serious public intellectuals publish on this subject, and in this way. Wellness first.
Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies
The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.
What’s behind this? Two big facts.
First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.
In fact, most Americans have no influence at all. That’s the conclusion of Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, who analyzed 1,799 policy issues — and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Instead, American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and of big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
The second fact is most big American […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2015
Arturo Garcia, - Raw Story
Stephan: Here is my position. I have held it for years: Any two people of whatever gender who want to spend their lives together as partners, ought to be able to file the appropriate papers and create that contract. The role of the clerks should be to handle the paperwork. And they should be required to do it in the same way that they handle any other kind of contract or license.
The Marriage Contract is a document between individuals and the state. It should have no religious aspect at all. This contract affects how you buy property, or pays taxes, other interactions with the state. This contract is what gives you access to your dying spouse; I can tell you that from personal experience.
If a couple wish to publicly declare this partnership in some ceremonial way, they should be free to do so in anyway they wish, involving some spiritual leader if they can find one who will oversee the ceremony. But it should be entirely elective. This hate motivated movement by Oklahoma ironically may evolve to something very like what I have described.
Female minister uses a tablet PC to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony
Credit: Shutterstock
An Oklahoma bill putting marriage licenses solely in the hands of clergy was approved by the state House of Representatives on Tuesday, the Tulsa World reported.
House Bill 1125 would bar county clerks from issuing marriage licenses in the wake of the federal court ruling late last year striking down a state ban on same-sex marriages. The bill passed in a 67-24 vote, sending it to the state Senate.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Todd Russ (R), said it would “protect” county court clerks opposed to marriage equality from having to recognize same-sex couples’ unions. Shifting the responsibility onto select clergy members, Russ said, takes clerks “out of the trap.”
If the Senate passes the bill, only “an ordained or authorized preacher or minister of the Gospel, priest or other ecclesiastical dignitary of any denomination” would be allowed to issue “certificates of marriage” after presiding […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2015
ALISON SMALE and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, - The New York Times
Stephan: While in the U.S. we often seem to be going backwards about women's rights and equality, more wellness oriented societies are going in the exact opposite direction, as this story about Germany makes clear.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Manuela Schwesig, the minister of family affairs who helped a law requiring more women on corporate boards clear legal and political hurdles in Germany.
Credit Soeren Stache/European Pressphoto Agency
BERLIN — Germany on Friday became the latest and most significant country so far to commit to improving the representation of women on corporate boards, passing a law that requires some of Europe’s biggest companies to give 30 percent of supervisory seats to women beginning next year.
Fewer than 20 percent of the seats on corporate boards in Germany are held by women, while some of the biggest multinational companies in the world are based here, including Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler […]
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