Stephan: China, because it is centrally controlled, and because it has become obvious to them that coal is literally killing them, I think will move much quicker than the U.S. on creating a non-carbon national energy system. Here is one intriguing version of that vision.
Chinese electric car
Credit: The Atlantic
China could use an expected boom in electric vehicles to stabilize a grid that depends heavily on wind and solar energy, officials from an influential Chinese government planning agency said Monday in Washington D.C.
“In the future we think the electricity vehicle could be the big contribution for power systems’ stability, reliability,” said Wang Zhongying, director of the China National Renewable Energy Center and deputy director general of the Energy Research Institute at China’s National Development and Reform Commission.
The Chinese do not see the cost of renewable energy as a significant obstacle to its widespread adoption, Wang told a lunchtime gathering at Resources for the Future, a non-partisan environmental research organization in the Capitol.
“The biggest challenge for renewable energy development is not economic issues, it is technical issues. Variability. Variability is the biggest issue for us,” said Wang, who explained variability like so: “When we have wind we have electricity; when we have sun we have electricity. No wind and no sun, no electricity.”
But if the […]
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, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: Norway is one of the happiest nations on Earth, has some of the best health care, education is free and it is, as this report describes, the best place in the world to be a mother. This is what happens when a country makes wellness a social priority. What we find in the U.S. is what happens when a wealthy technologically advanced nation does not make wellness a priority. Alberta, Canada, the most conservative province in the country just reversed 43 years of continuous conservative rule and policies.
Similarly, United States electorate could decide in 2016 to vote on a basis favoring wellness. Imagine what that America would look like. Imagine what it would feel like.
Norway ranks as the world’s best place to be a mother, well ahead of the United States which dropped to the 33rd spot in the annual scorecard released by Save the Children
Credit: AFP/Olexander Zobin
Norway ranks as the world’s best place to be a mother, well ahead of the United States which dropped to the 33rd spot in the annual scorecard released by Save the Children on Monday.
Somalia is the worst place, just below the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
Save the Children released its 16th annual Mothers’ Index, which rates 179 countries based on five indicators related to maternal health, education, income levels and the status of women.
This year, the United States dropped from number 31 on the list to 33, behind Japan, Poland and Croatia.
American women have a one in 1,800 risk […]
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The Daily Take Team, - truthout
Stephan: This is the latest on the Orwellian revision of the country's founding, a trend driven entirely by the CTR. In many ways I am more concerned about the trend of CTR willful ignorance then I am of climate change itself. If the American media constantly pointed out the factual distortions and lies of the CTR — The U.S. was founded as a Christian nation — as good journalism demands, this nonsense would be stopped by public ridicule.
Theocratic Rightism of whatever form, wherever it found is the most toxic social force in world civilization today.
Political commentator and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), March 7, 2014.
Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com)
The United States is a Christian nation.
That’s an idea former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has harped on time and time again during his political career.
And while he didn’t explicitly talk about it today during his presidential announcement, it’s bound to pop up some time during his campaign.
That’s because most Republicans agree that the US is a Christian nation. In fact, according to one recent survey, 57 percent of them actually want to establish Christianity as the official state religion of our republic.
That’s right – 57 percent of Republicans want to turn our democracy into a theocracy!
Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave.
The idea that the US is some sort of “Christian nation” is so out of whack with the both the history […]
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Glenn Greenwald, - The Intercept/Reader Supported News
Stephan: Benjamin Netanyahu has made a deal and by aligning himself with ultra conservatives both politically and religiously has formed a Theocratic Rightist coalition government. The result will be even more aggressive policies.
Something has gone very wrong in Israel in my view. The pictures alone tell the story. The Jews for centuries were forced into ghettoes, sometimes they were walled and sometimes, as in Warsaw with the Nazis, there resulted genocidal massacres. Gaza has been walled into a ghetto and, as this report describes, dreadful acts have been committed in the interest of the state. Or looked at another way, Israel has ghettoized itself walling itself apart from the Arab world. Either way the only outcome to be expected is increased violence, and further isolation of Israel from the rest of the world, except America.
This approach has not worked since 1948, and there is no reason to believe it will work in the future. It is beginning to look like Israel and the U.S. have committed themselves to endless asymmetrical warfare with radicalized Muslims whose numbers increase with every drone strike.
A Palestinian man cries in front of his destroyed house in northern Gaza Strip.
Credit: Oliver Weiken/EPA
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence issued a report this morning containing testimony from Israeli soldiers about the savagery and criminality committed by the Israeli military during the attack on Gaza last summer. The Independent has a good article describing the report’s findings: “The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance” and “was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population.” At best.
This should surprise nobody who paid any attention to the brutal Israeli destruction of Gaza or, for that matter, countless Israeli attacks before that. The U.N. has said that 7 out of 10 people killed by the Israelis were civilians, “including 1,462 civilians, among them 495 children and 253 women”; video of Israelis killing four Gazan boys as they played on […]
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Shelly Banjo, Reporter - Quartz
Stephan: The Scandanavian countries seem capable of social changes that are inconceivable in the U.S., and going cashless is perhaps the most radical move to date. The upside to going cashless is described in this report. If one is given to paranoia though it is not hard to see how a cashless society would be easy to control. Just turn off an individual's access to money, by rejecting their card everywhere. But this is coming. My 2050 remote viewers almost universally made this point, when I asked them to remote viewing how they paid for things and services in 2050.
The Danish government said today that it wants to allow gas stations, clothing stores, and restaurants the option to stop taking cash payments, a move that could accelerate a huge shift toward credit, debit, and alternative payment systems.
The measure is part of a larger set of 50 proposals (in Danish) from Denmark’s ministry of finance that aim to make it easier to do business in the country and boost economic growth.
Currently, Danish companies are required to accept cash payments, which “involve considerable administrative and financial burdens,” the finance minister, Bjarne Corydon, said.
For instance, he said retailers spend a fair amount of resources on security guards and surveillance systems, as well as spending the time to make change for customers. Grocery stores, dentists, doctors, post offices, hospitals, and nursing homes are among the establishments that would be excluded from the proposed rule.
If the change is implemented, it could mean that retailers, restaurants and gas stations would be able to turn away customers who don’t have access to electronic payments as early as Jan. 2016.
The idea is that […]
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