Stephan: Although this story is about Texas, a state with a very strange culture, the reason I am running it is because it is the latest in the growing Great Schism Trend. Forty states now have secession movements. Corporate media can't seem to see this except as isolated anomalies on the political fringe.
But I think there are several deeper message: there is a significant and growing portion of the population who think seriously about secession. And deeper still: In its own way the Secession Trend is a subset of the Localization Trend. It is one particular expression of the growing desire people have to control their lives locally because they no longer have any faith in the state or federal level of government which they see as fundamentally corrupt.
A petition for Texas secession has qualified to receive a White House response.
As of Tuesday evening, the petition — which asks for the peaceful withdrawal of the state of Texas from the union — had racked up more than 81,000 signatures. (Only 25,000 are needed to elicit an official response from the Obama administration.)
According to Politico, the leader of the Texas secession movement said the president’s reelection last week was a “catalyzing moment for his organization’s efforts to quit the United States.”
“I am completely aware that Election Day was a catalyzing moment, but I do not believe that the underpinnings of this are solely about Barack Obama,” Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement told the political news website. “This cake has been baking for a long time — it’s the Obama administration that put the candles on the cake and lit it for us.”
The Texas petition reads:
Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s (sic) citizens’ standard of living and re-secure […]
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Paul Vallely, Visiting Professor in Public Ethics, University of Chester - iol news (Ireland)
Stephan: I have been waiting for some Irish commentary assessing what has just happened in Ireland. Here is a good take on it. This shift in the Irish culture away from the Roman Catholic Church is a major trend that will affect Ireland, Europe and the Church profoundly.
People celebrate as the final vote of the referendum on same-sex marriage is announced, in Dublin Castle, Ireland.
Credit: Aidan Crawley
In less than three decades, the Catholic Church has lost its grip on the Irish, says Paul Vallely.
London – In 1987, the plain people of Ireland were asked in a referendum whether or not they wanted divorce to be made legal in their country. They overwhelmingly voted No. Hardly surprising, everyone said, since Ireland was the most Catholic country in Europe. No more.
This week’s massive vote in favour of legalising gay marriage in the same country charted the profound transformation undergone by Irish society in a single generation.
In less than three decades, the Catholic Church has lost its grip on the Irish. From being one of Europe’s most socially conservative societies, Ireland has become the first country in the world to approve same-sex marriage – one of the modern world’s defining issues – not from the legislation of a parliamentary elite, but […]
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Damian Carrington, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Did you know the people of the world pay $10 million a minute in subsidies to fossil fuel multi-nationals like Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and BP for a total of $5.3 trillion a year? Don't feel bad the American media doesn't seem to know it either, or at least it doesn't think it worth mentioning. I heard about this report and had to go to a British newspaper to find a decent story on the subject. With the exception of VOX and a couple other small outlets, no media in the U.S. could be bothered to think about it.
Just looking at America we have no money to feed or house the millions of poor children in the U.S. Nor do we have adequate money for childcare, or elder care. And rebuilding our infrastructure as we slide into second world status? Sorry. But the richest corporations in human history? Well, for them, we just can't shovel the tax payer money out fast enough.
You and I, thanks to the corporate vassals — excuse me members of Congress — who pass the laws allowing this are literally subsidizing the destruction of our planet's ecosystem. Children may starve, grannies may eat dog food, but fossil fuel executives have eight figure incomes. There, doesn't that make you feel better.
Marathon Petroleum refinery in Canton, Ohio, got a job subsidy scheme worth $78m when it started in 2011.
Credit: PR
Fossil fuel companies are benefiting from global subsidies of $5.3 trillion (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10 million a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. (emphasis added)
The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.
The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.
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Todd Woody, Senior Editor for Environment and Wildlife - Takepart
Stephan: To anyone who spends an hour Googling alternative energy data it is obvious how quickly the conversion out of the carbon era could actually go if the will was there. When you think about this, and place it in context with the $5.3 trillion dollars of annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industry you can easily see how blatantly the game is rigged to benefit the few and slight the many while damaging the Earth.
Could the United States get as much as 35 percent of its electricity from wind power within 35 years?
Absolutely, says the U.S. Department of Energy in a new report that details the benefits of replacing fossil fuel power plants with millions of wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity. (emphasis added)
Like perhaps longer showers in drought-stricken regions.
Fossil fuel power plants consume huge amounts of water for cooling. If wind supplied a third of the nation’s electricity by 2050, it would save an estimated 260 billion gallons of water a year. That’s just what California currently uses in about a week, but the savings could have significant local impacts where water shortages are severe.
“Wind’s environmental benefits can address key societal challenges such as climate change, air quality and public health, and water scarcity,” the report states. “Wind deployment can provide U.S. jobs, U.S. manufacturing, and lease and tax revenues in local communities to strengthen and support a transition of the nation’s electricity sector toward a low-carbon economy.”
The drop in greenhouse gas emissions from ramping up wind […]
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Erin Schumaker, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: I've lost six friends over the past 15 years to lung cancer, just a few of the 156,953 men, women, and children who die of this disease every year. I can only wonder how many might still be alive if we had not embargoed Cuba.
Note also that Cuba gives the drug away to patients as part of their universal healthcare system. Once it gets through trials in the U.S. how much do you think a course of treatment will cost? $5,000 a month? $10,000 a month? You know damn well the illness profit industry is not going to be selling it for a dollar or giving it away as they do in Cuba.
As this report notes: " life expectancy for Cubans is 79 years, on par with the United States, despite the fact that its economy per person is eight times smaller."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in Cuba.
Credit: USA Today
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) headed to Havana on a historic trade mission in April, he returned with the promise of an important commodity: a Cuban-developed lung cancer vaccine.
The vaccine, called CimaVax, has been researched in Cuba for 25 years and became available for free to the Cuban public in 2011. The country’s Center for Molecular Immunology signed an agreement last month with Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York to import CimaVax and begin clinical trials in the United States.
“We’re still at the very early stages of assessing the promise of this vaccine, but the evidence so far from clinical trials in Cuba and Europe has been striking,” Dr. Kelvin Lee, Jacobs Family Chair in Immunology and co-leader of the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at Roswell Park, told The Huffington Post.
When President Obama loosened the United State’s 55-year long trade embargo against the island nation in December, he allowed for such […]
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