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When the biomass hits the wind turbine: How we got ourselves into this mess, and how we are going to get out of it

When the biomass hits the wind turbine: How we got ourselves into this mess, and how we are going to get out of it
By Jay Warmke
Published by BRS Media (Philo, Ohio: 2012)
Renewable “green” energy will be the biggest industry in the history of humankind. When the Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine is a great way to learn all about it.

Author Jay Warmke is blessed with an off-beat sense of humor and a wonderful way of narrating truly earth-shattering history with aplomb and a light, loving touch. “I don’t remember a time when the world wasn’t about he end,” he begins.

Neither do I.

But given this summer’s life-threatening heat, its record drought and on-going string of apocalyptic ecological disasters, we could be easily convinced that unless we do something---NOW!---our ability to live on this earth could indeed come to a crashing halt.

With his wife and collaborator, Annie, Jay has founded an ecological community called Blue Rock Station, near Zanesville. It features green power along with tours and classes designed to further our knowledge and commitment to a world worth saving.

Corporate vote theft and the future of American democracy PART ONE

The Republican Party could steal the 2012 US Presidential election with relative ease.

Four major factors make it possible: the continued existence of the Electoral College, the systematic disenfranchisement of millions of American voters over the past decade, the widespread and growing use of electronic voting machines, and GOP control of the governorships and secretary of state offices in the key swing states that will once again decide the election.

To this we must add the likelihood that the core of the activist community that came out to protect the vote for Barack Obama in 2008 may not do so again in 2012.

Towering over it all, of course, is the reality that corporate money has come to totally dominate the American electoral process. The John Roberts US Supreme Court has definitively opened the floodgates with its infamous Citizens United decision. But for well over a century, at least since the 1880s, corporations have ruled American politics. Back then the courts began to confer on corporations the privileges of human rights without the responsibilities of human decency.

Attack of the lemmings

Stop the Frack Attack! Ohio Woman Fights Natural Gas Industry After Illness Caused by Drilling

Kari Matsko launched People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative-Ohio, a group that educates people about the dangers of fracking, after dealing with illness caused by drilling in her community.
As a landowner in the Marcellus and Utica shale in Ohio, I was introduced to the hazards of gas exploration in July 2006. After several days of debilitating headaches, I awoke one morning unable to move my head due to piercing pain on both sides of my neck.
I was in tears just attempting to do simple things such as get up from sitting or lying down. I was dizzy and had ringing in my ears. These symptoms lasted for months. I went to numerous doctors who found muscle spasms via x-ray but yet no diagnosis. I was in my early 30s and never had such an illness before or since then.

Thailand's robots can save your life or kill you, but not yet love you

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's engineers are creating "humanoids" that can save lives or accidentally kill you, or equipping them with attractive faces, voices and behavior so people fall in love with Thai robots.

Thais are also appearing on the technological map by winning fierce local and international contests, and visitors are invited to watch the competition or view Thailand's robots at exhibitions.

"This robot is female in form, the external appearance," Dr. Thavida Maneewarn, Deputy Director of Research at the prestigious Institute of Field Robotics, says in an interview while introducing her pink-and-white robot named NAMO -- an abbreviation for Novel Articulated Mobile Platform.

"Her voice is a woman. When we first designed her, we designed her to be roughly like a six-year-old girl. So we want her to have that ability, that level, like a six-year-old," Thavida says in her institute's robotics lab where she teaches at King Mongkut's University of Technology across the river from Bangkok in Thonburi. (http://fibo.kmutt.ac.th/fiboweb07/eng/index.php)

Aurora massacre

In the wake of the Aurora Massacre, pundits of all stripes are saying the same things they always say after all the massacres. In this sort of situation, poems are better, even if they may be just as inadequate as any other form of communication.
Aurora Massacre
The survivors will hug and tell their stories
With flashing lights the living and the dead
Will be taken to the morgues and to the hospitals
We'll hear about the last words that they said
At least if it was a notable occasion
Like if it happened just down the road from Columbine
If the victims numbered in the dozens
The murder plan especially malign

The governor will talk about the senselessness
The madness that must explain the crime
Some will ask about the guns, six thousand rounds of ammunition
He bought legally all at the same time
If the murders were especially dramatic
This man will have his week of fame
But by around this time next year
Just a few will remember his name

Fewer still will remember his victims
In this great nation that seems to have no peer

Abolishing war: One last step -- Remarks delivered at Peacestock 2012

Almost our entire population claims to favor peace. At least three quarters of us favor getting the U.S. military out of Afghanistan and ending that particular war, which by the way isn't ending. When carefully surveyed and shown what the federal budget is, a large majority of U.S. residents favors cutting huge amounts of money out of the military and putting it to better use.

But those doing anything about peace as part of a peace movement are a tiny fraction of a percent of the country. I have been lucky enough to see some of my cousins from this part of the country on this trip, and one of them referred to me as her famous cousin who speaks at events and writes books. There are others here much more famous than I within our little movement. But I'm willing to bet at least 99% of the country has never heard of any of us. Maybe the wonderful Coleen Rowley who made it onto the cover of Time Magazine. Maybe a few others.

New certifications, planned expansion

Black Box Voting has been investigating and reporting on this disconcerting trend for nine years now. Everything we've been reporting has not only turned out to be true, but is increasing. A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States.

Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit. Another major elections industry player, Canada's Dominion, purchased the massive Diebold Election Systems division (which it shares with ES&S); Dominion also owns Smartmatic, which handles electronic vote-counting in the Philippines and Belgium. Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software.

About the Colorado movie theater shooting

The second amendment of the United States Constitution states: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Obviously the need for a state militia has been replaced by the National Guard and Coast Guard whereby trained military personnel are entrusted with the defense of this country against domestic enemies. Their weapons are tightly controlled and safeguarded.

The only two reasons for a citizen to own a firearm are for hunting or defense of the household from intruders. In either case, ownership of a handgun, shotgun or rifle is more than adequate to satisfy these purposes. There is absolutely no need for any U.S. civilian to own any weapon more powerful or sophisticated than these.

Accordingly, all handguns, shotguns and rifles must be licensed and registered to the degree necessary to match weapon to owner at the click of a computer key. Furthermore, if we had prevented the purchase of more sophisticated weapons several innocent victims would not have died or been harmed at shopping malls, college

The Geopolitics of Compassion

Beyond the spectacle of the presidential race, the Washington consensus pursues business as usual. This is the season in which I wonder, with an ever-intensifying sense of urgency, what it would take to turn our political system into a democracy.

"And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the national security complex continues to accelerate," Tom Engelhardt wrote earlier this month. "The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself. . . ."

And as the world’s major powers play a 21st-century version of the "Great Game" to control the resources of the world, the U.S., in contrast with China, writes David Vine, "has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power."

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