B e t r a y T h e A g e

Published on Monday, August 29, 2005 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) by Robert G. Kaiser, Posted on Commondreams Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost. This isn't controversial in Finland; it's taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?

By Peter Singer | August 20, 2005, Boston Globe WHAT COUNTRY has the most advanced animal protection legislation in the world? If you guessed the United States, go to the bottom of the class. The United States lags far behind all 25 nations of the European Union, and most other developed nations as well, such as Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada

Published on Monday, August 22, 2005 by Reuters. By Carol Bohan, Linked to Commondreams The Ilulissat glacier in Greenland, a UN heritage site considered one of the wonders of the world, has shrunk by over 10 kilometers in just a few years, in one of the most alarming examples of global warming in the Arctic region.

By PETER MAASS. NY Times Published: August 21, 2005 "In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of c...

By Beth Daley, Boston Globe Staff | August 17, 2005 The cod population by weight on fabled Georges Bank, the premier fishing grounds off Massachusetts, has declined by almost 25 percent since 2001, according to preliminary federal data, despite the ever-tightening grip of restrictions on fishermen in the region's decades-old fishing crisis.

by Brent Curtis, Rutland Herald - August 13, 2005 Sometimes less is more. That philosophy has made all the difference in James Merkel's life. For 16 years, the 47-year-old East Corinth resident has been living comfortably on just $5,000 a year. "It's made all the difference in my life, I've never been happier," he said in a telephone interview Friday. Next week, he will tell Rutlanders how a sustainable lifestyle has simplified his life and made him a more responsible consumer in the global community. Merkel, who wrote a book titled "Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth," which compares America's consumption of the world's natural resources compared to other countries and gives step-by-step instructions for people to curb the amount of goods and services they use.

By Ian Sample, The Guardian/UK, published in Commondreams Siberia feels the heat: A frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas, and for the first time since the ice age, it is melting.

by Danny Schechter, Commondreams.org "It was hard not to marvel at Wiki's achievements. The encyclopedia is growing in readership and offerings. The English-language version started only in 2001 but now includes 672,848 often-changing articles. What's even more exciting is the Wikipedians' hope to encourage the creation of similar encyclopedias in every language in the world. The articles themselves often offer a level of depth and dimension not available anywhere else. An entry on the Tsunami, for example, contained 5,000 edits from 508 authors. You can learn more and see what they do at http://www.wikipedia.org/ ."

by James Howard Kunstler, Guardian, Aug 4, 2005 Cheap energy and relative peace helped create a false doctrine "Today's transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalisation evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs. It is significant that none of the cheerleaders for globalisation takes this equation into account. In fact, the American power elite is sleepwalking into a crisis so severe that the blowback may put both major political parties out of business."

by Jeff Franks, Reuters - posted at Commondreams HOUSTON -- Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

By CORNELIA DEAN NY Times Researchers who studied decades of catch records from Japanese fishing fleets say fishing has greatly reduced the diversity of fish in the world's open oceans, leaving ocean ecosystems less resilient against environmental changes like global warming.

If corporate owning of genetic material from plants doesn't bother you, how about your own genes? Last night Deb Koons Garcia showed her film "The Future of Food" at the Rutland Free Library as part of a tour of New England. The film was an biting expose Monsanto's attempts to gain control of the seed market worldwide by buying up seeds, companies, seed genes and they are succeeding. The freightening point the Deb makes in this film is that Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" seeds allow the spraying of the popular Roundup without hurting the plants. This allows Monsanto to control the sale of the pesticide and also the seed giving them more control over the agricultural markets. Since Monsanto ownes the patent to the "Roundup Ready" seeds, any farmer found to have plants with its properties on the farms can and have been sued by Monsanto. These genetically engineered seeds have migrated, as plants are supposed to do, and the courts have ruled that unwi...

by Michele Simon, Commondreams "Ironically, the most common argument made against such bills is that schools should maintain "local control" over nutrition policy. But Governor Rell's reasoning is hard to swallow. She invoked the word "local" no fewer than 16 times in her 3-page veto message. However, many school policies are made at the state and even national level. Perhaps the governor has heard of President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy?"

By Brian McGrory, Boston Globe "You read that right: Men and women making maybe $15 an hour who had dedicated their working lives to a bristle manufacturing company might have to give their paltry severance back to the multimillionaire Bostonians who are shutting down their plant. Hold on: I've got Charles Dickens calling on Line 1."

By Joyce Marcel - Commondreams Joyce Marcel is a free-lance journalist who lives in Vermont and writes about culture, politics, economics and travel. She can be reached at joyrand@sover.net "I didn't know Marty then, although I knew about him - that he was a well-known left-wing writer, one of the hippest people of his generation, and one of those legendary early commune hippies who came to Vermont in the 1970s and stayed to make a life here. Marty was no hippie caricature, though. He was a well-respected and much-loved contributor to the daily life of our community, an adept and knowledgeable political columnist, and the author of four books, one of which was made into a movie."

Cinema Libre Studio is proud to announce that MCLIBEL, the documentary about Dave Morris and Helen Steel's monumental libel case versus McDonald's, premieres in the US in San Francisco on June 10th. Directed by Franny Armstrong, MCLIBEL is the story of two ordinary people who took on McDonald's and won in what became the longest running trial in British history and the biggest corporate PR disaster. In the late 80's, as members of London Greenpeace, the activists started handing out "What's Wrong With McDonald's" leaflets that attacked many aspects of the corporation's business practices specifically: - Environmental abuse - Deceptive ads - Exploiting children - Low wages - Anti-union - Bad working conditions - Animal cruelty and, - Heart disease Soon afterwards, "McSpies" infiltrated the organization and shortly there afterwards McDonald's sued five of the members. McDonald's offered a stark choice: retract the allegations an...

Last Saturday night Congressman Bernie Sanders sponsored a town meeting to discuss the issue of poverty. It had been billed as an opportunity for citizens to gather and and discuss the increasingly troubling problem of poverty. Though there were many competing activities me and my family could have chosen on perhaps the most beautiful weekend of the year, we along with about 60 others wanted to dialogue about the forgotten issue of poverty in America. There seemed to be a cross-section of the community represented with low-income organizations present as well as concerned citizens and people who are poor. For my family and I hearing from many people in our community about the issue of poverty was the most inspiring. We were also lifted by the hopefulness of Bernie Sanders and by his demands to us to " not give up" and to "fight the good fight." As most of us are aware, Bernie is likely to become the next United States Senator from Vermont as Jim Jeffords steps down....

by Bill Moyers - This is the prepared text of the speech Bill Moyers gave at Take Back America: The Conference for America's Future, sponsored by the Institute for America's Future, in Washington on Friday, June 3, 2005 The Wall Street Journal is no Marxist sheet, either, although its editorial page can be just as rigid and dogmatic as old Stalinists. The Journal's reporters, however, are among the best in the country. They're devoted to getting as close as possible to the verifiable truth and describing what they find with the varnish off. Two weeks ago a front-page leader in the Journal concluded that "As the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1970, the odds that a child born in poverty will climb to wealth - or that a rich child will fall into middle class - remain stuck….Despite the widespread belief that the U.S. remains a more mobile society than Europe, economists and sociologists say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in poverty ...

by Ralph Nader Co-op America's solar magazine whets your appetite for solar. The/ Quarterly/ has a useful list of what you can do solarwise from old knowledge known as thrift. Hang your clothes out to dry instead of firing up the energy wasteful clothes dryer, for example. It shows you how to visit existing solar homes (www.ases.org ), tap state programs that give you a break if you install solar devices or systems. It takes you around the country and world where solar is being used for a wide variety of purposes efficiently.

by Jennifer Ladd and Felice Yeskel - Commondreams.org Class? There is no word or concept that is more off-limits in our boundless tell-all culture right now than class. As a society, we have rapidly progressed over several generations in developing a common language to talk about differences of gender, race, and sexual orientation. Newspapers and TV interview shows explore every nook and cranny of American life through the lens of diverse forms of oppression and difference such as aging, disability, and mental illness. Almost everything…but class.