Amendment 1, local film Sunday, Feb. 26, 7 pm

Learn more about Amendment 1, NC Legislature, tomorrow evening, 7:00, Whispering Pines Community Center, 1320 Ray's Bridge Rd, just off Hwy 22, about 1 1/2 miles north of the traffic circle at the airport, Whispering Pines, NC.

We are at a critical point in the health of the state of North Carolina.   Please join our Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Sandhills as we present the first in a series of films to bring awareness to Moore County about the inequities of Amendment One.

Stimulus and Nukes

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz on Obama's Stimulus Plan, Debt, Climate Change, and "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"
As President Obama defends the success of his one-year-old $787 billion stimulus package, we speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the stimulus was both not big enough and too focused on tax cuts. Stiglitz is the author of the new book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, which analyzes the causes of the Great Recession of 2008 and calls for overcoming what he calls an "ersatz capitalism" that socializes losses but privatizes gains. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/18/nobel_economist_joseph_stiglitz_on_obamas

"A Bad Day for America": Anti-Nuclear Activist Harvey Wasserman Criticizes Obama Plan to Fund Nuclear Reactors * President Obama has pledged $8.3 billion in loan guarantees needed to build the first nuclear reactors in nearly three decades. The move, along with a tripling of nuclear loan guarantees in the President's budget, represents a new federal commitment to the nuclear power sector. We speak to independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, who helped found the grassroots movement against nuclear power in the United States in the 1970s. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/18/nukes

One Family's Decision

http://www.thepowerofhalf.com/

Climate Summit, This Time in Bolivia

http://allalongtheedge.blogspot.com/2009/12/evo-to-resue.html

UN Summit, Rich vs. Poor

Draft text divides climate summit
Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between rich and developing nations over the shape of a possible new deal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/science/nature/8402502.stm

Geithner, Bernanke, Financial Crisis

Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go

In an extended interview, we speak with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer about the financial crisis and how it was handled by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Bernanke and Geithner "actually built and participated in creating the structure that now has collapsed," Spitzer says and calls on them to be replaced.

Spitzer also talks about the scandal that erupted last year that forced him to resign as governor. "I have no doubt there were many people who were opposed to me, very powerful forces, who were happy to see me go," Spitzer says. "Whether they participated, I'll let others figure that out. I resigned because of what I did."

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/4/eliot_spitzer_geithner_bernanke_complicit_in

Hmmmmm. . . .

"In short, we are prepared to die in order to live a life that is killing us." ~ Keith Farnish

Make Your Own Cleaner

http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/11/21/how-to-make-homemade-all-purpose-cleaner/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cheeseslave+%28Cheeseslave%29

Sustainability Master Plan , Fayetteville

Sustainable Sandhills eBlast
October 14, 2009
www.sustainablesandhills.org · PO Box 144 · Fayetteville · NC 28302 · 910-484-9098

City of Fayetteville Sustainability Master Plan Adopted!

The City of Fayetteville’s Environmental Services Department, with help from their consultant Greenworks Partners and Sustainable Sandhills, engaged key citizens and stakeholders in creating a comprehensive and visionary Sustainability Master Plan to guide the City’s efforts over the coming years. The plan was adopted – UNANIMOUSLY – by the City Council on October 12, 2009!

The final and adopted Sustainability Master Plan can be downloaded from the city’s website. The Master Plan includes a set of seven Guiding Principles:

1. Promote national energy independence, reduce carbon emissions and contribute to a healthier environment.
2. Increase competitiveness and produce economic benefits.
3. Promote regional cooperation.
4. Preserve neighborhoods and maintain housing affordability.
5. Develop healthier communities and social equity.
6. Lead by example.
7. Utilize performance metrics and ensure accountability.

The Master Plan is organized into 4 sections, each with its own specific goals and a list of current efforts and future proposed efforts.

1. Environment and Natural Resources Air, climate, energy, water, solid waste
2. Planning Green buildings, land use & open space
3. Community Health, economic development, social equity, education
4. City Agencies (internal operations) City and Public Works Commission facilities & operations

The Master Plan will further the Greater Fayetteville Futures II vision of the Greater Fayetteville community becoming one of the top 10 places to live in the Southeast.

Congratulations to City staff (especially the City’s Environmental Services Department), Liz Burdock from Greenworks Partners, the residents and stakeholders whose input created the Master Plan, and to the City Council for adopting this plan.

Indigenous Foods Under Attack

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-globalization-threatens-indigenous-foods-says-u.n.-agency/

Not-so-wonderful Disney, Inc.

You've probably heard this old saying: "He who controls the past controls the future."
What about those who control the imaginations of children?
Why we have we given the power of shaping our children's fantasies over to a shady multinational corporation with suspect origins? The not-so-wonderful world of Disney...
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/686.html

Water Crisis in Asia

Water crisis to hit Asian food
cientists say Asia's failure to upgrade irrigation and water security will hit food supplies and stability.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8206466.stm

Family Prisons

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/281.html

Solution? -- Create Jobs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/opinion/10herbert.html?_r=2

Feb. 9, Raleigh

http://www.hkonj.com/

On Immigration, Go Deeper

Immigration Flood Unleashed by NAFTA
By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 27 April 2006

The recent ferment on immigration policy has been so narrow that it has excluded the real issue: family-sustaining wages for workers both north and south of the border. The role of the North American Free Trade Agreement and misnamed "free trade" has been scarcely mentioned in the increasingly bitter debate over the fate of America's 11 to 12 million "illegal aliens."

NAFTA was sold to the American public as the magic formula that would improve the American economy at the same time as it would raise up the impoverished Mexican economy. The time has come to look at the failures of this type of trade agreement before we engage in more, and further lower the economic prospects of all workers affected.

While there has been some media coverage of NAFTA's ruinous impact on US industrial communities, there has been even less media attention paid to its catastrophic effects in Mexico:

NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven Mexican farmers off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%. No wonder so many Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their "death warrant.")

NAFTA's service-sector rules allowed big firms like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market and, selling low-priced goods made by ultra-cheap labor in China, to displace locally-based shoe, toy, and candy firms. An estimated 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses have been eliminated.

Wages along the Mexican border have actually been driven down by about 25% since NAFTA, reported a Carnegie Endowment study. An over-supply of workers, combined with the government-sponsored crushing of union organization, has resulted in sweatshop pay along the border where wages now typically run 60 cents to $1 an hour.
So rather than improving living standards, Mexican wages have actually fallen since NAFTA. The initial growth in the number of jobs has leveled off, with China's even more repressive labor system luring US firms to locate there instead.

But Mexicans must still contend with the results of the American-owned "maquiladora" sweatshops: subsistence-level wages, pollution, congestion, horrible living conditions (cardboard shacks and open sewers), and a lack of resources (for streetlights and police) to deal with a wave of violence against vulnerable young women working in the factories. The survival (or less)-level wages coupled with harsh working conditions have not been the great answer to Mexican poverty, while they have temporarily been the answer to Corporate America's demand for low wages.

With US firms unwilling to pay even minimal taxes, NAFTA has hardly produced the promised uplift in the lives of Mexicans. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo, whose city is crammed with US-owned low-wage plants, expressed it plainly: "We have no way to provide water, sewage, and sanitation workers. Every year, we get poorer and poorer even though we create more and more wealth."

Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras - are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US.

NAFTA failed to curb illegal immigration precisely because it was never designed as a genuine development program crafted to promote rising living standards, health care, environmental cleanup, and worker rights in Mexico. The wholesale surge of Mexicans across the border dramatically illustrates that NAFTA was no attempt at a broad uplift of living conditions and democracy in Mexico, but a formula for
government-sanctioned corporate plunder benefiting elites on both sides of the border.

NAFTA essentially annexed Mexico as a low-wage industrial suburb of the US and opened Mexican markets to heavily-subsidized US agribusiness products, blowing away local producers. Capital could flow freely across the border freely to low-wage factories and Wal-mart-type retailers, but the same standard of free access would be denied to Mexican workers.

Meanwhile, with the planned Central American Free Trade Agreement with five Central American nations coming up, we can anticipate even greater pressure on our borders as agricultural workers are pushed off the land without positive, alternative employment opportunities. People from Guatemala and Honduras will soon learn that they can't compete for industrial jobs with the most oppressed people in say, China, by agreeing to lowering their wages even more. Further, impoverished Central American countries don't have the resources to deal with the pollution and crime that results from moving people from rural areas to the city, often without their families.

Thus far, we have been presented with a narrow range of options to cope with the tide of illegal immigrants living fearfully in the shadows of American life. Should they simply be walled off and criminalized, as Sensenbrenner and House Republicans suggest? The Sensenbrenner option seeks to exploit the sentiment that illegal immigrants entering the US rather than US corporation exiting the US for Mexico and China are the primary cause of falling wages for most Americans.

The Bush version is only slightly different, envisioning the illegal immigrants as part of a vast disposable pool of cheap labor with no meaningful rights on the job or even the right to vote, to be returned to Mexico upon the whim of their employers.

Yet there is another well-known path of economic and social integration that has been ignored in the debates over immigration in the US: the one followed by the European Union and their social charter calling for decent wages, health care, and extensive retraining in all nations. Before then-impoverished nations like Spain, Greece and Portugal were admitted, they received massive EU investments in roads, health care, clean water, and education. The implementation of democracy, including worker rights, was an equally vital pre-condition for entry into the EU.

The underlying concept: the entire reason for trade is to provide improved lives across borders, not to exploit the cheapest labor and weakest environmental rules. We need to question the widely-held assumption that what benefits American corporations benefits Mexican workers and American workers. An authentic plan for growth and development isn't about further enriching Wall Street, major corporations, and a handful of Mexican billionaires; it is about the creation of family-supporting jobs. It is also about a healthy environment, healthy workers, good education, and ordinary people being able to achieve their dreams.

The massive tide of illegal immigration from Mexico is merely one symptom of an economic arrangement where human needs, not maximum profits - are not the ultimate goal but a subject of neglect. Neither a massive, shameful barrier at the border nor a disposable guest-worker program will address the problems ignited by NAFTA.

Programs providing stable, decent employment, modern transportation, clean water, and environmental cleanup are needed to take the place of the immense NAFTA failure and allow Mexicans to live decent, hopeful lives in their native land. But such an effort is imaginable only if the aim is truly mutual uplift for all citizens in both nations, instead of the NAFTA-fueled race to the bottom.

Global Movement Popping

Paul Hawken A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050107EC.shtml

Paul Hawken writes: "I have given nearly one thousand talks about the environment in the past fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards.
The people offering their cards were working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights and more. They looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught children about the environment.
Quite simply, they were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice."

What Is Global Security?

[Terrorism is inside the box. We must make profound adjustments TO the box.]

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/beyond_terrorism_4532.jsp

Class Action, Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart bias case to go to trial
A US court rules female staff claiming discrimination by retail giant Wal-Mart can go ahead with a class action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/business/6336753.stm