Global

This is about a clean, environmentally benign, cost effective way to capture energy which is otherwise lost.

Cisterns are normally considered to be rainwater storage devices either underground, or at ground level. Also, cisterns are not involved with the production of electricity.

The 12 continental U.S. places with the most annual rainfall are all on the west coast. Their average figures range from 105.6” at Grays River Hatchery, Washington state, to 130.6” at Aberdeen Reservoir, also in Washington.

What if a rather large cistern were placed at the top of a 200’ tower, just offshore in Washington state, where the rainfall was 108” (9 feet) per year? What if this device collected rainfall, and periodically allowed the accumulated water to escape by way of turbines just above the water’s surface? The turbines would be connected to the nearest power transmission lines

How much electricity could such a cistern/turbine combination generate in one year? Let’s talk about one acre in size, nine feet in depth. One acre is 43,560 square feet. This is not much larger than the average putting green at a golf course.

When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980's), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless.

In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight. The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public. Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker.

I was asked to speak about prosecuting weapons dealers and war makers with a focus on Saudi Arabia. There are, I think, many ways that one could go about that. I say this as a non-lawyer, with certain perverse preferences that lawyers generally don’t share.

Both houses of Congress have now passed big new sanctions bills by veto-proof majorities, in fact with near unanimity. The vote this week in the House of Misrepresentatives was 419–3 on a bill to sanction Russia, Iran, and North Korea as punishment for primarily imaginary crimes, despite the sum total of the global legal bodies having asked the United States to judge these crimes, skip over a trial, and move right ahead with punishment being exactly equal to the number of principled opponents of war employed on Capitol Hill.

The most recent vote in the Senate on a version of the bill that did not yet include North Korea was 97-2. The Senate will now take up the new bill for another vote.

Two of the last four commercial nuclear power plants under construction in the United States—both of them at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina—have been cancelled. A decision on the remaining two, which are in Georgia, will be made in August.

“DING DONG, Summer is dead,” says Glenn Carroll, one of a core group of safe energy activists who have labored for decades to rid the southeast of these last four reactor projects.

No longer will we have to explain to our less superhero-obsessed friends why Spider-Man doesn’t do things with the Avengers in the movies even though he’s a Marvel character. After his appearance in Captain America: Civil War, we finally have the first collaboration between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios in an attempt to help Sony make a Spider-Man movie that’s not awful. And – surprise surprise! – Spider-Man: Homecoming is actually pretty good.

Homecoming benefits quite a lot from being part of the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man works best in a setting filled with other superheroes. There have been entire comic series based on him teaming up with other characters because friendly, chatty Peter Parker plays off them so well. So while Iron Man stops short of stealing the show, his constant involvement in the background gives everything else a context that the previous Spider-Man movies have lacked.

Something extraordinary has happened in Washington. President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to destroy an arms control agreement and pave the way for war been so openly telegraphed.

Existence is Resistance: The Palestine Museum of Natural History with Dr.
Mazin Qumsiyeh  https://youtu.be/IZFSTAZ4_jw

Palestinian Ecoactivism with Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh https://youtu.be/PHRFPbyiioE

THREE ACTIONS

Jewish voice for peace ACTION: Five nonviolent activists were forbidden
from boarding a plane from Washington to Israel - and neither the airline
(Lufthansa) or the Israeli government will explain why or show us
documentation. We are activists for equality, justice, and dignity for all
people of Israel/Palestine. Join us in asking Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer
to explain why we can’t go there.

If war were moral, legal, defensive, beneficial to the spread of freedom, and inexpensive, we would be obliged to make abolishing it our top priority solely because of the destruction that war and preparations for war do as the leading polluters of our natural environment.

Angst, fear and loathing are the overwhelming emotions six months into the disastrous Trump presidency. Just exactly who, or what, do we have at the helm of the United States Ship of State, and the little red button that could end life as we know it?            

This month’s Free Press cover depicts a Trump regime floundering in rough sea waters, with the Don confident, but clueless.

The planet and its leaders are watching in horror as the ship appears to be capsizing. Trump and his fools enrich themselves, all the while gleefully decimating domestic social programs, dooming the environment and destroying our nation’s relationships around the world.

Charles Wince, the artist, is asking: just who is steering this ship of fools?

A buffoon? A bully? An oft-bankrupt billionaire businessman? A Benito Mussolini in the making?

Simply put, what we have is an international criminal hell-bent on continuing his crime spree within and without his corrupt administration. Making the world safe for oligarchy.