Green Party of Tennessee

Anyone who read the article in today’s Tennessean, “Hearing provides outlet for coal ash spill victims”, should, in good conscience, speak out for the people of Roane County. Another trampling on justice with devastating effects on the lives of people – do we sit back and say what does it have to do with me? Or do we do the right thing, ”Love they neighbor” and help thy neighbor? This toxic spill probably not only affected those in its direct path, but far beyond.

(CNN) -- New York cab driver Ahmed Sharif cannot bring himself to talk about the young man who allegedly cut his throat and nearly killed him last week, a taxi union representative said Sunday.

"Ahmed is a strong man, but mentally he has limits," said Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. "The trauma he's experienced will last for a long time."

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

Sandy Kurtz reminds us "July 2010 was the 305th consecutive month with a global temperature above the
20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985."
And she let us know that Tennessee Interfath Power & Light has a new web site.
http://tn-ipl.org/

Tennessee Interfaith Power & Light seeks to mobilize a religious response to climate change and the spiritual, moral, and environmental crises among people of all faiths and spiritual paths through the promotion of renewable energy, energy efficiency, a conservation and sustainability.

TnIPL is part of a growing national movement and our staff and volunteers support congregations and other partner organizations through leadership development, by developing and providing written and electronic resources, and building a network of concerned, committed people throughout Tennessee.

As a part of the Interfaith Power and Light national network TnIPL works to help congregations be models of energy efficiency, utilize renewable energy, and to lead by showing a strong example of stewardship of creation. At the same time, we know that we cannot stem the tide of global warming by our actions alone, and therefore we actively support public policies to reduce society-wide U.S. emissions to a sustainable level.

Huffington Post has a story on hormones in milk causing problems.

People are very upset about this, and for good reason. Female infants in China who have been fed formula have been growing breasts.

According to the official Chinese Daily newspaper, medical tests performed on the babies found levels of estrogens circulating in their bloodstreams that are as high as those found in most adult women. These babies are between four and 15 months old. And the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula they have been fed is responsible.

Synutra, the company that makes the baby formula consumed by these babies, says it's not their fault. They insist that "no man-made hormones or any illegal substances were added during the production of the milk powder."

Then what is the source of the hormones? A Chinese dairy association says the hormones could have entered the food chain when farmers reared the cows. "Since a regulation forbidding the use of hormones to cultivate livestock has yet to be drawn up in China," says Wang Dingmian, the former chairman of the dairy association in the southern province of Guangdo, "it would be lying to say nobody uses it." Bovine growth hormones are used in China, as they are in the U.S., to promote greater milk production.

More Here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/female-infants-growing-br_b_6...

August 10, 2010
By Matt Hartley
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3897686_1/Deskto...
Is using desktop Linux better for the environment than say, running Microsoft Windows or Apple's OS X?

In this piece, I’ll explore the ideas behind Linux as the operating system for the eco-friendly masses, and how desktop Linux could potentially affect the hardware/software sectors of the economy.

Note: Brother Martin's blog is listed in our green bloggers section.
The show will air at 7PM central time tomorrow (sunday) night on WRFN-LP,
107.1 or streaming internet here

PRIMARY RESULTS: TWEEDLEDEE AND TWEEDLEDUM AGREE TO HAVE A
BATTLE!

To nobody’s surprise, Bill Haslam won the Republican nomination for Governor
of Tennessee on Thursday, and everybody will be surprised if he doesn’t

A Sin and a Shame
By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 30, 2010 NY Times

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.