It was a difficult choice. Should I categorize this under 'News and Politics' or 'Health and Wellness' ...or add a totally new category - What?

 

Bill Gates' Cascade Investment - Company Profile on LinkedIn shows a new hire. While this is not so unusual, what baffles me completely is his penchant to build up his personal portfolio with dirty burning, CO2 spewing, mercury poisoning, acid raining contaminating coal. What? Yes.

 

Cascade not only wanted and got bigger stakes in Otter Tail Power, up to 20% from 9%, FERC Order Issued Oct 2- Cascade is also a holding company through its indirect ownership interests in Optim Energy, LLC, which includes the 305 MW lignite-fired power plant Twin Oaks 160 miles northwest of Houston., and more. You can check out Bill Gates' mini-coal-empire building at PNM Resources Inc.

 

Does Bill have a thing for coal? It would seem so, which is strange considering he claims to care about the health and well being of humanity. In his own words, which I would hear on a radio commercial as I would drive past the Big Stone I Power Plant in South Dakota on my way home to Minnesota '...all lives have equal value—...every person deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life" -- yeah right Bill. What about those of us who live next to the coal plants you support and continue to build? Isn't there a saying, "To those who have been given much, much is expected?"

The distance between Cuba and the United States extends far beyond the Florida Straits, at least ideologically. ‘Govies’ (government officials) on both sides want their citizens to believe that 'the other' is 'the enemy.' 'The Cuba-U.S. policy arena, dominated by men, has failed to resolve ideological differences, while Cuban women and children continue to suffer excessively under the more than half-century U.S. called 'embargo' - Cubans call blockade as voted on repeatedly in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Now that Castro has stepped down, will we see change on either side of the Florida Straits? Vaclav Havel would like to believe we could see "The Art of the Impossible." All I know is that from my first trip to Cuba in 1999 with Medaid, to the 60 days I traveled across the island the summer of 2002 with Student Project for Amity Among Nations (SPAN) what I especially recall is the camaraderie. Running a close second would be the flourishing arts and music...making you want to dance, yes! Cuban Art such as Gallery 106 and Casa Cubana, Priceless Houses by Pablo H - Proyecto Horizontal –  see “El Castigo de la vida II” (the punishment of life) (below) just waiting for outside discovery. Now if only the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets and Control would not make it so, so difficult to travel there...

 

photos by maryjo-s

Many breathed a sigh of relief this past week as Fidel stepped down from what they saw as his dictatorial perch. Others furrowed their brows and wondered what would come next. In Miami, Cuban native Maria Elena Alvarez said, "So What?" It appears that ‘change’ is in the air (or at least on people’s minds) on both sides of the Florida Straits. If only it were so when it comes to producing energy. Coal, another relic of a bygone era, has overstayed its welcome, much like Fidel, so some would say.