Citizens Awareness Network (CAN) and the Buddhist order of Nipponzan Myohoji will coordinate a walk throughout Vermont to support safe sustainable energy and abolish nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Potluck dinners will be followed by discussions of the dangers of Vermont Yankee.
The Vermont State Legislature MUST VOTE NO for the 20-year license extension of the thirty-five year old brittle and corroded Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor in Vernon, Vermont.

(continue) WALKING FOR A NEW SPRING:

Reverend Gyoway Kato of Leverett Peace Pagoda will lead this walk as part of the Mayors
for Peace Project’s month-long walk against nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

It will begin in Putney, Vermont, proceed down Rte. 5 to a vigil at ENTERGY headquarters
on Old Ferry Road in North Brattleboro, and then continue through downtown Brattleboro.

FOR INFO: CAN@nukebusters.org or Deb Katz at 413-339-5781. Both walks will have support vehicles for anyone needing assistance.  Both walks are alcohol free and drug free.

March 24 to April 1, 2007

SCHEDULE:
MARCH 24, Greenfield, MA
MARCH 25, Brattleboro
MARCH 26, Bennington
MARCH 27, Rutland
MARCH 28, Middlebury- public fast 10 a.m.-4 p.m. observing the anniversary of the Three- Mile- Island accident in 1979
MARCH 29, Montpelier – public fasting on state house lawn to oppose 20 year relicensing of Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor
MARCH 30, Johnson State College
MARCH 31, Burlington /University of Vermont
APRIL 1, Burlington – closing ceremony on waterfront.  All are welcome to join!
For further contact: Vermont Yankee Decommissioning
Alliance (VYDA) at 802-476-3154 or
Deb@nukebusters.org or Deb Katz at 413-339-5781.

The old adage is true: busy people get things done. Your help is needed to encourage people to walk, to host a potluck afterwards as well as  finding beds for the out-of towners for the towns listed.  Link up with Hattie Nestal of CAN at hattieshalom@verizon.net and please send the message to your networks.  We’re looking for more college involvement (from those not listed,) including walkers and speaking engagements.  We should also invite all our legislators to attend the potluck(s) and update us on Act 160.  Thanks,  Barbara

Google has become THE search engine.  We need to de-centralize the search engine function which essential to finding appropriate resources on the net.

Money concentrates wealth and power in the hands of the few.  Google is a prime example of how this works.  The more money they make, the more they can spend on development of their search engine(s) and the more faith people have in them BECAUSE they have the money and the power.

Monopolies are the natural result of a money-oriented system.  Some people refer to this as a capitalistic system, but it’s really more about the way money works.  It’s all about quantity without any necessity for quality.
The counterargument is that people will only give their money to a company which provides a quality product or service.  But this isn’t true with Google, because Google doesn’t charge the consumer of their services.

Google is doing evil, despite their company motto “Don’t do evil” because money itself is inherently evil.  It prioritizes money over morality, quantity over quality, and profit over principle.

The principle of a search engine should be to provide users with the BEST resources for their search request.  But profit overrules this in a number of ways.  You can get top placement on the page by paying money to Google.  Why are you the first line on the page?  Quantity.  You have the money to pay for that placement.  Quality is sacrificed for profit.

It’s evil, plain and simple.  It’s why we need to de-centralize the search functions we use on the net.  How can this be done?  Well, traditionally government plays a role in breaking up monopolies and preventing concentration of power in the hands of the few.  But government hasn’t done anything to stop this phenomenon on the Internet.

Government could do a great deal by simply creating a technical data standard for sharing search engine information.  This could be a voluntary standard which programmers like myself would happily comply with if we knew that the result would be distribution of quality data with attribution ( where it came from ). 

The attribution funciton of a government standard requires another standard … a standard internet identity.  Currently you can buy a domain name ( like yahoo.com or google.com ) for about ten dollars per year.  It’s a form of identity, but not a good one.  There are ways to disguise your identity and hide your true identity from users of your domain services.

The government could provide an alternative service for registering your name, whether a personal identity or a business identity, with a government agency.  The government could maintain the database of “who’s who on the Internet” and regulate it so that the public would have confidence that they were dealing with people and businesses who have established a quality identity. ( accurate, reliable and constant )

The third standard needed is one for rating any piece of information.  This would include rating individuals, companies, and even a specific web site or search engine record.  Everything needs to be ratable and the ratings need to be shared in the open, without any copyright protection for the ratings, so that everyone can collect, process and re-distribute rating data without concern of legal liability.

That’s how we can turn the Internet in a new direction, a direction in service of building a better world rather than simply focused on profit and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few.

Steve Moyer
http://stevemoyer.us

Rest assured, Shay’s email box and voice mail is blowing up with angry calls from Andrew Savage (who I don’t know well at all but I like what little I know).

And, this is just the start.

Where is the “new direction” where is the “holding the President accountable”?

http://www.vermontgu…

Where is the ’08 independent/Progressive candidate?