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Airboats Being Sent to Assist in Thailand Flood Recovery

The Orange Leader - November 5, 2011

      

Several airboats are prepped and ready to be air-transported to Thailand to help in that country’s flood recovery efforts. Ten airboats, all made in Orange by American Airboats, are being shipped out and more could be ready to go soon.  Tommy Mann Jr.

ORANGE — A local business is flexing its international muscle once again.

American Airboats Inc. of Orange was a beehive of activity on Thursday as crews prepared 10 airboats for shipment to Thailand to assist in that country’s rescue efforts due to recent flooding.

Tractor trailers lined the road’s edge and parking lot waiting to be loaded Thursday afternoon as work crews partially dis-assembled the boat carriages to better accommodate air transport.

Faron Floyd, vice-president of American Airboats, recently met with top Thailand officials and demonstrated the Air Ranger, the signature airboat of American Airboat Corporation. Upon seeing how maneuverable and beneficial these watercraft could be, government officials quickly placed an order.

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The Waterpod

          

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California creates new corporation types that reward doing good

By: Kyle Westaway

Even as Wall Street is being occupied and corporations are reviled, there is a revolution quietly raging across the country that empowers corporations to be a strong force for good. This week, California joined that revolution when Governor Jerry Brown created two new classes of corporations for businesses that seek to pursue both profit and purpose: Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations.

These new legal structures are revolutionary in two ways. First, they broaden the duty of a company beyond maximizing shareholder value to include maximizing stakeholder value, such as operating the business in an environmental and social responsible manner. Second, they increase transparency and accountability.

Though it is the first state to pass the Flexible Purpose Corporation type, California is the sixth state to approve the Benefit Corporation classification.

Here is a look at exactly what Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations are, and what they could mean for your company.

What is a Benefit Corporation?

The Benefit Corporation is a new class of corporation that allows companies to pursue profit as well as a strong social and environmental mission.

Obama To Announce Drug Shortage Resolution

submitted by Luis Kun

Drug Information Association (DIA) - October 31, 2011

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THRIVE: COMMUNITY TOOL FOR HEALTH & RESILIENCE IN VULNERABLE ENVIRONMENTS

submitted by Jeffrey Stiefel

THRIVE: A Community Approach to Address Health Disparities

Prevention Institute has updated its Community Approach to Addressing Disparities in Health with the revision of THRIVE: Toolkit for Health and Resilience in Vulnerable Environments.  A centerpiece of THRIVE is a set of community level factors that are linked to Healthy People 2010 Leading Health Indicators.  It now features a simplified list of thirteen factors to facilitate use of the tool at the local level.

THRIVE Executive Summary (PDF)

THRIVE Expert Panel

Advancing a Community Resilience Approach to Improve Health Outcomes

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Does Adaptive Management of Natural Resources Enhance Resilience to Climate Change?

Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. In this paper, originally published in Ecology and Society, authors Emma Tompkins argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. The authors review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. They demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr. C. Everett Koop’s perspective on health care reform

Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General, facilitated health care reform in the United States during the 1990s. Dr. Koop recommends whatever is done in the health care reform process, that the legislative process be designed to succeed in protecting the health care rights of children and aging Americans, if broader reform is not politically or economically feasible. The health care reform process should also be designed to fail safely, if not successful, in order to not endanger other key services that are currently addressing the health needs of all Americans. For example, Dr. Koop recommends that a simple incremental extension of Medicare should be at the center of health care reform and that current free market health care system elements are not damaged in the process of engaging new forms of legislation and regulation.

Below are five of the most important health care reform considerations advanced by Dr. Koop on health care reform, considering the successes and failures of attempts at health care reform in the 1990s and previous rounds of health care reform in the United States and in other countries.

1) Public/Private Partnership

The Memes of Occupy Everywhere

 

Occupy George dollar bill

 

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are now engaged in the Occupy Everywhere movement in hundreds of cities around the globe.  Many are carrying signs.  Of all the fragments of culture being paraded as slogans, the central meme that has caught fire starting with Occupy Wall Street is the idea of extreme wealth disparities and the lack of opportunities for youth to live within the mainstream economy of their country and live a meaningful life.  

The central message is not about arrests or police violence, it is about resilience, sustainability, and economic well-being in a time of energy descent and economic decline.  It will be interesting to see what emerges as central themes as the Occupy Everywhere movement continues to grow and evolve. What memes will morph and which memes will remain stable.

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Guardian: Maps and Lists of Occupy Everywhere Sites

 

The below Guardian article provides a map and lists of where Occupy Everywhere protests are emerging.  They are primarily, but not exclusively in the U.S. and Europe, in countries where the economy is in significant decline and inequities are significant.  In most of these places, the youth fear that their future will be worse than their parents, due to the greed of a global elite insensitive to the destruction they have caused economically and environmentally.

 

The list includes 951 cities in 82 countries.

 

To see the story and full list, go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/oct/17/occupy-protests-world-list-map

 

 

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Guardian: Snapshots of the Occupy Everywhere Protesters Views

 

This Guardian photo slideshow depicts how the Occupy Everywhere movement is growing globally. The protesters talk about what is motivating them.  In generzl, they are talking about how their governments have failed to provide the fundamentals of resilience to their generation.  They intend to take these matters into their own hands. 

 

Occupy protests: Rita Maestre, Madrid

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/oct/23/protests-around-the-world-in-pictures

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