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Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work. Instead, Biden and the gang of introverts and neocon war criminals that the has surrounded himself with have done everything that can to inflict fatal damage on the economy through rash initiatives both overseas and at home. A spending spree to buy support from the bizarre constituencies that make up the Democrat Party base while also fighting an undeclared war in Europe have meant that nearly two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt under Biden’s rule, a debt that was already unsustainable at nearly $30 trillion, larger than the United States’ gross national product. Plans to cancel student loan debts will add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.

When’s the last time you had your mind blown? Was this something that only happened in the 1960s?

Well, I had my mind blown a few days ago, when I took part in a sort of reunion I could never have imagined. It wasn’t a “reunion” so much as a reopening of the counterculture — specifically, the revival of a publication from the late ’60s called the Western Activist, a renegade (you might say) student newspaper that emerged at my college, Western Michigan University, in 1966.

Who would have expected that the BRICS nations could rise as the potential rival of the G7 countries, the World Bank and the IMF combined? But that once seemingly distant possibility now has real prospects which could change the political equilibrium of world politics. 

Germany has shut its last three commercial atomic reactors.  

Thus Satrday, April 15, 2023, marks a day that will live in joy and promise.

The world’s fourth-largest economy has gone post-nuclear.

While the conjoined atomic power and weapons industry wastes uncounted millions pushing yet another doomed-to-fail “nuclear renaissance,” Europe’s biggest economy has steered itself toward a sustainable green-powered future. 

For more than a half-century, a powerful Solartopian movement has fought reactor construction in Germany.  

A key early uprising came in the rural community of Wyhl, where thousands of No Nukers physically occupied the site of a proposed radioactive waste dump.  Films of the action circulated worldwide, helping to inspire mass non-violent occupations at Seabrook, New Hampshire, Diablo Canyon in California, and dozens of other reactor sites around the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Germany’s Green movement achieved significant parliamentary clout.  In early 2011, it set a massive national demonstration to shut the nation’s 19 reactors.

Last week the UN’s Disarmament Commission’s 2023 session was roiled by deep concern about escalating nuclear rhetoric over the war in Ukraine. A bit of recent context is in order.  

On October 27, 2022, the Department of Defense published its ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ which adopts a “First Use” policy, meaning the US reserves the right to make a pre-emptive nuclear strike against its primary nuclear adversaries China and Russia.  In the case of Russia, it explicitly stated such policy is to deter a nuclear attack on NATO.  

That same day, Russian President Putin, speaking at the Valdai Conference, disclaimed any intention of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.  However, he has made it clear that if the “very existence” of Russia is threatened by either a nuclear strike or a conventional war he could exercise a nuclear option.  

By ordering a brutal attack against Palestinian worshipers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinians would retaliate.  

Once again . . . once again . . . once again . . .

I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. Yeah, another — the latest (?) — mass shooting in the United States, this one at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 10, two days ago as I write. Five killed, eight injured. The shooter, an employee of the bank, was killed in a shootout with police. Three officers were injured, including a rookie officer (ten days on the job), who was shot in the head and is struggling to survive. The gunman’s weapon was a nice, reliable AR-15-style rifle, legally purchased at a local gun shop a week earlier.

That’s the basic data.