Global

The California Energy Commission has made it clear that their reason for advocating keeping the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station open an extra five years (or perhaps 20 extra years) has to do with rare, short-lived, peak load periods that can last from mere moments to perhaps a few hours and, very rarely, for a day or so.

The best solutions for these temporary fluctuations in power requirements are those solutions which can ramp up and down quickly. Nuclear power is not one of them.

"Baseload power refers to the minimum amount of electric power needed to be supplied to the electrical grid at any given time...Baseload power must be supplied by constant and reliable sources of electricity."
-- Source: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Baseload_power

As I write this (late January, 2023), more than half of Pakistan is without electricity -- approximately 220 million people. It's the third time in as many years that a widespread blackout has hit that country.

I had a passing moment of wonder the other day – as I read about the latest . . . you know, mass shootings.

Troubled souls with guns. Big problem.

My thought was simply this: What if . . .? And then I lapsed into uncertainty. What if    . . . violence were not the simplistic and obvious – and only – solution to so many problems? Violence presents itself, in our imaginations (and in our games, in our movies, in our defense budget), as consequence-free, instantaneous and, for God’s sake, necessary. It’s the essence – it’s the definition – of empowerment.

And then the headlines scream about crazy guys grabbing hold of that empowerment to escape their personal cages, their crises on the moment: Yeah, it’s the fault of . . . whoever, and then another dozen people are dead.

Yesterday (1/19/23) I was reading the New York Times (arguably America’s most prestigious newspaper) and couldn’t find a single article about Peru while able to find several many about Ukraine. It surprised me because it was widely announced that there was going to be a march in Peru starting from different points in the interior of the country joined by a general strike to be called by the La Central General de Trabajadores del Peru (a conglomerate of different labor unions as it is our AFL-CIO). 

The march was going to conclude in Lima, the nation’s capital. The Peruvian government set up roadblocks in many of the different roads leading to the city trying to prevent entry to the city to no avail. The Miami Herald reported on it in today’s (1/20/23) Page 8. Gee, I get the feeling that some people don’t want us to know about the trials and tribulations that white supremacists, and its elitists cohort are going through.

“The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and it has chosen to not mention the dangers of psychiatrically prescribed drugs.” -- Peter R. Breggin, MD (www.breggin.org)

The Global Firepower ranking was published on January 6. The annual report classifies the world’s strongest militaries based on over 60 factors, including size, spending and technological advancements. 

 The report, which placed the United States military on top, followed by Russia, China, India and the UK, raised more questions than answers, with some accusing GFP, the organization that compiled the report, of being biased, sloppy and highly politicized. 

There are a lot of reasons for a progressive caring person not to be focused on the growing threat of fascism in the United States. After getting past all the pressing needs of one’s personal life (in a society of long hours, financial insecurity, poor healthcare, energetic kids drugged, a record number of adults imprisoned, the most finely tuned propaganda system ever devised, not to mention intimidation and fear), the main stumbling block is that everything is turned into a partisan question. If you’re focused on the growing violence and hatred and lawlessness of Republicans, then you’re cheerleading for the Democrats.

In a self-congratulatory article published in the Atlantic in 2017, Yossi Klein Halevi describes Israeli behavior at the just-conquered holy Muslim shrines in Occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 as “an astonishing moment of religious restraint”. 

“Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.”

The words — actually a 2019 Facebook post — are those of then-Iowa Republican congressman Steve King, loosing a puerile smirk as he stirred the pot of violence on the American political right. The politics of stupid has intensified since then, as white supremacy and fear of the Great Replacement Theory take over the GOP.

The nuclear industry has been selling the world a story that nuclear power is a solution to climate change because it does not generate carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas. How this deceptive marketing has become understood as “fact” is astonishing in a free society. Operation of reactors takes plenty of energy even after they are built. The “front end” and “back end” of nuclear power are giant industries that generate almost as much CO2 as natural gas and leave a trail of endlessly dangerous radioactivity all along the way.