Does anyone really know what time it is?

Most Chicagoans, indeed, most Americans, have no idea what time it is. Though bombarded by clocks pulsating out numerals nearly everywhere they turn, they’re oblivious to the only clock that counts…the Doomsday Clock. Created right here at the University of Chicago by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947, it was intended to metaphorically alert mankind to our march toward Midnight, signaling nuclear annihilation. Originally set at 7 minutes to midnight, it retreated as far away as 17 minutes from Armageddon with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, after reaching just two minutes till in 1953 at the height of the Cold War.

In 2007 the Bulletin began considering climate change, which along with lack of nuclear disarmament kept edging the minute hand forward. When 88,000 voters in three swing states ushered a climate denier and nuclear agreement withdrawer into the White House, the Bulletin matched the 1953 setting of two minutes in 1953. Just this month the Bulletin moved the clock forward again, 20 seconds, just 100 more ticks to Adios Mother Earth. Why?  That man in the White House withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, feverishly promoting fossil fuel development, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, marching the US up to the brink of war with Iran. The Doomsday Clock appears to be telling us all that it’s time for him to go.

Save the Trib

I’ve been reading the Chicago Tribune since 1951 when I learned to read. Started slowly, migrating from ‘See Spot run’ to comics, then sports before venturing into the serious issues of Korea and McCarthy. In my news obsessed household I also perused the Sun Times, Daily News and Herald American; the latter two now long gone to Newsprint Heaven. Tho I’ve issues with Trib editorial policy, I still subscribe to it as well as the Sun Times. While the Trib once billed itself as ‘The World’s Greatest Newspaper’, the Sun Times still self describes as ‘The Hardest Working Paper in America’. Hyperbole for sure but both still deserving of my newspaper loving support.

That’s why I’m saddened to learn of the Trib’s takeover by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund famous for buying great newspapers and them gutting them. Check out their evisceration of the Denver Post as Exhibit A. Alden’s 75% staffing reductions at papers they’ve acquired are three times the rate of job cuts at non Alden papers, including the Trib till Alden gobbled it up for a trip to the chopping block like a Thanksgiving turkey. A couple of gutsy Trib reporters with sixty, yes sixty years of experience, recently penned a NY Times op ed on the crisis at the Tribune and appeared on ‘Chicago Tonight’ public television to lay out the troubling saga Trib staffers face from vulture capitalist Alden, which was asked but declined to participate.

Back in the run up to Pearl Harbor, American interventionists slammed isolationist Trib publisher Robert McCormick for his ferocious opposition to any help for the Nazi beleaguered Brits. Their rallying cry was “Millions for defense…but not two cents for the Tribune”. If Alden directors were riffing on that slogan today it would be “Millions for the Vulture Capitalists…but not two cents for the Public Good”.

A year later US still pushing Venezuelan regime change

Last January, US Vice President Pence called Juan Guaido, its designated Venezuelan pro capitalist to replace hated socialist Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro. Pence told him to declare himself president and the US would recognize him. He did and we did. Only problem was that Guaido, opposition leader to President Maduro, had little connection to and even less popular backing to replace Maduro who was duly elected. Guaido has been running around Venezuela and much of the US dominated world without an iota of success in becoming the US designated sock puppet governing Venezuela. He’s even trying to meet with President Trump at the Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum to shore up US support. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo isn’t giving up either. He says that “Everyone can fully expect the US is not done as more efforts to support President Guaido will be coming from the Trump administration.”

We shouldn’t be too surprised that a year into failed regime change in Venezuela the US has not given up. After all, we’ve just entered our seventh decade conducting an illegal and immoral economic and political boycott of Cuba to change out their communist regime. Uncle Sam…one stubborn regime changer.

Rev. King sadly disparaged for his opposition to Vietnam War

On Rev. Martin Luther King Day I always reflect on the last year of his life he kicked off with his "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence" at New York's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967, ahead of a massive anti war rally eleven days later. A college senior at the time, I had dabbled a bit in both civil rights and antiwar advocacy and was thrilled King was linking them together. I even made the April 15th rally my one antiwar foray out of Chicago.

Though he long opposed the war privately as a cruel and senseless waste of resources needed to uplift US society, King was reluctant to go public at a time mainstream US political culture still largely supported it. But as King said so well: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Alas, King's trepidation was realized as political leaders including President Johnson, major media outlets like the Washington Post and Life Magazine, union officials and even previously sympathetic whites distanced themselves from KIng's righteous attack against America's self destructive war against the imaginary communist bogyman.

A year to the day later King was gunned down; his anti Vietnam War opposition sadly relegated to a footnote in his magnificent life journey. But it should not be as America still fails to heed his warning that the perpetual wars of this century are continuing our inexorable road to spiritual death.