Happy 75th Anniversary 'Doomsday Clock'

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the Doomsday Clock would remain at 100 seconds to Doomsday

It reflects the scientists’ view that the world is no safer than it was this time last year and the year before that. It is the closest to it has ever been to Midnight (Doomsday) since first created at the University of Chicago in 1947 by the Chicago Atomic Scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project.

The Clock serves as a metaphor for global apocalypse and considers the probability of emerging threats like climate change and advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology as well as nuclear war.

Announcing the new Clock position, CEO Dr. Rachel Bronson said experts look at two questions in judging the position for the clock: “Is humanity safer or at greater risk this year than compared last year? Is humanity safer or at greater risk this year compared to the 75 years we’ve been asking the question?”

Dr. Bronson said the countdown “represents the judgement of leading science and security experts of the threat to human existence, with a focus on manmade threats, nuclear risks, climate change, and new disruptive technologies.”

On second thought this is a truly sad anniversary as for 3 years peoplekind has made no measurable progress in pushing back our race to extinction.

America alone has left 3 nuclear treaties in the past 5 years and warns of possible war with both Russia, China and Iran from renewed Cold War posturing. Little if any progress has been made to combat global warming which represents the other major threat to Mother Earth.

For more on the the Doomsday Clock and the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists Zoom in to the February 15 Educational Forum of the West Suburban Peace Coalition. Rob Elder of The Bulletin will present: 'The Doomsday Clock: 75 Years and Still Ticking'. Email Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com for the Zoom link.

Trib editorial on ‘Kremlin’s menace’ deletes any mention of West’s menace

 The Trib’s January 18 editorial ‘The Kremlin’s menace grows’,  focused laser like on Russia’s ongoing menace to Ukraine, and by extension Western Europe, contains this astonishing statement:  “In the years that followed the popular uprisings in Tbilisi and Kyiv (Georgia and Ukraine), NATO was far more preoccupied with the all-consuming battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than it was with Kremlin chicanery.” 

What’s missing is that those “all-consuming battlefields” were immoral, senseless wars that left hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and two failed states in their wake.  Afghanistan is on the brink of economic collapse while NATO and the U.S. exacerbate their collapse by withholding billions of Afghan treasure to punish Afghanistan’s new rulers for defeating, indeed humiliating the Western invaders. Western vengence is getting Afghans killed every day.  Compared to the West, Putin is an amateur at 'menace'. 

It’s valid to discuss the current Ukraine crisis as one urgently requiring a peaceful resolution. But over hyping the Russian menace while totally whitewashing the West’s menace which will inflict death and destruction for years to come is reprehensible and not helpful to achieving peace in the region.     

Walt Zlotow

President, West Suburban Peace Coalition

Glen Ellyn IL 

Sanctions expert informs Peace Coalition on America’s destructive, deadly sanctions

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Investigative reporter Rick Sterling provided a devastating overview of America’s economic and political sanctions causing economic hardship, degraded health and often death around the world at yesterday’s West Suburban Peace Coalition’s Educational Forum. The topic: ‘We Don’t’ Deserve this: The Impact and Consequences of U.S. Sanctions’.

The extent of those sanctions is massive and widespread; 39 countries and 6,300 individuals. Fully a third of the world’s population suffer under U.S. sanctions. And most of them are illegal, violating international law. How so? Only the UN can impose sanctions, such as those the UN legally imposed upon North Korea. But the U.S. thumbs it nose at the UN and international law in its frenzy to make countries bend to its will without resorting to open warfare.

A recent case involving sanctions on Cuba, ongoing now for 62 years, is a case in point. Cuba, with its advanced medical industry, has developed 3 vaccines to combat covid. But the Dutch bank funding their distribution has backed away from their support for fear of retribution from Uncle Sam. U.S. sanctions have worsened sanctioned countries’ covid response in the same fashion. The U.S. even dropped out of World Health Organization, in part, to emphasize their refusal to lift sanctions.

Yet, the U.S. falsely claims their sanctions don’t apply to food and medicine. The UN and many humanitarian agencies have pleaded with the U.S. to end all sanctions during pandemic. The U.S. response is the cruelest deaf ear imaginable.

Untold thousands dead, millions on the move and at risk of starvation, wrecked economies all stemming from a form of war as lethal as a drone or plane dropped bombs. U.S. sanctions are Uncle Sam’s way of lulling his citizens into believing sanctions are a humane way of conducting foreign policy.

That must end. Sterling urged attendees to get more information on sanctions from www.sanctionskill.com. Then join the worldwide effort to persuade America to end its perpetual wars around the world fought without bombs.

A year later

 

725 minnows arrested for failed

Jan 6 coup

The Big Tuna still at large

No bridge over troubled gay waters for St. Procopius Abbey

Back in October, Abbot Austin Murphy of St. Procopius Abbey and chancellor of prestigious Benet Academy, expressed being “deeply troubled” by Benet’s decision to hire a women’s lacrosse coach. in a same sex relationship. His New Year’s resolution was to pull the plug on the Abbey’s relationship with and annual $50,000 support for Benet which it oversees. ‘Doesn’t comport with Catholic teaching on sexuality’, Murphy cited, in his New Year’s lump of coal to Benet’s 1,400 students.

While the vast majority of America and much of the world has entered the 21st century on enlightenment over homosexuality, the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey, and much of the Catholic hierarchy, apparently prefer to fade into irrelevancy rather than switch.

Benet Academy elders initially bowed to the will of the Abbey, which founded Benet 120 years ago providing secondary educational excellence in Chicago’s western suburbs. They withdraw their coaching offer to the gay candidate after her same sex relationship was revealed. But a firestorm of pushback by over 4,000 students, alums and parents, ‘educated’ school administrators on the lunacy of their action to placate their delusional Abbey overseers.

That annual $50,000 withdrawn by St. Procopius Abbey might well be replaced by donations from enlightened Catholics and others of good will. Abbott Austin Murphy and his Benedictine monks would be wise to use their new revenue source for extensive psychological counseling to peel back the centuries of fear, ignorance and yes, loathing of the gay lifestyle.

GOP now a zombie party

One of the saddest pictures in American history was snapped yesterday, the anniversary of then President Trump’s inspired and supported but failed coup at the Capitol.

House Democrats held a pro forma session to commemorate the January 6, 2021 insurrection, an infinitely more existential threat to American democracy than either December 7 or September 11.

The picture showed a lone Republican legislator, Rep. Liz Cheney, accompanied by her father Dick, sitting in the first row of an otherwise empty GOP House side. Liz Cheney represents one of only two active Republicans (Adam Kinzinger, the other), who hasn’t died, at least in their souls, over their party’s attempted coup to destroy American democracy.

But their service will be short lived. Both are being pushed out by the now zombie Republican Party, which allows only folks with dead souls to serve in Congress, even run for president. Kinzinger is already gone, banished from any chance for re-election from his Northern Illinois district by the zombies who now vet the candidates. Cheney fights on, serving on the House committee investigating the failed coup. That garners her a zombie led effort to defeat her this November in what should have been one of the safest GOP incumbent seats.

The remaining GOP legislators and their sycophantic followers are all dead to me and, I suspect, every decent American who values American democracy. A year on they’re all going thru the motions of being living, breathing human patriots. But their appearances are deceiving. They are all just zombies, relentlessly moving in lockstep to overturn the will of the truly living Americans who still believe their vote counts. Their goal is simple: The Zombie States of America.

Whether accident truck driver or Aubrey killers; no one deserve life sentence

Life sentences are in the news lately. It was a bad thing when the justice system imposed a 110 year sentence on Rogel Aquilera-Mederos for negligent driving that killed 4 in Colorado 2 years ago. A fluke in Colorado law involving multiple charges and minimum sentences that had to be served consecutively (one after the other) demanded Aguilera-Mederos receive a life sentence. It was a good thing when Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted the sentence to 10 years. Colorado legislators need to fix the peculiar sentencing guidelines that made the 110 year sentence mandatory over the objections of the sentencing judge.

Then yesterday, the McMichael father and son, Gregory and Travis, received life without parole for murdering Ahmaud Arbery while in the process of making a citizens’ arrest for the imaginary crime of a black man jogging thru a white neighborhood in Georgia. Their neighbor Roddie Bryan received life with the possibility of parole in 30 years when he is 82. Again, it was state law, not a considered judgement, which mandated the 3 life sentences. Georgia law allows 3 sentences for first degree murder; death, natural life, or life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Only the last sentence truly serves justice.

Unlike truck driver Aquilera-Mederos, the Georgia trio will not get 3,000,000 folks demanding a more appropriate sentence. I, however, will offer my plea that all 200,000 hapless souls languishing in prison for life, 50,000 of whom with no chance for parole (https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Life_imprisonment_in_the...), have their life sentences reduced to a number commencerite to the true aim of justice.

No citizen, even relatives of murder victims, should to expect the perpetrator to die in prison. That is not required in our criminal justice system designed simply to provide a measure of justice, punishment and deterrence while protecting society at large.

The 1958 release of ‘Thrill Killer’ Nathan Leopold for the grisly 1924 murder of his cousin illustrates this view. Leopold's exemplary conduct won him parole after serving 34 years, a third of his hundred year sentence. Only 52, he relocated to Puerto Rico where he became an X-Ray technician in a church hospital. He earned a master's degree, taught at the University of Puerto Rico, became a researcher in social services in Puerto Rico's health department, did research in leprosy, urban renewal and housing. He traveled extensively to research a book he published on Puerto Rican bird life. He married a widow in 1961 who was with him till his death at 66 in 1971.

Nathan Leopold's case argues not only for abolishing capital punishment, but for modifying our sentencing guidelines to offer a path for similar offenders to demonstrate both their rehabilitation and their readiness to rejoin society at some point. Nobody lost when Nathan Leopold was paroled after 34 years. No potential murderer thinks that 34 years imprisonment is a fair trade to kill someone.

As much as Nathan Leopold gained from his freedom instead of dying in prison, society achieved even more. Sixty-four years after Leopold’s early release, American justice still has its head buried in the sand of vengeance.

It happened at Glen Ellyn Dunkin Donuts

The lady who runs the shop is all businesslike, no smiles, no greetings. Gives my a bad vibe. But I stopped in at 6:30 this morn to order a Bavarian Cream before heading 2 doors down to get my Starbucks (Dunkin coffee doesn't float my boat). "One Bavarian Cream please" Without eyeing me she reached into the tray and handed me the bag. "You first customer this morning...you get 2." Just goes to show, you can't tell a shopkeeper by her demeanor.

Super Novaxx

Super tennis player on the courts

Super spreader of covid everywhere else

Peace Coalition to tackle U.S. sanctions worldwide at January 18 Educational Forum

The West Suburban Peace Coalition will present 'We Don't Deserve This: The Impact and Consequences of U.S. Sanctions' at its January 18 Educational Forum via Zoom.

Just about every week we hear of new sanctions imposed on nations' leaders who have incurred Uncle Sam's wrath. They universally fail to change leaders' behavior or even the regime itself. But they impose harmful, even deadly consequences on the innocent people trapped under America's sanctions.

Our guest speaker is Investigative journalist Rick Sterling, who has studied and written about this issue extensively.

The U.S. sanctions program will be held Tuesday, January 18, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM Chicago time via Zoom. Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com for the Zoom link.

Peace, if not now…when?