Russia's nonexistent contemporary literature. Having not long ago finished Tolstoy's War and Peace, I was struck by this article on the state of current Russian lieterature. The author has hope, though.
Today, Putin’s promised renaissance notwithstanding, Russian writers are no longer deified at home, let alone abroad. Yet at least the right to publish in Russia holds good; in comparison with the centuries that came before, the past 23 years have been largely free of censorship. Even if Russia is now entering another cycle of oppression, writers will be there to document every turn of the screw — and the best among them will produce classics.New Cold War. Looking back on our nuclear past, especially in Europe, is a chilling exercise in "OMG, how close did we come?" In a recent Foreign Affairs article, John Mecklin writes about our decision to not only retain our nuclear armaments, but to modernize them. Both decisions have tremendous impact, politically and economically. The largely unheralded debate:
With the end of the Cold War and the reduced risk of a Russian invasion, NATO eliminated almost all its tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Today, five NATO countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey—are widely believed to host roughly 200 U.S.-owned nuclear bombs at their air bases. These weapons, variants of the B61 warhead, a stalwart of the American thermonuclear arsenal since the late 1960s, are viewed by some security experts as provocative anachronisms. The critics argue that strategic missiles and bombers posted in the United States and the United Kingdom, along with missiles on nuclear submarines, provide more than enough deterrence against any Russian aggression.Consider the fact that the world today has to contend with at least four more nuclear-armed nations: (alphabetically) China, India, North Korea, and Pakistan. Though undeclared, Israel has long been considered to have nuclear weapons. Much like the US and USSR/Russia, India and Pakistan are modern-day reminders of two nuclear armed nations with undeniable enmity.
But in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the destabilization of Ukraine, the controversy about B61s is being heightened and compounded. In addition to retaining tactical nukes in Europe, the United States plans to modernize the weapons, as well as its arsenal back home, in a remarkably expensive way.
Only four nations have voluntarily surrendered their nuclear weapons: (again, alphabetically) Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Some believe that South Africa, too, had a very small nuclear arsenal.
Apollo, PA. Never head of this small town in southwestern PA, not far from Pittsburgh where Westinghouse Corporation helped to build the engines for the world's first nuclear powered submarine? The nearby Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) produced the nuclear materials for the submarine's engines. Debate still continues about the estimated 200 pounds that went missing! There has never been an explanation from the old Atomic Energy Commission, CIA, DOD, Energy Department, or Homeland Security. Stolen by the Israelis is an oft mentioned possibility.
We are far from out of the woods!
Exposure unknowns. It has been seventy years since Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, et. al. and scientists still have no firm conclusions about the effects of radiation, from whatever source, not from a nuclear test or your last dental x-ray.
As a young child, my enlarged thyroid was treated according to the standards of the day: it was irradiated, shrunk. Thirty-five years later my mother (a registered RN) received a letter from the children's hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, strongly advising that I have my thyroid checked. I have been on low-dose thyroid medicine ever since.
Those in Japan and the south sea islands are still being studied -- and the scientific community continues to "guess" about the effects of their radiation-related illnesses. Nuclear contamination from nuclear weapons production and nuclear power stations continues to be a potential problems related to accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, sunken nuclear submarines, etc. The US still have no designated -- and tested -- repository for its nuclear waste.
The latest tests of the effects of very low level radiation are far from encouraging. “Because cells talk to each other, they send out signals,” Brenner [the director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research] explains. “We don’t understand how those mechanisms work, but there’s no doubt whatsoever that a cell that’s unaffected by radiation can have DNA damage in it if it’s near to a cell that is affected by radiation.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the lead scientists in the Manhattan Project, remarked later that the world's first atomic test (Trinity in NM in 1945) brought to mind words from the sacred Hindu text, Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
The new discrimination. In Walt Kelly's 1971 Earth Day cartoon, Pogo opined that, "We have met the enemy and he is us." So, too, this seems to be the case in IN, CO, and other states as their legislatures pass laws allowing discrimination against LGBT persons. "[L]egislators from West Virginia to Hawaii are waging a hollow fight to join 19 states already on the wrong side of history. Hiding behind religious freedom, they’re pushing right-to-discriminate bills they say protect people unwilling to compromise their beliefs for business." A pediatrician in Michigan refused to treat the newborn daughter of a lesbian couple. In Denver, a baker refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Last week, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed into law a statute permitting "businesses and workers, citing their religious beliefs, to refuse service to anyone they find objectionable."
“The LGBT movement is the main thing, the primary thing that’s going to be challenging religious liberties and the freedom to live out religious convictions,” Oklahoma state Senator Joseph Silk, who is sponsoring a pro-discrimination bill in his state, recently told the New York Times. 'They don’t have the right to be served in every single store.' ”
Here is a thought for your local ACLU office: federal law has been known to throw a monkey wrench into some situations (e.g interstate transportation), one wonders what would happen if the operator of a shoe shine stand at Indianapolis International Airport were to refuse service to an obviously gay man wanting a shine for his "Sunday-go-to-meeting" cowboy boots.
Justice at Guantanamo. Morris D. Davis, the third chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay (the number is now six) has written an op ed in the New York Times. He notes that,
Today, despite President Obama's persistent calls, the Congress remains adamant that the remaining prisoners will not be brought stateside. Far from America's most shining 15 years!On Dec. 31, 2001, the venerable Washington lawyer Lloyd N. Cutler wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal titled “Lessons on Tribunals — From 1942.” Mr. Cutler, a young attorney at the Justice Department in the summer of 1942, served on the team that prosecuted the eight German saboteurs whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered tried before a military commission following their capture on American soil.While Mr. Cutler noted some shortcomings in the way the military commission had been conducted in 1942 and advised the Bush administration to avoid repeating those mistakes at Guantánamo Bay, he was generally optimistic that after a six-decade respite military commissions could be revived and used in a credible manner.“But success will depend on the quality of the judges, the prosecutors and the defense lawyers, and their ability to show the world that justice is in fact being done,” he concluded. “In a very real sense, it is the American legal system, not just Al Qaeda’s leaders, that would be on trial.” ....[To date we have shown the world that] we have a legal system where it is more advantageous to be found guilty of a war crime than never to be charged at all and remain imprisoned indefinitely.
Wyoming coal. In February, a team led by University of Wyoming economist Robert Godby released a study that demonstrates just how much [WY depends on coal]. Coal trains rumble endlessly through metro Denver on their circuit from WY's Powder River Basin to the coal-burning plants scattered along the front range clear to the Four Corners area. Today, coal, like all energy sources, is in a state of flux driven in part by factors beyond local, even national, control.
The "new" senatorial Democratic caucus. The late senator Robert Dole (R, KS) once said the most dangerous place in the Capitol was anywhere between Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) and the media cameras. With the looming retirement of Harry Reed (D, NV), Schumer's colleagues will have cause to be wary. "You can add your own warning caption."
STEM education. Good? Bad? More/too much emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)? This linked story sees cause for concern.
Governor Jerry Brown -- again. We mellow as we age, I guess. During part of California's earlier drought, a younger, more bumptious Governor Brown, in discussing how to conserve water, coined the colorful phrase, "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down!" CA is again facing drought and, once again, Governor Brown voices concern about water conservation, but he has yet to resurrect his earlier quip. The storm predicted for April 6 may have afforded some relief.
Thank you for reading and have a good week.
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