Time to Think

  W arning Signs                                  #221 By Hank Silverberg  The world may have been ignoring too many warning signs over the last couple of decades, and now they are all coming to roost.  Warning 1:  Perhaps the biggest one here in the United States comes from the west coast where experts say the multi-year drought is going to get worse. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is calling it a "megadrought." NOAA says 60% of the continental U.S. is experiencing drought conditions, the largest area in the U.S. since 2013. And a study published in  Nature Science Change  indicates that the period between 2000 and 2021 was the driest in 1,200 years.  Just one example comes from Utah, where 99% of the state has severe drought conditions and 43% is in extreme drought.  (Courtesty USGS) The drought presents several problems. Drinking water...

The Fourth Estate by Hank Silverberg Freedom of the Press. We take it for granted here in the United States. Our Founding Fathers were wise enough to understand that an unchecked government can easily become an oppressor of free will. We have three branches of government, so the press has often been labeled the "fourth estate" because of its watchdog role in our democracy.   The press, and by extension, broadcast news, is the only profession actually protected in the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment strictly forbids Congress, or ANY other branch of government, from censoring the press or restricting it in anyway.  That extends to the president, the courts, state legislatures, city hall, local school boards, county governments, or even local planning or zoning boards. So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I watched President Biden highlight the news media's role in our country when he spoke at the White House Correspondents Association din...

What I Missed in Just One Week    #219 By Hank Silverberg You may have noticed I did not post a blog this past week. My wife and I took a trip of a thousand miles to see family for the first time since the start of the pandemic for Passover. It was good to see them all.  We had a celebration of my mother's life, since the pandemic prevented a funeral a year ago, and then we had a huge family Seder that included all of her nine great-grandchildren for the first time. I love this type of event.  (Take the bridge and avoid NYC) But I confess the crowds at the service areas on our trip (where we stopped in Maryland and Connecticut) made me a bit nervous. I was wearing a mask, but that darn Omicron variant is still a worry, even though I am fully vaccinated. (If you are not, you are making a mistake.)   What surprised me most were all the things that happened in the 72 hours where I was not paying much attention to the news. (I had one or two hours of list...

  Lessons From the Civil War      #218 By Hank Silverberg  April 9,1865 was the day Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulyssis S. Grant at Appomattox. The defeated Confederate States of America,  (Surrender at Appomattox, Courtesy of battlefields.org) a country which never legally existed, still had armies in the field, but Lee's surrender pretty much ended a long and bloody Civil War which killed almost 700,000 Americans, both in uniform and civilian. And almost immediately after Appomattox the myths began about the causes of that war and who was to blame for starting it.  I write about this today because the myths persist all these years later and still seem to find their way into contemporary politics. That war was the biggest failure in American political history. And the wounds, despite Mr. Lincoln's plea, have never really healed.   School children across the south were taught for decades that the war w...

How Can Anyone Believe Putin?                                #217 By Hank Silverberg The news from Ukraine has gotten worse this week. The Russians continued their murderous missile and air strikes on Ukrainian cities even as their army was pushed back out of several Ukrainian towns. Military casualties are mounting on both sides.  (A street in Bucha, Ukraine Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)   But it was the bodies of dead civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha which showed us the worst of this war. Civilians had been executed and left lying in the streets, some of them with their hands tied behind their back. And the city's Mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, says there's also a mass grave holding 230 bodies just from that one small town (pre-war population of 36,971).  Several other towns were liberated from Russian control, but Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky warned citizens not to g...