Oops, December was too busy to post a monthly blog entry, so here goes a short duo to make it up...

OBAMA EXITS

I just wrote a comment in the online version of the local national weekly ZEIT (on-the-spot rough translation):

"I say YES*, since he simply achieved a lot within the States, incl. for young afro-american & immigrant folk. And remained human - you noticed occasionally, that the job weighs one down, and he allowed that to be noticed. (Cool!) The "plusses" just barely weigh up the "minuses" - civil dead through drone attacks, wavering re Syria & Israel, & that he initially really seemed to believe he was the new Messiah, at least in the USA."

I will miss him!

LOSING THE NUCLEAR FOCUS

In the current issue of STERN magazine, the director of the Munich security conference said in an interview that both the US and Russia have not been adressing nuclear proliferation or even arms modernisation as they could have done to further de-escalate the possibility of using nukes in the near future.

An American ex-inspector of i.a. North Korean arms production/testing recently urgently called for talks with that country's leaders, a feat a new administration might attempt, he feels.

It seems to layman me, that the phase of my worst fears concerning the world, back in the Eighties, is resurfacing slowly but menacingly. One reason I've been saying that catastrophic climate change is not on the cards for me, since it's another vehicle for generating global fear (with a lot of bad conscience handed out for good measure, too).

This vehicle is one to be truly afraid of: Either a nuke strike nearby and rapid spiral into death, or a nuclear winter, where we have months to tearfully watch the sky get darker and darker, as fallout "snow" begins to fall.

Focus, folks! Don't let that Putin or any other insecure "Big Man" try another Hiroshima, even if it's only a small, "tactical" one! That way lies true, rapid catastrophe - it's not just a clay-footed pseudo-scientific prognosis if the fat boy bombs start to fall...