Global

We start GREEP Zoom #269 with the New York firestorm ignited by DONALD TRUMP’s unwelcome appearance at the third game of the NBA Finals, which the Knicks have lost….a loss millions of New Yorkers now blame on Trump.

We’re then confronted by reports from HOWIE HAWKINS and MYLA RESON on atomic reactors under fire in Ukraine and radioactive clouds now pouring over LA from the melted Santa Susana reactor in Simi Valley.

Thanks to co-convenor MIKE HERSH we’re joined by Virginia County official WALA BLEGAY with a spirited explanation for her powerful fight against data centers’ mass destruction power grids & water supplies.

From PAUL NEWMAN, ALISON GREENE, LYNNE FEINERMAN and DOROTHY REIK chime in with critical points on data centers and election protection.

As we move forward with a critical list for the “all-out war” of election protection including the power of money, vote by mail, KKK-style intimidation, mass data theft used to “steal our votes,” creation of new “ghost voters” to throw elections, unverified vote counts, Gerrymandering, lack of credible audits, and more….all opposed by the grassroots campaign for an overwhelming turnout.

This article first appeared here

The U.S. Army wrapped up a live-fire counter-drone exercise in Lithuania in mid-May, and the headline out of Anduril’s marketing department was straightforward: the software worked, the targets died, and the kill chain ran on Lattice.

What that means in practice deserves more scrutiny than Anduril’s press team is inclined to provide.

The announcements

In November 2025, the Army selected Anduril Industries to serve as the software backbone of its Integrated Battle Command System Maneuver program — IBCS-M — establishing Lattice as the next-generation fire control platform for counter-UAS missions across the force. Less than six months later, Flytrap 5.0, a live-fire exercise conducted in Lithuania with U.S. and allied forces, served as the program’s public coming-out event.

This article first appeared here

Running away to join the circus generally isn’t the best way to deal with your problems. But sometimes it’s the only way available to you.

That’s the situation faced by Jacob Jankowski in Water for Elephants, a touring musical now playing at Columbus’s Ohio Theatre.

We first meet Jankowski as an old man (Robert Tully) reminiscing about his past, but the show then thrusts us into that past, when a young Jacob (Zachery Keller) hitches a ride on a circus train and is offered work after he reveals he was trained as a veterinarian.

Because the Great Depression is in full force, and because Jacob has no other prospects, he reluctantly accepts the job. He then tries to make the best of what turns out to be a bad situation, complicated by a dictatorial and sadistic boss, August (Connor Sullivan). The job’s only perk is that Jacob gets to meet the show’s beautiful star performer, Marlena (Helen Krushinski), who, unfortunately, turns out to be August’s wife.

The latest wave of US airstrikes has already reportedly damaged critical civilian infrastructure, which according to the Iranian government has cut off some 20,000 Iranians from their water supply amid sweltering heat.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US is going to be launching major strikes in Iran, while President Trump says he’ll “bomb the shit out of” the Iranians if they don’t agree to a deal of his liking. 

The latest wave of US airstrikes has already reportedly damaged critical civilian infrastructure, which according to the Iranian government has cut off some 20,000 Iranians from their water supply amid sweltering heat.

Meanwhile the US war machine is acting like a poor widdle victim and claiming it’s only bombing Iran in order to defend itself from unwarranted aggression.

Our President holds up a chart showing that if you stood up the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on its side, it would be taller than the Empire State Building!

But apparently, no one told Trump that if you stood the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on its side, ALL THE WATER WOULD RUN OUT!

And now he wants to paint Lincoln’s pond blue. Don’t complain, he could have demanded we paint the Potomac River blue.

I suspect Trump’s idea of turning the reflecting pool blue comes from the toilets at Trump Tower that have that blue stuff in the bowls which, Trump says, is “very classy.”

In fact, instead of this multi-million dollar paint job, why don’t they just throw some of those Tidy-Bowl tablets into Lincoln’s reflecting pool. He won’t mind. He’s dead. They didn’t have blue stuff in his day.*

Can you imagine what Lincoln’s thinking right now? He’s thinking, “Damn, I always wanted a toilet-bowl blue reflecting pool. And I always wanted a ballroom! With bullet-proof glass. If I had that, I’d still be President today! So, blow my head off Mt. Rushmore and put this guy’s combover in my place.”

Suddenly my cynicism vanished and things started making sense . . . America started making sense, from past to present.

I was already in the process of writing this column – hey, the nation’s 250th birthday is coming up – and had never felt more lost. Where, where, where am I going with this? What am I trying to say? My words had no core, no soul. I felt like I had given myself the random rubble of a bombed-out building to write about.

Then a friend sent me a link to a New York Times opinion piece. I decided to give it a quick read. I don’t necessarily trust the Times. It can be smugly wrong. But I took a look – it was by literary critic A.O. Scott – and I couldn’t stop reading it. He had found our country, it seemed, beginning with these 35 simple words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Recently the least popular person alive said, “I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”

Already unpopular with kind and decent people, Trump may have — with that comment — tanked his popularity with every weapons company public relations hack on Earth. Their most deeply held pretense has always been that military spending isn’t needed for wars but rather to prevent wars.

Of course, Trump promised not to start any wars and to end existing ones easily and swiftly. Of course, one of the many reasons not to have believed him was that he wanted ever higher military spending. Of course, military spending makes the use of a military more, not less, likely.

But Trump’s current push is supposedly to take his record-breaking trillion-dollar-a-year military budget and raise it to $1.5 trillion a year. This is a lie built on a falsehood wrapped in a Truth Social post.

New York Knicked Trump with the Best Boos in History.Oh, those loud crowd boos.Those magnificent boos.Those beautiful, beautiful boos.The greatest boos. Perhaps the best boos in the history of boos. 

People are saying nobody has ever been booed more magnificently. Big, strong men came up to him, tears in their eyes, and said, “Sir, those are the most incredible boos we’ve ever heard.” You’ve never heard boos like this before. The acoustics were AWESOME. 

Neither Jesus nor Abraham Lincoln ever heard boos like these.  Academy Award winner for most beautiful boos in the whole wide world, except for shithole countries.  World-class boos. Five-star boos. Michelin-rated boos. A boopoopalooza! Sir, you knicked NEW YORK out of the park! 

Said Trump after the boos died down after a half hour: They loved me so much, they couldn’t stop cheering me, your favorite president, me.”

Ohio Supreme Court reverses permit for Agrovoltaics site

The Supreme Court of Ohio has reversed a previously approved permit for Madison County's Oak Run Solar project, which would have been the largest solar installation in the history of the state and one of the largest agrivoltaics projects in the US. The 6,000-acre project would have included about 800 MW of solar generation as well as 300 MW worth of battery storage capacity.

Developers filed for approval with the Ohio Power Siting Board in 2023, claiming the project would create more than 3,000 construction jobs as well as 63 long-term operational and maintenance jobs once online. The utility-scale project would provide enough power for about 170,000 homes, and $7.2 million in tax revenue for the county over and estimated 35 years. The Siting Board approved the project in March of 2024. Opponents to the project then appealed the decision to the supreme court.