I’m not sure if there’s been a better written book published yet this year than Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard and How the West Was Checkmated, but I’m confident there’s not been a more important one. With some 17,000 nuclear bombs in the world, the United States and Russia have about 16,000 of them. The United States is aggressively flirting with World War III, the people of the United States have not the foggiest notion of how or why, and authors Natylie Baldwin and Kermit Heartsong explain it all quite clearly. Go ahead and tell me there’s nothing you’re now spending your time on that’s less important than this.

This book may very well be the best written one I’ve read this year. It puts all the relevant facts — those I knew and many I didn’t — together concisely and with perfect organization. It does it with an informed worldview. It leaves me nothing to complain about at all, which is almost unheard of in my book reviews. I find it refreshing to encounter writers so well-informed who also grasp the significance of their information.

More than a hundred people gathered outside the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) headquarters today, June 15, trying to stop the bailouts of dirty coal plants and the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. The rally was tightly controlled by the Ohio Sierra Club, who sent five members inside to deliver letters to the PUCO meeting. The outcome of the decision is not yet known. For more information on the issue, please see: No bailouts for First Energy’s Davis-Besse nuclear reactor by Pat Marida, chair, Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear Issues Committee.

Photos by Tekla Lewin

The international community is extraordinarily concerned about the Chinese construction on small islands and atolls in disputed waters off China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan.  Over the past 18 months, the Chinese government has created islands out of atolls and larger islands out of small ones.

With the Obama administration’s “pivot” of the United States military and economic strategy to Asia and the Pacific, the Chinese have seen military construction in their front yard. 

I’ve just returned from my third trip to Jeju Island, South Korea. Jeju is called the Island of Peace.  However, its where the South Korean military has almost finished construction of a new naval base, the first military base on this strategically located island south of the mainland of Korea that is littered with U.S. and South Korean military bases, leftover from the Korean war and that are a part of the U.S. “defense” of South Korea from  “aggression” from North Korea. 

Origins Game Fair hit an attendance record this year, with over 15,000 attendees gathering at the Greater Columbus Convention Center to see the latest in role-playing games, card games, and every other game of the non-video variety. Over 200 game creators, publishers, and shops — some big, many small — had their games on display in the Exhibitor’s Hall.

   So what did Origins 2015 show us about the coming year? What trends and changes are coming to a tabletop near you?

“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world… Shall we say the odds are too great? … the struggle is too hard? … and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity… The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam”

Kabul—I’ve spent a wonderfully calm morning here in Kabul, listening to bird songs and to the call and response between mothers and their children in neighboring homes as families awaken and prepare their children for school. Maya Evans and I arrived here yesterday, and  are just settling into the community quarters of our young hosts, The Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs).  Last night, they told us about the jarring and frightening events that marked the past few months of their lives in Kabul.