Yesterday, I was at Costco buying a large bag of Purina Dog Chow for my loyal pet, Necco, the Wonder Dog, who weighs 191 lbs. I was in the checkout line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
What did she think I had–an elephant?
Since I’m retired and have little to do, I decided, on impulse, to have some fun. I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog–I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because the last time I tried it, I ended up in the hospital. But before that happened, I had lost 50 pounds!
I went on to explain that I woke up in an intensive care unit with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. Still, I insisted, it was essentially the perfect diet. The way it worked was simple: load your jacket pockets with Purina Nuggets and eat one or two whenever you felt hungry. The food was nutritionally complete, so it worked well. And despite my past experience, I was planning to try it again.
(I should mention here that practically everyone in line was now captivated by my story.)
The woman, horrified, asked if I had ended up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned me.
I told her, “No, I stopped to pee on a fire hydrant, and a car hit me.”
I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack–he was laughing so hard.
Costco won’t let me shop there anymore.
Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say.
If you’re interested in watching the presentation and discussion a few days ago, it can be VIEWED HERE. (Note: you can fast forward through the part of the discussion about light rail if you wish).
Whether you’ve driven through a toll recently or not, you might’ve gotten a text saying you owe money for unpaid tolls. It’s probably a scam. Scammers are pretending to be tolling agencies from coast to coast and sending texts demanding money. Learn how the scam works so you can avoid it.
You get a text out of the blue that says you have unpaid tolls and need to pay immediately. The scammy text might show a dollar amount for how much you supposedly owe and include a link that takes you to a page to enter your bank or credit card info — but it’s a phishing scam. Not only is the scammer trying to steal your money, but if you click the link, they could get your personal info (like your driver’s license number) — and even steal your identity.
Don’t click on any links in,or respond to, unexpected texts. Scammers want you to react quickly, but it’s best to stop and check it out.
Check to see if the text is legit. Reach out to the state’s tolling agency using a phone number or website you know is real — not the info from the text.
Report and delete unwanted text messages. Use your phone’s “report junk” option to report unwanted texts to your messaging app or forward them to 7726 (SPAM). Once you’ve checked it out and reported it, delete the text.
Learn more about spotting and avoiding text scams at ftc.gov/textscams.
A review card of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, written by a Los Angeles Public Library staff member around the time of the book’s publication.
James Sherman/Los Angeles Public Library
Before the internet made book reviews widely accessible, where would curious minds go to find information about a new novel’s subject matter or a plot?
If you lived in the Los Angeles area, you could reference the Los Angeles Public Library’s index of fiction book review cards. The reviews, a collection of thousands of index cards, contain library staff members’ thoughts and opinions about new fiction releases that the library carried. The library system was used starting in the 1920s and into the 1980s.
Robert Anderson, who has worked as a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library since 1980, says the staff review cards were a handy tool that library staff used to answer specific questions the public had about different books.
“In the the pre-internet days, when you couldn’t just Google something, if people called and said, ‘I’ve heard about this book and I just want to know what it’s about,’ you could pull out the card and read it to them or show it to them if they were in person,” Anderson said.
The reviews, along with being a helpful public tool, also helped staff pick which books the LAPL would order for their shelves. “They didn’t always write reviews for every book, but it was a major way they made the decision on what to buy, particularly for newer authors,” Anderson said. If a staff member reviewed a book favorably, they were more likely to carry the title and order multiple copies, he said. (continued)
Today 25+ Skyliners went to City Hall to support the skybridge project connecting the Cascade and Olympic Towers across 8th avenue. The presentation to City Council’s Transportation Committee was well received and the comments, particularly from Councilmembers Hollingsworth and Kettle, were quite positive. Three residents spoke in support during the public comment time allotted–Doug Palmer (who has tirelessly headed up this effort), Ed Marcuse and Jim deMaine.
Although the Transportation Committee, by their tradition, did not vote today they will on April 1st. Then on April 8th, assuming all goes well, the project will finally get a go-ahead vote at the full City Council meeting. Kudos to “Skybridge Doug” (as he was referred to today) who chaired this resident driven project. The Skybridge Resident Committee led by Doug included Deborah Cohen, Bill Taraday, Bob Terrell, Jim deMaine and the late Put Barber. Kudos also to the First Hill Improvement Association and to the city staff. All along Transforming Age has brought on the legal and staff expertise to provide the needed professional help and coordination. Thanks to all!
A Pulitzer Prize finalist in the cartoonist category, Pat Bagley has worked for The Salt Lake Tribune for more than 45 years. He is one of roughly a dozen cartoonists still working at a major metropolitan newspaper in the U.S.
Bagley started working for The Tribune shortly after graduation and has published more than 6,000 cartoons for the now-nonprofit newsroom.
His cartoons have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He is syndicated and appears in more than 450 American newspapers.
Pat was born in Utah and grew up in Oceanside, California, where his father was the mayor and his mother a schoolteacher.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served a mission in Bolivia in the 1970s. In 1978, he received his degree in political science from Brigham Young University. In 2009, following statements by LDS apostle Dallin Oaks about gay marriage protesters and religious freedom, Bagley commented that he was retired from the church, though not bitter.
The City Council’s transportation committee meets today at 9:30 AM. The second item on the agenda is a vote of approval for Skyline’s skybridge. Three residents are slated to give a brief supportive statement during the public comment period. If interested, the meeting can be viewed on the Seattle Channel (321 on Comcast and 721 on Wave). If approved, we hope that the vote for approval will go to the full City Council very soon.
Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth just deleted the history of the “Go For Broke” 442nd Infantry Regiment from the Army website as part of their anti-DEI rampage to eliminate any mention of race or gender. (see update at the end of this article).
The 442nd was formed for Japanese-American heroes who believed in the Constitution so much that they volunteered to serve a nation that imprisoned their own families on the basis of race.
They were awarded 21 Medals of Honor, 4,000 Purple Hearts and 4,000 Bronze Stars for as they defeated Nazis, liberating Italy and France and freeing Jewish concentration camp survivors from a Dachau satellite camp.
The 442nd proved that American patriotism was not limited by race and creed – it belonged to all Americans who believe in our freedoms.
Ed note: From ChatGPT: There are several books about the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit composed mostly of Japanese American soldiers who fought in Italy and France during World War II. Some well-known books include:
“The Nisei Soldier: Historical Essays on World War II and the Korean War” by Edwin M. Nakasone
“Go for Broke: A Pictorial History of the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team” by Chester Tanaka
“No No Boy” by John Okada (a novel that touches on Japanese American soldiers and internment)
“And Then There Were Eight: The Men of I Company 442nd Regimental Combat Team” by Suzanne Tarbell Cooper
“Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion” by Scott McGaugh
Is book banning from the National Library of Congress next??
Update: Due to an outcry from many, the Army has restored the page on their website. The chaos and total weirdness of the anti-DEI continues. Let’s honor our differences, not try to ignore or erase them.
SCAM ALERT: Good To Go! will not request payments on any websites but MyGoodToGo.com or send bills through texts. Do not click unknown links in emails or texts.
March 15 is a crucially important day in U.S. history As the man who taught me to use a chainsaw said, it is immortalized by Shakespeare’s famous warning: “Cedar! Beware the adze of March!”
He put it that way because the importance of March 15 is, of course, that it is the day in 1820 that Maine, the Pine Tree State, joined the Union.
Maine statehood had national repercussions. The inhabitants of this northern part of Massachusetts had asked for statehood in 1819, but their petition was stopped dead by southerners who refused to permit a free state—one that did not permit human enslavement—to enter the Union without a corresponding “slave state.” The explosive growth of the northern states had already given free states control of the House of Representatives, but the South held its own in the Senate, where each state got two votes. The admission of Maine would give the North the advantage, and southerners insisted that Maine’s admission be balanced with the admission of a southern slave state lest those opposed to slavery use their power in the federal government to restrict enslavement in the South.
They demanded the admission of Missouri to counteract Maine’s two “free” Senate votes.
But this “Missouri Compromise” infuriated northerners, especially those who lived in Maine. They swamped Congress with petitions against admitting Missouri as a slave state, resenting that slave owners in the Senate could hold the state of Maine hostage until they got their way. Tempers rose high enough that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Massachusetts—and later Maine—senator John Holmes that he had for a long time been content with the direction of the country, but that the Missouri question “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”
Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, but Jefferson was right to see it as nothing more than a reprieve.
The petition drive that had begun as an effort to keep the admission of Maine from being tied to the admission of Missouri continued as a movement to get Congress to whittle away at slavery where it could—by, for example, outlawing slave sales in the nation’s capital—and would become a key point of friction between the North and the South.
There was also another powerful way in which the conditions of the state’s entry into the Union would affect American history. Mainers were angry that their statehood had been tied to the demands of far distant slave owners, and that anger worked its way into the state’s popular culture. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 meant that Maine men, who grew up steeped in that anger, could spread west.
And so they did.
In 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had moved to Alton, Illinois, from Albion, Maine, to begin a newspaper dedicated to the abolition of human enslavement, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob, who threw his printing press into the Mississippi River.
Elijah Lovejoy’s younger brother, Owen, had also moved west from Maine. Owen saw Elijah shot and swore his allegiance to the cause of abolition. “I shall never forsake the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother’s blood,” he declared. He turned to politics, and in 1854 he was elected to the Illinois state legislature. His increasing prominence brought him political friends, including an up-and-coming lawyer who had arrived in Illinois from Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln.
Lovejoy and Lincoln were also friends with another Maine man gone to Illinois. Elihu Washburne had been born in Livermore, Maine, in 1816, when Maine was still part of Massachusetts. He was one of seven brothers, and one by one, his brothers had all left home, most of them to move west. Israel Washburn Jr., the oldest, stayed in Maine, but Cadwallader moved to Wisconsin, and William Drew would follow, going to Minnesota. (Elihu was the only brother who spelled his last name with an e).
Israel and Elihu were both serving in Congress in 1854 when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, overturning the Missouri Compromise and permitting the spread of slavery to the West. Furious, Israel called a meeting of 30 congressmen in May to figure out how they could come together to stand against the Slave Power that had commandeered the government to spread the South’s system of human enslavement. They met in the rooms of Representative Edward Dickinson, of Massachusetts—whose talented daughter Emily was already writing poems—and while they came to the meeting from all different political parties, they left with one sole principle: to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.
The men scattered for the summer back to their homes across the North, sharing their conviction that a new party must rise to stand against the Slave Power. In the fall, those calling themselves “anti-Nebraska” candidates were sweeping into office—Cadwallader Washburn would be elected from Wisconsin in 1854 and Owen Lovejoy from Illinois in 1856—and they would, indeed, create a new political party: the Republicans. The new party took deep root in Maine, flipping the state from Democratic to Republican in 1856, the first time it fielded a presidential candidate.
In 1859, Abraham Lincoln would articulate an ideology for the party, defining it as the party of ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery, and when he ran for president in 1860, he knew it was imperative that he get the momentum of Maine men on his side. In those days Maine voted for state and local offices in September, rather than November, so a party’s win in Maine could start a wave. “As Maine goes, so goes the nation,” the saying went.
So Lincoln turned for his vice president to Hannibal Hamlin, who represented Maine in the Senate (and whose father had built the house in which the Washburns grew up). Lincoln won 62% of the vote in Maine in 1860, taking all eight of the state’s electoral votes, and went on to win the election. When he arrived in Washington quietly in late February to take office the following March, Elihu Washburne was at the railroad station to greet him.
I was not a great student in college. I liked learning, but not on someone else’s timetable. It was this story that woke me up and made me a scholar. I found it fascinating that a group of ordinary people from country towns who shared a fear that they were losing their democracy could figure out how to work together to reclaim it. Happy Birthday, Maine.
The title of his first book tells you a lot about the work and wit of Dr. King Holmes: “How To Have Intercourse Without Getting Screwed.”
“I wrote it for my kids,” Holmes said, with a grin, at a lecture in 2013.
That was his style — and, in a nutshell, what he spent nearly his entire professional life doing. In studying sexually transmitted infections at a time when research on the topic was almost nonexistent in the U.S., Holmes became a world-renowned pioneer in demystifying the field. And he was especially fond of teaching and mentoring younger learners, an expert at gently, yet persuasively, encouraging students to dream big.
Holmes was 87 when he died Sunday in Seattle. He had long been living with kidney disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and was with his wife, family and loved ones in his last moments at Skyline Retirement Community on First Hill.
“He had this sort of indefatigable energy, and the ability to open up field after field,” said Dr. Larry Corey, former president and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and a longtime friend and colleague of Holmes’.
“Global health became a mantra in Seattle,” Corey said this week. “And he was really one of the giants that got that started.”
Holmes was born Sept. 1, 1937, in Minnesota, and was known to friends, family and former co-workers as a visionary researcher, deep thinker and entertaining storyteller.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1959 and medical degree from Cornell in 1963. After finishing an internship in medicine at Vanderbilt, Holmes was off to Pearl Harbor, where he was based as an epidemiologist in the Navy Medical Corps.
While there, Holmes also earned a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Hawaii.
Although Holmes didn’t necessarily intend on devoting his career to STI research, his first Navy assignment was to address a gonorrhea epidemic that had become widespread among sailors stationed in the western Pacific.
“That’s where the need was,” said Dr. Hunter Handsfield, a University of Washington infectious disease professor and former mentee and longtime colleague of Holmes. “He then very quickly realized the need was everywhere. He saw the sexual revolution occurring around him.”
At the time, the field of STIs had long been ignored and underresearched in the U.S., according to infectious disease experts. Much more stigma existed around the topic, but Holmes could see these diseases were important to understand clinically.
“No one would talk about them,” said UW professor emeritus of infectious diseases and global health Sheila Lukehart, who met Holmes as a graduate student studying syphilis in 1977. “You couldn’t say ‘syphilis’ on the radio. And he worked hard to make this an academic field.”
In Hawaii, Holmes came up with the concept of prescribing a single dose of antibiotic to sailors as a preventive measure against gonorrhea after a sexual encounter, according to UW Medicine. Today, post-exposure prophylaxis against bacterial STIs with doxycycline, an approach called doxy-PEP, is endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It’s been adopted as the single most important new innovation in bacterial STI prevention in over five decades,” said Handsfield, who also served as director of Public Health — Seattle & King County’s STD control program for more than 25 years. “It’s out there because of initial work King did in the Navy.”
After his military service, Holmes completed his medical residency at UW. In 1969, he joined the UW School of Medicine faculty and later also held an appointment in epidemiology at the university’s School of Public Health.
In the early 1980s, Holmes became immersed in the response to the growing HIV epidemic, working with other leaders in the field such as Dr. Bob Wood, who was the director of King County’s HIV/AIDS program for over two decades.
In 1985, Holmes helped establish what’s become known as the Madison Clinic at Harborview Medical Center, which still treats and cares for people living with HIV. Four years later, he founded the UW Center for AIDS & STD, another hub that continues to provide patient care, research and training today.
On top of that, Holmes also served as chief of medicine at Harborview during this time, and continued to study other STIs including chlamydia, human papillomaviruses, genital herpes and Mycoplasma genitalium.
“Work was not work for him. He was happy to be at the office seven days a week,” said his wife, Virginia Gonzales, a retired clinical social worker who also spent her career in public health. The two met in Nepal while she was working on HIV response and he was on sabbatical in 1989.
Another high point in his career came with the creation of UW’s Department of Global Health in 2006, a partnership between the school’s medicine and public health departments that hadn’t been done before. Holmes was named the department’s first chair.
“On May 26, 1938, Nazi dignitaries gathered near Fallersleben in northern Germany to lay the foundation stone for the Volkswagen Works. The Führer himself was present, predicting that this Volkswagen… would be ‘a symbol of the National Socialist [Nazi] people’s community,'” according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Ed note: To the below list from my inquiry to ChatGPT I’d add the following: don’t click on any link unless you know its a trusted source; check the email address of a sender which often shows a bogus address; beware of emails saying click here to hear a voice mail or click here to get a post office package sent to you that’s being held; don’t believe financial threatening emails saying your account has been hacked and you need to transfer money out to protect yourself. More ingenious scams will be no doubt be forthcoming. It’s sad but true that we need to be very distrustful when on the internet.
Scammers often target seniors because they may be more trusting, less familiar with modern scams, or have accumulated savings. Here are some common scams that seniors should be aware of and how to avoid them:
Common Scams Targeting Seniors
Medicare & Health Insurance Scams
Scammers pretend to be from Medicare or an insurance company, claiming the senior needs to verify or update their information.
How to Avoid: Never share personal or financial information over the phone. Medicare will never call to ask for your personal details.
Grandparent Scam
The scammer pretends to be a grandchild in trouble (e.g., arrested, in an accident) and urgently asks for money.
How to Avoid: Always verify the caller’s identity. Call the actual family member or another trusted person before sending money.
Tech Support Scams
A pop-up or caller claims to be from Microsoft, Apple, or another tech company, stating that the computer has a virus and needs remote access or payment to fix it.
How to Avoid: Legitimate tech companies don’t make unsolicited calls. Never grant remote access to your computer.
Sweepstakes & Lottery Scams
Victims receive a call or email saying they’ve won a prize but must first pay fees or taxes to claim it.
How to Avoid: If you didn’t enter a contest, you didn’t win. Real lotteries don’t require upfront payments.
Romance Scams
Scammers build online relationships with seniors to gain their trust and then ask for money for emergencies, travel, or investments.
How to Avoid: Be cautious of online relationships where the person avoids meeting in real life and asks for money.
Charity Scams
Fake charities, especially after disasters, solicit donations from seniors.
How to Avoid: Research charities before donating (check Charity Navigator or the BBB Wise Giving Alliance).
Investment & Financial Scams
Scammers offer “guaranteed” high-return investments, often in real estate, cryptocurrency, or gold.
How to Avoid: Be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true offers. Consult a financial advisor before investing.
IRS & Social Security Scams
Scammers claim you owe back taxes or your Social Security benefits will be suspended unless you provide personal info or payment.
How to Avoid: The IRS and Social Security Administration will never demand immediate payment or threaten arrest over the phone.
Home Repair Scams
Fraudsters offer low-cost home repairs, demand payment upfront, and disappear without doing the work.
How to Avoid: Hire only licensed and verified contractors. Never pay in full upfront.
Bank Impersonation Scams
Scammers pose as bank representatives asking for account details to fix a security breach.
How to Avoid: Banks never ask for sensitive info via phone, email, or text. Contact your bank directly if unsure.
Tips to Avoid Scams
✅ Be skeptical of unsolicited calls, emails, or texts. ✅ Never give personal information (Social Security, bank details, Medicare number) to unknown callers. ✅ Verify stories before sending money. ✅ Use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication on accounts. ✅ Talk to a trusted friend or family member before making financial decisions. ✅ Report scams to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at reportfraud.ftc.gov or call 1-877-FTC-HELP.
“This award no longer effectuates agency priorities. It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment. NIH is obligated to carefully steward grant awards to ensure taxpayer dollars are used in ways that benefit the American people and improve their quality of life. Your project does not satisfy these criteria.”
• Where AI fills care gaps and where hurdles like regulation, health literacy, and workforce shortages slow progress.
• Actionable insights on deploying AI in lower-resource settings and what can be learned from these innovative approaches.
• Opportunities to collaborate and help accelerate implementation to positively impact global health. Don’t miss this chance to understand global trends in AI-driven clinical care and how they can shape your strategy. REGISTER NOW Featured speakers for this event Prem Batchu-Green, PT, DPT, MBA, HEOR-C Viz.ai Puneet Khanna, MBBS, MD, FAGE All India Institute of Medical Sciences ModeratorIsaac Kohane, MD, PhD Harvard Medical School Ann Mwangi, PhD Moi University Alex Ng, MPH, MBChB, BHB, PGDipHealInf Tencent Healthcare David C. Rhew, MD Microsoft Don’t miss out on AI Without Borders:
The conservative media is beginning to see the fruits of Trump’s promises. Will the “servile sycophants” who are supposed to serve our nation’s citizens listen?
‘Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you.’ By Claude Malhuret in The Atlantic (thanks to Mary Jane F.)
Miguel Medina / AFP / Getty
March 8, 2025, 7 AM
Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, the French senator Claude Malhuret gave a powerful speech about the implications for Europe of the reversal of American policy toward Ukraine. Malhuret is the former mayor of the town of Vichy as well as a doctor and an epidemiologist, and the former head of Doctors Without Borders. He is a member of the center-right Horizons party representing the district of Allier. The speech, whose dark urgency and stark rhetorical force made it a social-media sensation, follows, translated and adapted by The Atlantic.
Updated at 7:00 AM ET on March 8, 2025
Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. [President Donald] Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictators who invade you.
The king of the deal is showing that the art of the deal is lying prostrate. He thinks he will intimidate China by capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but China’s President Xi Jinping, faced with such wreckage, is undoubtedly accelerating his plans to invade Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally, issued so many illegal decrees, and sacked so many military leaders in one go. Never has one trampled on the American Constitution, while threatening to disregard judges who stand in his way, weaken countervailing powers, and take control of social media.
This is not a drift to illiberalism; this is the beginning of the seizure of democracy. Let us remember that it only took one month, three weeks, and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution.
I have confidence in the solidity of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator; now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the draft-dodger was giving moral and strategic lessons to the Ukrainian president and war hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, before dismissing him like a stable boy, ordering him to submit or resign.
Eight days ago, at the very moment when Trump was patting French President Emmanuel Macron on the back at the White House, the United States voted at the United Nations with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
That night, he took another step into disgrace by halting the delivery of promised weapons. What should we do in the face of such betrayal? The answer is simple: Stand firm.
And above all: make no mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic states, Georgia, and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to the Yalta Agreement, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the global South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe, or whether they are now free to trample it.
What Putin wants is the end of the world order the United States and its allies established 80 years ago, in which the first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
This idea is at the very foundation of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressed, because the Trumpian vision coincides with Putin’s: a return to spheres of influence, where great powers dictate the fate of small nations.
Greenland, Panama, and Canada are mine. Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe are yours. Taiwan and the South China Sea are his.
At the Mar-a-Lago dinner parties of golf-playing oligarchs, this is called “diplomatic realism.”
We are therefore alone. But the narrative that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is doing poorly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country with about a quarter its population.
With interest rates at 21 percent, the collapse of foreign currency and gold reserves, and a demographic crisis, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is violent, but it has one virtue. The Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in a single day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands, and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that Ukraine can hang on, and of course to secure its and Europe’s place at the negotiating table.
This will be costly. It will require ending the taboo on using Russia’s frozen assets. It will require bypassing Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself through a coalition that includes only willing countries, and the United Kingdom of course.
Second, demand that any agreement include the return of kidnapped children and prisoners, as well as absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia, and Minsk, we know what Putin’s agreements are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and most urgently because it will take the longest, we must build that neglected European defense, which has relied on the American security umbrella since 1945 and which was shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The task is Herculean, but history books will judge the leaders of today’s democratic Europe by its success or failure.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is a recognition that France has been right for decades in advocating for strategic autonomy.
Now it must be built. This will require massive investment to replenish the European Defense Fund beyond the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and munitions systems, accelerate European Union membership for Ukraine, which now has the leading army in Europe, rethink the role and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, and relaunch missile-shield and satellite programs.
Europe can become a military power again only by becoming an industrial power again. But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and above all in the face of Putin’s collaborators on the far right and far left.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump says is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of a de Gaullian Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain under Putin’s thumb. The peace of collaborators who, for three years, have refused to support the Ukrainians in any way.
Is this the end of the Atlantic alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have finally stirred Americans into action. Poll numbers are plummeting. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer at the height of glory. They control the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court, and social media. But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They are starting to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine will be decided in the trenches, but it also depends on those who defend democracy in the United States, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans and find the means for our common defense, to make Europe the power it once was and hesitates to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
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Prem Batchu-Green, PT, DPT, MBA, HEOR-C Viz.ai 
Moderator Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD Harvard Medical School 
Ann Mwangi, PhD Moi University
David C. Rhew, MD Microsoft Don’t miss out on AI Without Borders: