World Gone Mad 2025: May Roundup for the Rebel Alliance

Danger at Diablo Canyon, Trump's foul domain goes nuclear, Phish Rocks for the Resistance & Andor Has a Message for the Left...

Well I missed my self-appointed end of April deadline for monthly blogging, but things got busy and here we are all of a sudden at the end of May. I started working on a new investigative story in April about the ongoing danger of a potential radioactive meltdown at the aptly named Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo, on California’s central coast. The story quickly grew more complicated than I’d originally anticipated, as these nuclear stories typically do. So I’m taking my time with it.

This will be my third article on the topic, a follow up to “A Risky Gamble at Diablo Canyon” from December 2022. That story focused on troubling evidence of regulatory collusion between the NRC and PG&E to sweep newer seismic data under the rug, since acknowledging it would have forced a shutdown of the plant for costly upgrades. The story included use of FOIA to obtain the NRC Office of the Inspector General’s report on their investigation into the accusations of collusion, a report that had several holes and at least one major fabrication. All of those issues remain very much in play.

A current test for embrittlement of one of the aging reactors was the impetus for the new story and remains another concern. But the focus of the story shifted when I interviewed an energy policy expert who explained in compelling detail about why Diablo Canyon actually is NOT needed to ensure grid reliability in California to protect against potential rolling blackouts (as occurred in 2020.) Arguing that Diablo Canyon was/is needed to ensure the Golden State can keep the lights on is how Gov. Gavin Newsom sold the state legislature on SB 846 in 2022 to extend Diablo Canyon’s lifespan, instead of shutting the aging plant down in 2025 (as per a joint agreement that had been reached in 2018.) So the story is now focusing on the angle of why Diablo Canyon simply isn’t needed, in addition to the fact that the seismic dangers pose a potentially catastrophic disaster for double jeopardy.

Was Newsom coerced by our nuclear overlords to get on board with nuclear if he harbored Presidential ambitions? I’d rate that theory as plausible. Was he also potentially targeted by the lucrative lobbying of Big Utility? Also highly plausible. I can only speculate on his motivations, but what I can do is report on the information that undercuts his argument for keeping Diablo Canyon open. Stay tuned!

A related angle that I’m also digging into to touch on in the story is how the fascist Trump regime’s war on government regulatory agencies now includes loosening regulation at the NRC, an entity that is already well known as a handmaiden of the nuclear industry. This is one of the most appalling angles of Trump’s foul domain of greed and avarice, since loosening NRC regulations to sacrifice safety for industry profiteering is one of the most reckless and insane things that any government regime could do…

The Trump regime is engaged in so many different angles of fascist assault on America and what’s left of Democracy that it can become overwhelming just trying to keep up with the news. My strategy for dealing with this problem is to tune most of it out, while keeping close tabs on the issues that I have the most expertise in. I recommend this, because everyone has an issue or two that they are most passionate about and that’s where individual activism tends to be most effective. These stories about the Trump regime and the nuclear industry alarm the fuck out of me and and so this is what I’m keeping tabs on:

On May 14, E&E News by Politico reported a story titled “White House weighs NRC overhaul”, concerning how “nuclear advocates in the Trump administration are looking for ways to bypass the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission and challenge its central claim over nuclear safety standards.”

WARNING Will Robinson! Beyond Nuclear commented on this story on May 15 in their own article, “President Trump to unleash atomic power” in which they concluded: “It should be alarming that the Trump Executive Orders to fast track the still elusive and unpredictably costly construction of unproven Generation IV reactors by decommissioning the NRC comes at precisely the wrong time.

This is the still the 50th Anniversary Year of the creation of the NRC following the abolition of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission by Congress for its blatant fast track promotion of atomic power plant licensing and a dangerous disregard of public health and safety. Least we forget, too many of those aging and now deteriorating nuclear power stations that are approaching and have exceeded 50 years of very harsh operating experience of radioactive neutron bombardment, embrittlement and cracking in base metal and dissimilar weld materials, fatigue, corrosion and a combination of extreme heat, pressure and vibration. Nobody knows better the growing level uncertainty, the multitude of technical knowledge gaps and innumerable shrinking reactor safety margins than those NRC nuclear engineers. Certainly, not Trump.”

Then E&E News was back on May 27 with “Trump forces showdown over nuclear regulation” — Nuclear experts warn of “serious consequences” if NRC’s loss of independence and blurred lines between promotion and regulation erode safety.

“It will be impossible for NRC to maintain a commitment to safety and oversight with staffing levels slashed and expertise gone,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) commented in the story.

WARNING Will Robinson, DANGER DANGER!

(Like many Gen-Xers, I was a big Lost in Space fan when I was a kid… got to take a picture with the Robot at the San Diego Comic Con in 2012.)

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On the plus side this spring, Phish returned to the West Coast for a short spring tour that started in Seattle and Portland before two shows in San Francisco and three shows at the Hollywood Bowl. As with my story on King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard last fall, I was able to convince the band’s team to comp me for all five California shows to cover them for PopMatters as one feature story. In “Phish Rock for the Resistance in San Francisco and Hollywood”, I touched on the connection between Phish and the Grateful Dead and how the psychedelic rock counterculture has always been a movement for peace and freedom that inherently stands opposed to authoritarianism, militarism and fascism.

The San Francisco shows at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium turned out to be pretty special, so I was stoked to score this alternate print from artist Ryan Jerzy at the Waterwheel Foundation Table after night two’s show. The image really captures the essence of a great Phish jam:

Another momentous event that occurred on April 22 was the premier of Andor season 2, the Star Wars prequel series that digs into the origins of the Rebel Alliance in the five years leading up to the events of Rogue One and A New Hope. With 12 gripping episodes dropped over 4 weeks, it was arguably the most monumental TV/film event of the decade. When actor Diego Luna’s “Captain Cassian Andor, Rebel Intelligence” was first introduced in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, he seemed like sort of a typical member of the Rebellion — a star pilot who was simply part of the alliance to take on the Empire. But the Andor series really takes the saga to a deeper level with the tale of how he was drawn deeper and deeper into the rebellion in those years preceding the mission to steal the technical plans to the Death Star.

As a long time fan of the Jedi religion and the Rebel Alliance, it’s been most gratifying to see the series dig deeper into radicalization of key rebels like Cassian Andor. The parallels to the current political climate have been downright visionary, and it’s astounding how so many delusional right wingers out there can’t see it. The Intercept had a great article out last week that digs into these themes:

Andor Has a Message for the Left: Act Now

The Star Wars series shows a rebel movement struggling to be born, but has a clear lesson for fighting rising fascism.

The article touches on the key plot point of “the Ghorman Massacre”, which eerily mirrored the anniversary of another relevant historical event:

But the empire takes matters out of the Front’s hands. While the people chant, “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!” and sing their national anthem, Imperial soldiers barricade them inside the plaza. An Imperial sniper perched on the roof sets off the violence with a false flag, purposefully killing an Imperial grunt and provoking an imperial attack, which forces the Ghorman Front to defend their people with arms. They are massacred.

The part about the sniper’s false flag killing of an Imperial grunt to set off the massacre recalls longtime speculation over witness reports that there was another shooter at Kent State on May 4, 1970 — an agent provocateur who fired a shot that triggered the National Guard to start shooting at peaceful students protesting the Vietnam War, killing “four dead in Ohio” and wounding nine more. We’ll probably never know for sure, but such a scenario adds up and the lessons of Kent State remain ever so relevant with the Trump regime poised to crack down on dissent.

The Intercept article sums up the current moment:

“The parallels of the world of Andor to the United States’ political reality in 2025 under Trump’s second administration are clear.

Rightwing think tanks and news have spewed propaganda for decades to make us question objective truth, leaving us vulnerable to the monster screaming the loudest. People speaking up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza are being imprisoned without evidence or due process. Even politicians who dare go against Trump are targets for arrest now. What is it going to take for Democrats to do more than break floor speech records over things that don’t matter and fight for the people they represent?

Our democracy is giving way to authoritarianism, and we can’t just wait for a Jedi to save us. We have to fight now.”

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Lastly, I’m still mad as hell at Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their minions for allowing a fascist swine like Trump to even compete to return to power in the first place. Ace investigative journalist Sarah Kendzior has been reporting on this since 2021 and she had another article that touches on the matter out this week:

“The Biden years were the best opportunity to gut the US mafia state, expose elite criminality, and bring consequences to those who committed state crimes and those who enabled them. Since this describes nearly everyone in government and also alienates those who seek to profit off this catastrophe instead of stopping it, they decided to let criminal impunity flourish instead.

As I wrote in 2023, Biden was a Placeholder President meant to fill time between two terms of Trump while a right-wing apparatus launched an attack on civil rights and the activist movements of the prior decade were drained of their power.”

This is something that the current American Resistance movement needs to remember —- it’s not just about rising up against the fascism of the Trump regime, but also the adjacent corruption within the Democratic Party that enabled Trump to run for President again in the first place…