BackboneAmerica

Remember Berlin
By Joe Gschwendtner

When Mamoru Shigemitsu, the Japanese foreign affairs minister, signed the surrender papers on board the USS Missouri in 1945, the drama of World War II drew to a close. The end of the war set the stage for another great play – one in Berlin where America would take center stage. Unlike the European continent, the United States emerged from the war physically strong, economically robust — and in a position of global leadership. As the sole owner of nuclear weapons, it would have been possible to dominate the defeated nations of Germany, Italy and Japan and destroy the malevolent Soviet Union. Instead, America harkened back to the spirit of Abraham Lincoln’s (more…)

What the Berlin Wall Anniversary Means
By Joe Gschwendtner

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this week. Anyone in Central or Eastern Europe today, 70 or older, has spent over two-thirds of their life under Communism or jackbooted Nazis. That is, unless your courage and ambition made you willing to risk life itself like our neighbor, Emerencia Marton Kanan. Emi was born into impoverished, post-war, Communist Hungary in 1945. At age four, weakened by ingested chemicals, Emi was near death on a straw bed until a man with rare Rh negative blood offered an 11th hour transfusion. (more…)

By Joe Gschwendtner

Poland’s expansive plains have made her lands a military corridor in regional skirmishes and world wars. Teutonic Knights, cavalry and tanks have controlled her vast spaces and she has been uniquely oppressed by outsiders. Outstripping this history and braving long odds, she is now a successful recovering Soviet client state, defiant and free, the beneficiary of a robust capitalism flourishing within her borders and Eastern Europe. We would do ourselves great harm to not remember that this is the Poland of Generals Kosciusko and Pulaski who fought for our freedom (more…)

When oil is not in the headlines, wind and solar energy gets the ink. Renewable energy is seen by some as the fix (more…)