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It’s January, yet methane hydrates in the Arctic are growling like an incensed monster on a scorching hot mid-summer day. But, it is January; it’s winter, not July!

On January 1st Arctic methane at 2,764 ppb spiked upwards into the atmosphere, which, according to Arctic News: “Was likely caused by methane hydrate destabilization in the sediments on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.” ((“Unfolding Arctic Catastrophe”, Arctic News, January 2, 2018.))  Once again, with emphasis, it’s January; it’s winter, and there’s little or no sunshine above the Arctic Circle. So, what gives? Why are alarming levels of methane spewing into the …

Since November 2015 unprecedented protests have been taking place in Ethiopia: angry and frustrated at the widespread abuse of human rights and the centralization of power in the hands of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) tens of thousands have taken to the streets. The ruling party’s response to this democratic outpouring has been consistently violent; hundreds have been killed and beaten by security forces, tens of thousands arrested and imprisoned.

In an attempt to gag the people, a highly repressive State of Emergency was imposed in August 2016. It failed, the protests continued, the movement strengthened. The regime then tried …

Should progressives support the efforts of Trump and Putin to bring about rapprochement between Russia and the U.S.? Or to use Trump’s terminology, should progressives support the effort to “get along with Russia”?

This might seem like a no-brainer.  After all Russia and the U.S. are the world’s major nuclear powers.  A war or a mistake resulting in a nuclear exchange would reduce much of the planet to radioactive rubble, ending civilization as we know it, and perhaps even putting the continued existence of the human race at risk.  And yet there are virtually no voices in the progressive community calling …

So. The US economy is just fine. The post-recession 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation has cured all. Banks have lots of cash. Congress is your friend and that certain-to-pass Tax Cut and Jobs bill will finally allow you, your family and America to… MAGA.

Really?!

“I’m sorry, Sir. We are unable to cash this check,” were the ominous words delivered to me by a fresh-faced, none-too-friendly, Wells Fargo Bank manager. He had just kept me waiting ten minutes while in consultation about my requested transaction. Returning to his cubicle he sat down quickly, now looking at me intently through narrowed eyes.

Three feet away, between …

I have the feeling that Hollywood awards shows enjoy a robust secret life of viewership among radicals and assorted cultural snobs—it’s like that impulsive, furtive dash to McDonald’s in the dead of night, driving you almost without will or consciousness to line up for that Big Mac and fries, wracked with at least one evening’s worth of self-loathing in the aftermath of this crime against your and the planet’s well-being. With the Oscars and Golden Globes, it’s only two nights of malicious ogling and masochistic stupefaction per year, so you say, what the hell, and jump in, knowing that these …

As a practicing neurologist, as well as a Marxist and socialist feminist, Dr. Bandy Lee’s best-selling anthology caught my eye.  I have learned over many years how oblivious contemporary American psychiatry and psychology are, with some heartening exceptions, to the role capitalism plays in the production and circulation of mental illness.  I wondered if this book would do better.

Sadly, it does not.  In fact, if Donald Trump is as dangerous as the authors claim, then their volume is at least as dangerous, because both their analysis of and solution …

Kabul — The number of visitors passing through the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ (APVs’) Borderfree Nonviolence Community Center in Kabul is incredible. Each afternoon, nearly sixty high-school-age students attend free classes to prepare them for the rigorous KanKor test, required of every Afghan desiring to attend public university. By 8:00 this morning, women from neighboring districts had begun arriving on foot, by taxi, or on bicycle, bringing hand-sewn duvets which the young APV’s will distribute to the city’s poor. There is no sign on the door; the address is not published; there is no central telephone number. And yet they come….

The warlords of history are still kicking our heads in, and no one, not our fathers, not our Gods, is coming to save us.

— Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates,We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled: it will not hear the case of Young v. Borders.

Despite the fact that a 26-year-old man was gunned down by police who banged on the wrong door at 1:30 am, failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the innocent homeowner who answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense, the justices of …

The Trump Administration continues to plant more seeds for the coming era of transformation that we have written about in recent newsletters, Preparing for the Coming Age of Transformation and Ensuring Justice in the Coming Age of Transformation. It continues to put policies in place that go against national consensus on critical issues and is conducting a foreign policy that isolates the United States from the rest of the world.

With each of these actions, the spring that will create the boomerang of transformation gets compressed further. This week, we focus on three areas: allowing federal prosecution of marijuana …

This is the second in a two-part article on the debt burden America’s students face. Read Part 1 here.

The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself.

“Students should not be asked …

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Chicago, March 25, 1966.

It is the year 2018, and yet not a day goes by when a patient is unable to receive good care or a doctor questions their career choice.  How have we arrived at this tragic state of affairs? The answer is that our for-profit health care system is the principal cause, not only of poor patient care, but also of physician burnout. Only with a single-payer system, …

If opposing Israel is anti-semitism then what do you call supporting a state that has been engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing for seven decades. What does that make you?

It’s a question posed by Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew and son of an Israeli general, former Israeli soldier and now a leading voice in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. You couldn’t find a more authentic insider.

What else has Peled been saying about Israel?

The name of the game: erasing Palestine, getting rid of the people and de-Arabizing the country…

As for talk about Israel giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state:

If …

(Full article …)

The Israeli government is planning a series of measures aimed at fully denying Palestinians their legal rights in Jerusalem and precluding any future peace settlement based on sharing the city between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

One of the most aggressive measures to date is a bill that was approved by the Israeli Knesset on Tuesday, January 2.

The bill, which passed with the support of Israel’s ruling right wing and far-right coalition has several dangerous stipulations.

According to the bill, two thirds of the Knesset majority is required for Israel to relinquish sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. International law …

Because he was not a partisan in the Cold War between the U.S./NATO and the U.S.S.R, Albert Camus was an oddball.  As a result, he was criticized by the right, left, and center.  His allegiance was to truth, not ideologies.  He opposed state murder, terrorism, and warfare from all quarters.  An artistic anarchist with a passionate spiritual hunger, an austere and moral Don Juan, this sensual man of conscience and honor earned his reputation by a lifelong literary meditation on death in all its guises: disease (he was constantly threatened by tuberculosis), murder, suicide, capital punishment, war, etc.; deaths both …

Most Americans recently polled reportedly seem to hold favorable opinions about America’s corporations. ((Maniam, S. Most Americans see labor unions, corporations favorably Pew Research Center, January 30, 2017.)) If true, it means that most Americans don’t know what I know and what they need to know. Trained as an organizational psychologist much of my research and consultative work during my career were for government agencies at the local, state and federal level. But I also have studied exhaustively the corporate side of organized life and have written more about it than the government side. ((See my books: Corporate Reckoning Ahead. …