Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Articles”
The March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused extensive human suffering—evacuations, emotional trauma and premature deaths, disrupted jobs and schooling. What they have not caused, so far, is radiation-related illness among the general public, and few specialists expect dramatic increases in cancers or other ailments. The reactors spewed just a tenth of the radiation emitted by …
Lesson of 1972 isn’t that progressive nominees lose. Dems lose when they are out of step with voters, like Hillary KATHY DONOHUE This election cycle, Democratic Party leaders are pleading with younger voters to heed the lessons of history. Echoing George Santayana’s famous warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” they urge millennials to take …
Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan. Wall Street is smiling. Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private sector gain. There are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create more jobs in …
Yasmin Mulbocus clutches her hijab as she sees images on TV of young women returning home from Syria. She hears them talk about how they escaped from the clutches of ISIS. Mulbocus sees herself in them—her former self. This 40-year-old mother of three with piercing black eyes, who speaks at what seems like a thousand words a minute, who elicits …
Physicists announced recently that they had discovered gravitational waves, confirming a one hundred year-old prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity theory. As remarkable as the discovery seems, it does little or nothing to resolve a profound quandary in physics that is indicative of a larger dilemma within the whole idea of the “scientific world-view.” First let me say why this matters …
Secretary Hillary Clinton is asking Democratic voters to believe that she has experienced a “Road to Damascus” conversion from her roots as a leader of the “New Democrats” – the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party. When exactly this conversion occurred is never stated, but an interesting fact has emerged that demonstrates it did not occur during her service …
In the current age of free-market frenzy, privatization, commodification and deregulation, Americans are no longer bound by or interested in historical memory, connecting narratives or modes of thinking that allow them to translate private troubles into broader systemic considerations. As Irving Howe once noted, “the rhetoric of apocalypse haunts the air” accompanied by a relentless spectacle that flattens time, disconnects …
Statins, the widely prescribed class of drugs said to lower “bad” cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart problems, has recently come under fire after a study revealed that they destroy human health more than they work to improve it. Sadly, many people take statin drugs, which are commonly known by brand names including Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor. Prescription drug …
Climate change could bring about more than 500,000 extra adult deaths a year by 2050 – simply by reducing the supply of fruit and vegetables available to millions. Although restricted food production could reduce health risks linked to the growing epidemic of obesity worldwide, any such benefits will be wiped away by the greater toll of undernourishment, according to new research that …
When United States President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he said: “Perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.” Obama meant the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, although this is a modest answer. …
