As a social justice activist and conflict resolution scholar-practitioner, I have always been particularly concerned with what motivates people to enter the theater of protest and civil resistance. It is a far more complicated question than what motivates people to start a career or a family because even the largest social movements are made up of a relative few, and …
Constitution Pipeline: ‘The Keystone Pipeline of Natural Gas’
“This Constitution pipeline is about enriching a few billionaires by impoverishing the people of New York State,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. “And the bullying that we’ve seen go along with this, the corruption—FERC is really a rogue agency, it’s a classic captive agency, it issued this permit illegally.” A popular movement is building against the …
Fear Dominates Politics, Media and Human Existence in America—And It’s Getting Worse
“Fear is the mind-killer” – Frank Herbert, Dune People cannot think clearly when they are afraid. As numerous studies have shown [3], fear is the enemy of reason. It distorts emotions and perceptions, and often leads to poor decisions. For people who have suffered trauma, fear messages can sometimes trigger uncontrollable flight-or-fight responses with dangerous ramifications. Yet over time, many interlocking aspects of …
My War on Terror
Dear American Patriot, I wish I knew your name. I’ve been thinking about you, about all of us actually and our country, and meaning to write for a while to explain myself. Let me start this way: you should feel free to call me an American nationalist. It may sound ugly as hell, but it’s one way I do think …
Breaking: Google gives new meaning to “Orwellian” — Becomes Ministry of Truth
“…if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.”(1984, George Orwell) The New Scientist has the stunning story (2/28/15, “Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links,” by Hal Hodson): “THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free ‘news’ stories spread like wildfire. Google …
Corporate-Friendly Democrats Mobilize to Drag Party Rightward
Afraid “a sharp turn to the left could prove disastrous in the 2016 elections,” factions within the Democratic Party more closely aligned with Wall Street and other corporate interests than with the progressive left are “gathering their forces to fight back against the ‘Elizabeth Warren wing’ of their party,” The Hill reportedMonday. Framed as a fight between so-called “centrists” of the party …
The BRICS Plus Germany
Winston Churchill once said, “I feel lonely without a war.” He also badly missed the loss of empire. Churchill’s successor – the ‘Empire of Chaos’ – now faces the same quandary. Some wars – as in Ukraine, by proxy – are not going so well. And the loss of empire increasingly manifests itself in myriad moves by selected players aiming …
The Failing Animal Research Paradigm for Human Diseases
“The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades—and it simply didn’t work in humans.” This statement was made by Richard Klausner, M.D., former director of the National Cancer Institute, to the Los Angeles Times(Cimons 1998). It is a statement that applies equally to many other common …
Former Mooresville child compensated by federal ‘vaccine court’
As they started their family, Mooresville residents Theresa and Lucas Black dutifully got their children immunized, never doubting their doctor’s word that vaccines are safe and necessary. But their faith in those promises was shaken in 2001, when their 3-month-old daughter, Angelica, developed life-threatening seizures and brain damage just three days after getting several vaccinations. The child’s Charlotte neurologist diagnosed …
Legal cannabis generating so much tax revenue in CO that government may have to give some back to residents!
The Colorado legislature is desperately trying to finagle its way out of having to refund an excess of tax revenues generated from legal cannabis sales in the Centennial State. So much tax money has been brought into the state’s coffers since marijuana was legalized in 2014 that a portion of it will have to be refunded to taxpayers in accordance …