Новости за 24.01.2025

Our concern with the politics, policies, and propaganda of Donald Trump underplays the central question of his presidency: Is Donald Trump psychologically fit to be president of the United States?  In Trump’s first term, psychiatrists and psychologists warned that our dangerously disordered president was a threat to domestic and international security.  The erratic behavior of Trump as a candidate in 2015-2016 and as a president in 2017-2021 led to the ethical principle known as the “duty to warn” of the danger he represented. Читать дальше...

Within days of his return to office, President Donald Trump unleashed a chilling display of authoritarianism, providing a stark reminder of the specter haunting the United States: the specter of fascism. As reported in the New York Times, his actions underscored a vision of governance steeped in cruelty and unchecked power.  With the stroke of a pen, Trump pardoned 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6th insurrection, dismantled environmental protections, opened Alaska’s wilderness to expanded oil and gas drilling... Читать дальше...

We’ve entered the era of smartphones and eugenics. “They’re eating cats, they’re eating dogs,” Trump had exclaimed frantically, echoing words that could’ve been uttered by a Klansman in the early 1920s, but now that very same level of toxicity having been beamed into households all across the world for whoever has the stomach to bear More

A wise man once told me that when the pendulum gets to the bottom it can only go up. “But how will I know it has gotten to the bottom?” I responded. Trump’s November 5 election and January 20 inauguration can be seen as a bottom, but perhaps they are only the tip of what More

On January 12, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, speaking to 350,000 people gathered in Mexico City’s Zócalo plaza, outlined her government’s accomplishments and prospects. Elected with a 60% plurality on June 2, 2024 as the Morena Party candidate, Mexico’s first woman president took office on October 1. Her approval rating is 80% That party, founded by More

Climate change deniers are experiencing a renaissance, especially on social media. In concert with this upswing in denialism, home insurance premiums are skyrocketing, or coverage is dropped altogether, a problem in coastal states. Indeed, it’s noteworthy that American real estate is the largest asset class in the world valued at $43.5 trillion that’s challenged for More

It was the perfect setting for a cage fight. The circular perimeter and dome soaring above were not enclosed with chain-link fencing coated in vinyl. The floor was not covered with a foam mat. No, this cage was made of bone crushing-marble. Padding to absorb brutal takedowns and the onslaught of hammerfists and guillotine chokes More

As he left office, President Biden warned of an emerging oligarchy in this country — rule by and for a small number of wealthy people and corporations. After donating heavily to President Trump’s campaign, the fossil fuel industry in particular has already begun to reap return on their investments. Welcome to the age of “Oil-Garchy.” More

How can the ineffective “partnership” mentality infecting almost all of US unions offer anything but tiny incremental and losing choices to the massive problems of outsourcing and AI? Two recent articles on AI / automation and outsourcing / immigration offer a glimpse of what faces labor unions and the working class as capital, emboldened by the election of Trump More

Farmed animals in the United States have minimal legal protections, and much of the abuse they endure is legal. Unfortunately, the federal Animal Welfare Act—which establishes protections for pets and nonhuman animals used for exhibition (like in zoos) and research—does not apply to farmed animals. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a poorly conceived regulatory More

As President Trump takes office, one of his first agenda items is to slash taxes on corporations and the rich. The results will be more inequality and less revenue for the programs Americans rely on. The good news? States can make their own tax codes more equitable. And everyday people can help. In our state, More

All that you touch you change.  All that you change changes you.  The only lasting truth is change.  God is change. –Lauren Oya Olamina, in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler The achievement of individual consciousness…to Jung, civilization’s highest achievement, the hope of our future.  But the tree grows only from deep roots….I will find [true myth] only in myself; More

Garbage, apparently, isn’t what it used to be. Last week someone in a luxury van trolled my street, rifling the stretch of bins for items of value. He refused my refuse but found caches of worth in many of my neighbors’ receptacles, spending close to a half hour in his pillage. Who knows how much More

“Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.” —Justice Neil Gorsuch That didn’t take long. Within days of Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights disappeared from the White House’s website. While the Trump Administration insists the removal of More

There are catchy phrases for legal non-doctrines that explain seeming anomalies in precedent. “Bad-man-stays-in-jail” doctrine, for example, recognizes that judges might bend the strict text of a law to uphold the conviction of a criminal convicted of horrific crimes. The “abortion distortion” referred to the logical writhing and wriggling in which judges would engage to More

It has been said and written many times that the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is “the first live broadcast war” in history. And that, as a result of this historic first, no one can now claim ignorance of what is happening in Palestine. Few, however, have asked themselves: thanks to whom was this war More

With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, advocates for peace, social justice, racial and economic equality, fair immigration policies, climate renewal, trans rights, and other movements for change are bracing for hard times. The new administration will be doggedly opposed to so many of the values we hold dear, as well as More

Los Angeles is burning, but it isn’t alone. In recent years, fires have blasted through cities in Colorado, the southern Appalachians and the island of Maui, along with Canada, Australia, Portugal and Greece. What wasn’t burned was smoked in. Is this another case of a future not only dire but strange, without a narrative to More

Georgia’s Department of Agriculture on January 17 announced a suspension of all poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets and sales due to the detection of a case of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza at a commercial poultry producer. A month earlier, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a State of Emergency to “streamline and expedite the state’s response More

What does it say about a society when its scholars turn increasingly to studies of the downfall of civilizations, the end of empires, the concept of human extinction, and even “existential risk”?  That scholarly attention in both Europe and America turned to something that was labeled “collapsology” in 2015, and an academic volume of Futures More

  Poldark series title card All men were born in the same way: no privilege existed which was not of man’s own contriving. – Winston Graham Ross Poldark (1945) Introduction The recent drama, Victoria (2016-2019) on Netflix based on the life of Queen Victoria is an elaborate, well-made and well-acted series, all the better to More

Art and politics should mix. In fact, art and politics do mix. This is true whether or not the viewer of the art recognizes this truth. There are some artists whose works leave no doubt. In the modern world, most art is used to sell things. The reader might argue that what I am talking More

Bioregioning. I’ve been seeing that word around more. Signifying the active process of making a bioregional life. The art of living in place, in tune with natural realities. Bioregionalism has that “ism” to it, which calls to an ideology. That’s okay. We need to start thinking in bioregional terms to come back into balance with More

My Possum my Opossum: Interchangeable in name and then: Buildings shine the same: Architecture is created and resolved similarly: They are categorically different but the same: Vastly different like Possum and Opossum, the words somehow germinated in some circles into one: Certainly the notion that they are interchangeable is false: Sometimes language unfortunately manifests a More