By Mattea Kramer and Sean Fogler ( Tomdispatch.com) – Amid ongoing emergencies, including a would-be autocrat on his way to possibly regaining the American presidency and Israel’s war on Gaza (not to mention the flare-ups of global climate change), the U.S. has slipped quietly toward an assault on civil liberties as an answer to plummeting […]
- Africa (233)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,215)
- Australasia (8)
- Australia (24)
- Authoritarianism (382)
- Canada (5)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (509)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (319)
- Dissent (416)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (1,011)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (48)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (15)
- Industry (4)
- Inequality (416)
- Inflation (4)
- infrastructure (10)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (197)
- Plutocracy (607)
- Poverty (201)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (36)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (113)
- Weapons sales (6)
- Education (121)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,688)
- Batteries (47)
- Coal (137)
- Fossil Fuels (317)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (407)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (5)
- Hydroelectric (13)
- Natural Gas (106)
- Nuclear Energy (156)
- Petroleum (296)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (394)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (328)
- Environment (2,572)
- Climate Change (1,527)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (24)
- Biodiversity (12)
- Climate Refugees (2)
- CO2 (108)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (145)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (158)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Weather (293)
- Flooding (131)
- Food Supply (1)
- Forests (17)
- Green New Deal (39)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (60)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (11)
- Sea Level (332)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (249)
- wildfires (229)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,224)
- Drought (284)
- Ecology (9)
- Environmentalism (391)
- Green Transportation (249)
- Ice Melt (130)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (98)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (226)
- Water (92)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,527)
- Europe (1,324)
- Featured (3,818)
- fiction (5)
- Food (13)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (653)
- History (339)
- Human Rights (1,365)
- Apartheid (255)
- censorship (274)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (549)
- Food Insecurity (5)
- Gay rights (28)
- Genocide (17)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Migrants (4)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Torture (96)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (99)
- Unlwful Killing (74)
- War Crimes (352)
- War Rape (7)
- Immigration (20)
- International (786)
- Islamophobia (373)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (97)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (466)
- Middle East (9,158)
- Arab World (5,128)
- Iran (1,267)
- Israel (860)
- Israel/ Palestine (2,969)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (289)
- Turkey (573)
- Turkiye (99)
- military (123)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (115)
- NATO (36)
- Natural Disasters (13)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- nuclear weapons (102)
- Patriarchy (10)
- Peace (132)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (12)
- privacy (21)
- racism (461)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,450)
- Rights (139)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (145)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (278)
- Terrorism (1,086)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,075)
- United Nations (130)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,248)
- US politics (5,191)
- Anti-War Movement (12)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (62)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (76)
- Conspiracy Theories (21)
- Constitution (394)
- Courts (11)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (925)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (123)
- Ethnicities (377)
- Far Right (381)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (94)
- Immigration (234)
- Israel Lobbies (121)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (271)
- National Security State (471)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (554)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (8)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (12)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (15)
- Reproductive Choice (66)
- Republican Party (2,904)
- Supreme Court (123)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (5)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (487)
- White Supremacists (223)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (548)
- workers (230)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (207)
Mental Health
How Trees and Forests Heal us and make for Well-Being,
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Korean scientists have confirmed that walking through forest areas improved older women’s blood pressure, lung capacity and elasticity in their arteries. Walking in an urban park with trees, or an arboretum, or a rural forest reduces blood pressure, improves cardiac-pulmonary parameters, bolsters mental health, reduces negative thoughts, […]
One is the Loneliest Number, especially when the One is Trump
By Mattea Kramer and Sean Fogler ( Tomdispatch.com) – Consider two phenomena that might seem unrelated. This fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data showing a marked increase in overdose fatalities nationally. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN that she had expected overdose deaths to […]
World Health Organization: Gaza faces Epidemics; 449 Israeli Attacks on Health Services in Palestine
( Middle East Monitor ) – World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday confirmed more than 449 attacks on health services in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, saying “now the work of the health workers is impossible.” Speaking at a special session organised by the WHO executive board on […]
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (Review)
Review of Peter Attia’s recent book, with Bill Gifford, OUTLIVE: THE SCIENCE & ART OF LONGEVITY, (New York: Harmony Books, 2023), $16.24. Auburn, Al. (Special to Informed Comment) – Peter Attia, M.D. received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and trained at John Hopkins Hospital in General Surgery and worked at the […]
How to Enroll Intelligently in Medicare – A Consumers Guide 2024
Gainesville, FL (Special to Informed Comment)- Medicare open enrollment season begins October 15th, running through Dec.7, 2023. And very soon, everyone will be bombarded with new smarmy health insurance Medicare Advantage ads featuring healthy and happy-looking seniors playing tennis and telling us how wonderful their Medicare Advantage plan is and how much of a no-brainer […]
How Lebanon was shaped by its Great Famine in WW I
Brand, Tylor. Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. Review of Tylor Brand, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – Suez, Gallipoli, Kut al-Amara, and Jerusalem saw […]
Trump’s Indictment for Jan. 6: Revisiting “Psychopathocracy”
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A Grand Jury empaneled by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has issued an indictment (full text here) against Donald John Trump on four counts, Smith delivered a statement, saying, “Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring […]
Hunting the Military Extremist: How Disturbed is the U.S. Military?
By Nan Levinson ( Tomdispatch.com) – In April, when Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman with a top-secret clearance, was arrested for posting a trove of classified documents about the Russia-Ukraine war online, the question most often asked was: How did such a young, inexperienced, low-level technician have access to such sensitive material? […]