Church leaders didn’t want me there. The minister had even called me into her office to ask me to stop passing out anti-war flyers and articles on the Iraq War. Why? Because I led a church peace group that was …
February 27, 2020: The Lockdown Plan Goes Public
I did not know it at the time. I was preparing for a trip to Utah with my husband. I was vaguely aware that there was a virus of concern in China, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I …
Health: Factors, Paradoxes, and Dark Matter
Sixty years ago, the first of a remarkable series of articles appeared in the medical literature describing the curious lack of cardiovascular deaths in Roseto, Pennsylvania in comparison to surrounding towns. Roseto, Pennsylvania had been settled predominantly by immigrants from …
Jesus or…Amazon…Loves You
“Jesus Loves You. Jesus is there for you when you need him,” reads a children’s book at the Barnes & Noble bookstore almost four years after lockdowns descended on this country and all over the world. With what children and …
Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched
“Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare quotes the soothsayer’s warning Julius Caesar about what turned out to be an impending assassination on March 15. The death of American liberty happened around the same time four years ago, when the orders …
Divided We Fall
The presidential election is still 8 months away. Yet the campaign to preclude a second Trump administration has already reached a fever pitch. In the course of the past two weeks, the public has been treated to “searing” images of …
Health Care: Right, Privilege, or Neither?
Much of the current debate surrounding health care – putting aside momentarily the catastrophic failure of the public health system during the pandemic – is whether or not it is a “right” or a “privilege.”
Critically, though, what should be …
The Playmobil Society vs. The Game of Nations
Language, and by extension its emergent feature, narrative, is one of the distinctive characteristics that make us human. Humans are “storytelling animals,” as literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall would say; cultural philosopher Ernst Cassirer called man an “animal symbolicum” (or “symbolizing …
The History of Public Health Colonialism
In a world where ‘equity’ is the catch-cry of corporatists accumulating unprecedented wealth, the return of colonialism should not surprise. Colonialism, after all, brings great benefits to those whom it disempowers and pillages. Success requires a highly centralized approach to …
WHO’s Guilty of Fake News, Now?
“A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood,” poet William Shenstone once wrote. These words are likely to strike a chord with those who have been following the World Health …
How the Sea Turns Stones Into Pebbles
One of the favorite pastimes of my often competitive family growing up was seeing who could get the most “skips” from a stone thrown into the low-tide waters at the beach. This is a game that, as anyone who has …
A Close Look at the Amici Briefs in Murthy v. Missouri
The convergence of state and corporate power has spawned unexpected bedfellows as Stanford University, the CATO Institute, and Letitia James have joined forces to support the censorship regime in Murthy v. Missouri.
The David and Goliath dynamic of the case …
Technocrats Cut Ireland at the Knees
Driving home after Christmas, we pulled in at the last toll plaza on the M8 to Cork. It had been dark for hours with ‘Storm Gerrit’ still pelting. As I lowered the window to hold out my card, a voice …
Technology: Weapon of the People
In an essay titled “Looking forward, looking backward,’ philosopher of technology, Andrew Feenberg writes (in Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity, The MIT Press, 2010, p. 61; my emphasis, B.O.):
The utopian and dystopian visions of the …
Technology: Weapon of the People
In an essay titled “Looking forward, looking backward,’ philosopher of technology, Andrew Feenberg writes (in Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity, The MIT Press, 2010, p. 61; my emphasis, B.O.):
The utopian and dystopian visions of the …