Columnists

THE PUBLIC EYE: Obama’s Legacy: Drone Wars

Friday January 25, 2013 - 08:35:00 AM

After Barack Obama’s stirring second inaugural address, Democrats anticipate action on vital domestic issues, such as immigration reform and gun control. Nonetheless, the national security budget will continue to dominate discretionary expenditures, as the President pursues the “war” on terror using aerial robots – drones. -more-


AGAINST FORGETTING: Gender wars: women redefining customs as crimes

By Ruth Rosen
Thursday January 24, 2013 - 04:56:00 PM

The social movements of the 60s gave American women the skills to name and address the injuries they faced in their own lives, and led to a global women’s movement that is now facing a violent backlash. We need to know this history in order to fight for women’s rights today

The idea of gender equality has almost always had its origins in a civil war, a revolution or a social movement. In the United States, the women’s movement had its origins in the American civil rights and anti-war social movements of the sixties. What was called “The Movement” gave birth, after a long and hard labour, to a movement that eventually flourished in the United States and spread around the globe.

The conventional wisdom is that the men in the New Left in the United States treated women so badly, that they gradually began leaving to start a movement that addressed their own lives. This is true, but does not capture a more complicated picture of the past. The “Movement" was also a tremendous gift to young women in which they learned how to name injustices, question the supremacy of one group over another in the civil rights movement, and to challenge the authority of the government in the anti-war movement. -more-


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: The Effects of Quitting Medication Against Medical Advice

By Jack Bragen
Thursday January 24, 2013 - 11:29:00 AM

When a person with schizophrenia takes antipsychotic medication over time, it is possible that he or she may develop a tolerance to these drugs. A well-known doctor (whose name I will not mention) claims that certain prescription drugs produce the very diseases they are intended to treat. (I'm assuming he meant that this is because they create a tolerance.) This doesn't mean that someone with severe psychosis shouldn't be medicated-such a person is in trouble and needs the help of the medicine. -more-


Longevity

By Harry Brill
Friday January 25, 2013 - 08:37:00 AM

Last night a friend of mine passed away a month before he reached his 74th year birthday. Thanks to good hospice care, he was taken good care of in his final days.. But I am feeling now the pain of depression, and not only because of the death of this friend. Over the years I have buried lots of friends, relatives, and acquaintances younger than I am. In most of these instances, cancer was the culprit. Why? Because we live in a diseased environment that is killing people. The private sector is not only mainly to blame. Government agencies, whose purpose is to protect the public more often than not look the other way. To add insult to injury, it is our tax money that funds these agencies that in practice serve the major corporations. This is morally unjust and insane. -more-