Author: Evan Rose

Afghanistan’s Education Crisis: A Plea For Global Policy Measures Against Taliban Indoctrination

Posted on January 10, 2024

The author, an Afghan legal scholar, laments the Taliban’s ever-strengthening grip on Afghan education, but argues that hope is not lost for the country’s women and girls…

“The Taliban’s new curriculum is all about killing people in the name of Jihad,” a Kabul-based teacher* told me in a recent interview.

“I’m not going to teach that material, even if I know it means I will almost certainly lose my job,” the teacher said, citing an early draft of the new curriculum.

Upon seizing the capital in 2021, the Taliban promptly set about barring girls and women from attending school. Initially, they said these students would be able to return to school in early 2022, but here we are in early 2024, and their return has yet to materialize. Despite the hopeful anticipation of millions of female students across Afghanistan, the Taliban ultimately reversed their decision, opting instead to keep half of Afghanistan’s population essentially imprisoned in their own homes.

Human rights and education activists around the world have sounded the alarm, publicly counting the number of days Afghanistan’s women and girls have been deprived of their rights to an education, and adopting hashtags like #LetAfghanGirlsGoToSchool and #LetAfghanGirlsLearn in a bid to publicly shame the regime.

Unsurprisingly, the Taliban appears to be internalizing no such shame. To the contrary, in December 2022 they banned women from pursuing higher education in universities. And rather than allowing girls to return to their general studies, they have slowly begun to build madrasas across the country.

Madrasas may be educational institutions, but they do not prepare women and girls to participate in public life.

As described in a recent JURIST interview by educational activist and father of Malala, Ziauddin Yousafzai:

Madrasa education is only helpful for educating women and girls on performing basic religious rituals and activities, like prayers, going to Hajj, taking ablution, and certain moral issues. But you cannot run modern institutions without modern education. You cannot run a hospital with a madrasa education. You cannot run a business with a madrasa education. You cannot fly an airplane with a madrasa education. You can’t even drive a car with a madrasa education. It is not an education that will teach girls and women to participate in the economy. It is not a modern education.

And even beyond these limitations, under the Taliban, Madrasa curricula can be concretely damaging. Crafted in accordance with the Taliban’s uniquely strict interpretation of Islamic law, the regime’s draft madrasa curricula for men and women alike aim not to foster education, but rather to give rise to a new generation of jihadists.

The regime’s approach to education has been pilloried for its prioritization of indoctrination underpinned by a lack of understanding of Islamic principles. [Ed: While interpretations of Islamic law vary broadly around the world, the Taliban’s interpretation has been described by scholars as a blend of Deobandi jurisprudence and the group’s own “lived experience as a predominantly rural and tribal society”]. The regime takes pride in the high number of Taliban suicide attacks in the last two decades, and it aims to instill its peculiar ideological interpretations in every child in Afghanistan.

So what’s left for the women and girls of Afghanistan? Should we accept defeat? Or is there a way out of this crisis — an option that could ensure we will receive a safe and proper education, and that we can build our country and serve our nation in what we hope will be a brighter future ahead?

I would argue that there’s still hope.

Option 1: International Scholarships for Afghanistan’s Women and Girls

Realistically, it’s hard to conclude anything other than that for women and girls in Afghanistan today, a madrasa education is worse than having no education at all. But a far better solution is to create pathways for women and girls to study abroad. By offering scholarship opportunities to Afghanistan’s women and girls, universities, individuals, and organizations could move mountains in terms of preventing lost time and wasted talent.

In late August 2023, the Taliban blocked a group of female students at Kabul airport from traveling to study in the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, in mid-November 2023, the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education prevented some 500 male students from leaving the country for a scholarship program in Russia.

Despite the heartbreaking situation, organizations must not give up. It’s a matter of life and the loss of time and energy. The international community, governments, and their special representatives should exert pressure on the Taliban. Instead of urging them to open schools and universities within the country, the focus should be on allowing people, especially women and girls, to study abroad, as there is no longer a safe and proper education for all students in Afghanistan. The risk is that without proper education, more students might become radicalized, resembling groups like ISIS and Hamas, who disregard human lives and exploit individuals [source].

Option 2: Offer Afghanistan’s Women and Girls Online Education and Certification Programs

Between Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain and its ongoing economic crisis, it is nearly impossible for the majority of the population to depend on reliable internet access. But steps can be taken to remove some of the resulting obstacles from the paths of women and girls seeking educational options.

One option would be for billionaire Elon Musk to offer internet access to the country, just as he has to Ukraine via the Starlink system. Activists have been advocating for this option since at least last year.

Another option would be to create a mechanism that would enable Afghanistan’s women and girls to pursue certifications through hybrid or correspondence learning. Global universities and schools could contribute to this initiative by sharing the policies and strategies they employed during the global COVID pandemic for online education. This collaborative effort could also open avenues to deploy female teachers who lost their jobs due to the ban on female students’ education in schools and universities. Teaching online would not only contribute to the education process but also offer these teachers an opportunity to regain employment.

Now is the time for action, and everyone should contribute whatever they can to ensure that no one is forcibly indoctrinated by the Taliban. Supporting and assisting female Afghan students in obtaining a proper and secure education is crucial, not only to protecting their own fundamental rights, but to securing the futures of Afghan citizens generations to come.

The author of this commentary is an Afghan legal scholar who cannot be named for security reasons. 

*The teacher requested anonymity, also for security reasons. 

Mainstream Media Is Playing Into Trump’s Neo-Fascist Hands

Posted on January 8, 2024

I’m sticking with democracy and the Guardian. I trust the Guardian to illuminate what’s really happening as America faces an election in which one of the two likely candidates engaged in an attempted coup. The reason I write a column for the Guardian is the same reason I read it daily: I trust it.

Not just the facts it conveys but also its judgment about what to convey – the stories it believes worthy of reporting, and doing it in ways that illuminate what’s really happening.

That judgment is especially important as the US faces an election in 2024 in which one of the two likely candidates was engaged in an attempted coup and has given every indication of wanting to substitute neo-fascism for democracy.

Again and again, the mainstream media have drawn a false equivalence between Donald Trump and Joe Biden – asserting that Biden’s political handicap is his age while Trump’s corresponding handicap is his criminal indictments.

But Trump is almost as old as Biden, and Trump’s public remarks and posts are becoming ever more unhinged – suggesting that advancing age may be a bigger problem for Trump than for Biden.

The Guardian has been picking up on this, but why isn’t the mainstream media reporting on Trump’s increasing senescence?

Similarly, every time the mainstream media reveal another move by the Republican Party toward authoritarianism, they point out some superfluous fault in the Democratic party in order to provide “balance”.

So readers are left to assume all politics is rotten.

A recent Washington Post article was headlined: “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics.”

“How do Americans feel about politics?” the New York Times asked recently, answering:

“Disgust isn’t a strong enough word.”

But where is it reported that the mainstream media have contributed to making people tired and disgusted with politics?

And where is it acknowledged that this helps Trump and his Republican allies?

They want voters to be so turned off of politics that they’re unaware of Biden’s accomplishments, such as an economy that continues to generate a large number of new jobs, with real (adjusted for inflation) wages finally trending upward, inflation dropping and no recession in sight.

Plus, billions of dollars pumped out to fix and improve the nation’s roads, ports, pipelines and internet. Hundreds of billions allocated to combat climate change. Medicare, now lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Billions in student debt canceled. Monopolies attacked. Workers’ rights to organize, defended.

One person interviewed by the Post admitted, “I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.”

As if the “us-against-them politics” is the fault of Democrats as much as it is Republicans, when in fact the GOP is the party of dysfunctional politics.

Much of the GOP no longer accepts the rule of law, the norms of liberal democracy, the legitimacy of the opposing party or the premise that governing requires negotiation and compromise.

Why isn’t this being reported?

Trump and his allies want Americans to feel so disgusted with politics they believe the nation has become ungovernable. The worse things seem, the stronger Trump’s case for an authoritarian like him to take over: “I’d get it done in one day.” “I am your voice.” “Leave it all to me.”

By focusing on Trump’s rantings and ignoring Biden’s steady hand, the mainstream media are playing directly into Trump’s neo-fascist hands.

I’m sticking with democracy, and the Guardian.

Statement In Remembrance Of January 6th

Posted on January 6, 2024

WASHIINGTON – U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) released the following statement on the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection:

“Three years ago today, we witnessed the deadliest and most destructive attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. What happened on January 6, 2021 was a violent insurrection — an attempt to stop the certification of a free and fair election.

“After the House floor was cleared that day, I was left trapped in the Gallery with about 30 other members. I remember hearing the pounding on the doors, the shouting and screaming of both those trying to overrun the institution and those putting their lives on the line to defend it.

“I wasn’t sure I would make it out alive, and some of the brave officers who fought to protect us tragically lost their lives. The sacrifices they made for our country will never be forgotten, and I am eternally grateful to all those who helped preserve our democracy that day.

“But the horrific events didn’t stop after January 6th — the former president and many in his party continue to this day to fan the flames of political violence. This led to events around the country, including a man showing up to my home with a gun, shouting threats and profanities.

“The January 6th Committee did amazing work, uncovering disturbing details and showing the nation just how close we were to losing our democracy that day. The Department of Justice has also continued to hold those who stormed the Capitol accountable — a necessary step in ensuring this never happens again.

“As a Member of Congress, I see democracy at work almost everyday, and it is a beautiful thing. Those who attempt to undermine and destroy it have zero business in places of power — not the House, not the Senate, and certainly not the presidency.

“Democracy is sacred. It is a principle we must consistently engage with as we work to protect and improve America. Three years after the horrific events of January 6th, I am grateful for the democracy we still have and am more committed than ever to defending its existence.

“We all must remember that Jan 6th, 2025 may be right around the corner as we move into another presidential election. Almost a third of Americans still believe Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen. We must all stand up and work to protect our democracy and remember just how fragile it is.”

Jayapal was trapped in the House Gallery on January 6th, after many members had been evacuated from the chamber. In the aftermath, she has been a vocal critic of President Trump’s role in the insurrection and joins a group of members that are suing the former President for his role that day.

Democrats Must Not Repeat The Mistakes Of Globalization

Posted on January 5, 2024

The New York Times 

Last September, tech’s biggest names trekked to Capitol Hill for a forum on artificial intelligence. In a meeting closed to journalists, executives briefed nearly two-thirds of the Senate on the future of A.I. A few respected labor and civic leaders were present, but the tech titans dominated the headlines.

There’s an assumption in Silicon Valley that the first trillionaire may well be an A.I. entrepreneur, so tech leaders were eager to share their thoughts on some rules of the road. They warned of killer robots and the “Terminator” scenario, of misinformation and fake videos but gave short shrift to broader issues of economic fairness and wealth disparity that are of more urgent concern to most Americans.

Watching Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Sam Altman lead a confab on the ethical principles and regulations that should guide A.I. development was reminiscent of Davos conferences in the 1990s and early 2000s.

You remember the story that those Davos conferences broadcast to the world: Everyone will be able to get a knowledge job. Consumer goods will become cheaper. Globalization coupled with the internet will lead to prosperity for everyone.

Well, it didn’t quite work out that way.

What these Davos participants missed was how unfettered globalization hollowed out the working class here at home. We are all familiar with the consequences now: shuttered factories and rural communities that never saw the promised jobs materialize. As the American dream slipped away from them, many people developed deep and justified resentment. They saw the obscene concentration of wealth and opportunity in districts like mine in the heart of Silicon Valley. The evangelists for the new economy were prescient about the wealth generation that globalization and the internet would unleash but wrong that it would increase economic opportunities for all Americans.

Like globalization, A.I. will undoubtedly bring benefits — tremendous benefits — to our economy, with higher productivity, personalized medicine and education and more efficient energy use. Generative A.I. has the potential to help those with fewer resources or experience quickly learn and develop new skills. The real challenge, though, is how to center the dignity and economic security of working-class Americans during the changes to come. And unlike the Industrial Revolution, which spanned half a century at least, the A.I. revolution is unfolding at lightning speed.

Today the Democratic Party is at a crossroads, as it was in the 1990s, when the dominant wing in the party argued for prioritizing private-sector growth and letting the chips fall where they may. The criticism of this approach offered around that time by Senator Paul Wellstone, Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Bernie Sanders (as he was then) — that the offshoring globalization debacle was not helping the working class and was, in fact, hurting it — was largely ignored.

When it comes to A.I., the fault lines for the Democratic Party similarly run between business and labor, between donors and grass-roots activists and between those concerned foremost with our global competitiveness and those concerned with the economic well-being of the working class.

The tension between business and labor became clear in the battle over proposed legislation in California, A.B. 316, which divided me and many California legislators from Gov. Gavin Newsom. The bill would have required, for at least five years, a human driver on board self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds that are transporting goods or passengers.

Tech companies argue that replacing human drivers with A.I. is feasible, will reduce labor costs and will therefore make it cheaper to transport goods and services. They lobbied heavily against the bill. The bill nonetheless passed overwhelmingly, with support from more than 80 percent of the California Legislature and more than 70 percent of California voters. Unfortunately, Mr. Newsom sided with the business advocates in September and vetoed the bill.

I supported A.B. 316 because drivers say it’s currently an unnecessary risk to have large trucks on public roads without a human on board. This is especially true if there is extreme weather, hazardous conditions or heavy cargo on board. No one understands the safety risks at play here better than the drivers themselves, and it’s both foolish and insulting to suggest they would make up such concerns to keep jobs that do not add value. We wouldn’t trust planes to fly without pilots, even with the most sophisticated and well-tested autopilot systems, and we shouldn’t trust large trucks to drive without operators.

It’s not just the A.I. concerns of truck drivers that are causing divides in the Democratic coalition. Last summer, some California politicians were hesitant to support the Writers Guild of America strike publicly, given Hollywood’s cultural importance and fund-raising power. I was proud to join the picket line. As in the case of self-driving trucks, the issue comes down to giving workers a say.

Writers were intrigued by the ways A.I. could help as a research tool and unlock new potential for movies and TV but were concerned that studios might rush to use A.I. to write cookie-cutter scripts and sacrifice imagination and creativity on the altar of profits. It’s better for writers, not executives, to slowly discover the best uses of A.I. in entertainment. In their new contract with the studios, the writers won important A.I. guardrails concerning credits and compensation — protections that can evolve over time. Even though writers’ jobs are very different from truck drivers’ jobs, labor solidarity is one of the few countervailing forces that can blunt the dehumanization of work motivated by short-term profit maximization in a world where A.I. is capable of suddenly disrupting both blue- and white-collar work.

That said, workers need more than just a voice and guardrails. They should also share in company profits, whether they are working for a trucking company, a production studio or a car manufacturer. Like many chief executives, workers should receive compensation based on profits and the company’s performance, not solely hours worked. It’s the only way workers can fully thrive as A.I. increases America’s productive capacity.

Of course, there are Beltway skeptics of pro-labor policies. What about the threat that leading A.I. companies will flee to China if we pay workers here more? they ask. Don’t raise worker bonuses or have them share in profits, or we’ll lose the global race, they warn. We caved to that blackmail in the 1990s and 2000s, and look where it has landed us. Ordinary Americans are tired of hearing about abstract notions of our global competitiveness while their pay doesn’t keep up and their costs of living rise.

There are already reports that A.I. could displace tens of thousands of jobs this year at big companies, potentially causing damage to their culture and their local communities — and starting a concerning trend. A work force committee at each company should weigh in on how A.I. could help employees better do their existing jobs, whether new hiring should slow down and what new credentialing or roles for affected employees could look like before restructuring and letting people go.

This is not to dismiss the need for dynamism, fluidity and flexibility in our markets. American companies must continue to adopt cutting-edge technology. These technologies can unleash a manufacturing revolution here at home — which America should celebrate, in part because jobs in the trades that require craftsmanship appear less likely to be eliminated. It’s a development that can reverse the decline of new American factories. Even so, federal policy should require public companies to have active worker participation when making decisions on how A.I. will change jobs that have functions that might be automated and provide tax incentives to companies that give workers a direct stake in their profits.

Here’s the balance we need to strike. We should encourage disruptive innovation at our universities, start-ups and even large companies but prioritize the perspective and earnings of workers in the adoption of any such technology that develops. This is a vision for democratic innovation that will still allow us to compete economically and militarily but not at all human costs. Democratic innovation recognizes that the need for social cohesion may be the ultimate determiner of the success of the American experiment and American leadership.

The Democratic Party cannot claim to be the party of the working class if we allow A.I. to erode the earnings and security of the working class. The party can be forgiven once for the mistake of abetting globalization to run amok, just not twice.

Technologies — our technologies — are meant to complement and enhance human initiative, not subordinate or exploit it. We must push for workers to have a decision-making role in how and when to adopt technologies, and we must insist on workers’ profiting from the implementation of these technologies. Our generational task is to ensure that A.I. is a tool for lessening the vast disparities of wealth and opportunity that plague us, not exacerbating them.

Ro Khanna, who represents the 17th Congressional District in California, which includes Silicon Valley, is the author of “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us.”

An Odd Silence At The End Of Humanity’s Hottest Year…Yet

Posted on January 4, 2024

The world—its politics, its economy, and its journalism—has trouble coping with the scale of the climate crisis. We can’t quite wrap our collective head around it, which has never been clearer to me than in these waning days of 2023.

Because the most important thing that happened this year was the heat. By far. It was hotter than it has been in at least 125,000 years on this planet. Every month since May was the hottest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures set a new all-time mark, over 100 degrees. Canada burned, filling the air above our cities with smoke.

And yet you really wouldn’t know it from reading the wrap-ups of the year’s news now appearing on one website after another.

Earlier today, for instance, the Times published an essay by investment banker and Obama consigliere Steven Rattner on “ten charts that mattered in 2023.” That’s the most establishment voice imaginable, in the most establishment spot. And the global temperature curve did make the list—at #10, well behind graphs about the fall in inflation, the president’s approval levels, the number of Trump indictments, the surge in immigrants, and the speed with with the GOP defenestrated Kevin McCarthy.

Indeed, yesterday the Times and the Post both published fine stories about 2023’s record temperatures, but they were odd: in each case, they centered on whether the year was enough to show that the climate crisis was “accelerating.” It’s an interesting question, drawing mainly on a powerful new paper by James Hansen (one that readers of this newsletter found out about last winter), but the premise of the reporting, if you take a step back, is kind of wild. Because the climate crisis is already crashing down on us. It doesn’t require “acceleration” to be the biggest—by orders of magnitude—dilemma facing our species.

In a sense, though, that’s the problem. Those stories in the Times and Post were a way to search for a new angle to a story that doesn’t change quite fast enough to count as news. (In geological terms, we’re warming at hellish pace; but that’s not how the 24/7 news cycle works.) It’s been record-global-hot every day for months now: the first few of those days got some coverage, but at a certain point editors, and then readers, begin to tune out. We’re programmed—by evolution, doubtless, and in the case of journalism by counting clicks—to look for novelty and for conflict. Climate change seems inexorable, which is the opposite of how we think about news.

The war in Gaza, by contrast, fits our defintions perfectly. It is an extraordinary tragedy, it changes day by day, and it is the definition of conflict. And perhaps there’s something we can do about it (which is why many of us have been trying to build support for a ceasefire). So, rightly, it commands our attention. But in a sense, it is the very familiarity of the war that makes it easy for us to focus on it; “mideast conflict,” like “inflation” or “presidential elections,” is an easily-accessed template in our minds. The images of the horror make us, as they should, feel uncomfortable—but it’s a familiar discomfort. The despair, and the resolve, we feel are familiar too; even the subparts of the story fit into familiar grooves (a New York Times reader would be forgiven for thinking the main front of the war is being played out in Harvard Yard, between free speech advocates and cancel culture warriors). Next year seems likely to be another orgy of familiarity: Joe Biden and Donald Trump, yet again.

Climate change has its own familiar grooves—above all the fight with the fossil fuel industry, which played out again at COP 28 in Dubai. But so much of the story is actually brand new: as this year showed, we’re literally in uncharted territory, dealing with temperatures no human society has ever dealt with before. And to head off the worst, we are going to require an industrial transition on a scale we’ve never seen before: there were signs this year that that transition has begun (by midsummer we were installing a gigawatt worth of solar panels a day) but it will have to go much much faster.

These changes—the physical ones, and the political and economic ones—are almost inconceivable to us. That’s my point; they don’t fit our easy templates.

And the point of this newsletter, now and in the years to come, is to try and explain the speed of our crisis, and explain what it dictates about the speed of our response. It’s a story I’ve been trying to put into perspective for 35 years now (the End of Nature was published in 1989, the first book about this crisis) and I’ll keep looking for new ways in. As the climate scientist Andrew Dessler put it in one year-end account, “The only really important question is, ‘How many more years like this we have to have before the reality of how bad climate change is breaks into the public’s consciousness?'”

Thank you for being part of this ongoing effort to break into that consciouness, and—well, happy new year. It’s coming at us, we might as well make it count.

In other energy and climate news:

+The LNG export fight has finally broken through into the big papers. The Times assigned three reporters to the story, and they published a long-awaited account the day after Christmas, under the headline “A Natural Gas Project Is Biden’s Next Big Climate Test.”

The decision forces the Biden administration to confront a central contradiction within its energy policies: It wants nations to stop burning the fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the planet and has heralded a global agreement reached in Dubai earlier this month to transition away from fossil fuels. But at the same time, the United States is producing record amounts of crude oil, is the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas and may approve an additional 17 export facilities, including CP2.

Since early September, activists have lit up TikTok and Instagram, delivered petitions to the Biden administration and met directly with senior White House climate officials to urge Mr. Biden to reject CP2. Jane Fonda recorded a video for Greenpeace calling on the public to work against the project.

“We have enough gas and export terminals to supply everything in the world right now,” said Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, one of many local groups working to stop the construction of new natural gas infrastructure in the area. “There is no need for additional facilities.”

+A favorite video to end the year. The New York City Labor Chorus, with Jeffrey Vogel doing much of the work, has redrafted the Hallelujah Chorus to be about our beautiful if troubled earth. Enjoy

 

The Economic Growth Equation & The Great 2023 Book Review

Posted on January 4, 2024

We start by breaking down the mathematical formula to economic growth before moving to my best reads of 2023… and a sneak peek of a book coming out in 2024!

 

Can We Still Find Common Ground?

Posted on December 31, 2023

Many Americans today worry that our nation is losing its national identity. Some claim loudly that the core of that identity requires better policing of our borders and preventing other races or religions or ethnicities from supplanting white Christian America.

But that is not what defines our national identity. It’s the ideals we share, the good we hold in common.

That common good is a set of shared commitments. To the rule of law. To democracy. To tolerance of our differences. To equal rights and equal opportunities for everyone. To upholding the truth.

We cannot have a functioning society without these shared commitments. Without a shared sense of common good, there can be no “we” to begin with.

If we’re losing our national identity, it is because we are losing our sense of the common good. That is what must be restored.

Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. Well, I disagree.

Almost every day, I witness or hear of the compassion and generosity of ordinary Americans. Their actions rarely make headlines, but they constitute much of our daily life together.

The moral fiber of our society has been weakened but it has not been destroyed.

 

 

We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in our democracy.

We can fight against all forms of bigotry. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another.

We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies.

Together, we can rebuild a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the institutions of the nation

America is not made great by whom we exclude but by the ideals we uphold together.

We’ve never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we have sought to live up to those shared ideals.

I hope you’ll join me in carrying forward the fight for the common good.

You might start by sharing this video with your friends and loved ones.

We Need To Talk About The United States’ Mental Health Crisis – And Its Larger Causes

Posted on December 22, 2023

The suicide rate is at its highest since 1941. In addition to a stronger safety net, we must face hard truths about US society.

I want to talk about an uncomfortable topic that needs much more open discussion than it’s receiving: the United States’ extraordinarily high level of anxiety.

A panel of medical experts has recommended that doctors screen all patients under 65, including children and teenagers, for what the panel calls anxiety disorders.

Lori Pbert, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan medical school, who serves on the panel, calls mental health disorders “a crisis in this country”.

A recent New York Times article discussed what’s called “persistent depressive disorder”, or PDD, which an estimated 2% of adults in the United States have experienced in the past year.

Nearly 50,000 people in the US lost their lives to suicide last year, according to a new provisional tally from the National Center for Health Statistics. (The agency said the final count would probably be higher.)

The suicide rate, now 14.3 deaths per 100,000 Americans, has reached its highest level since 1941, when the US entered the second world war.

Men aged 75 and older had the highest suicide rate last year, at nearly 44 per 100,000 people, double the rate of people aged 15-24. While women have been found to have suicidal thoughts more commonly, men are four times as likely to die by suicide.

Suicide rates for Native Americans are almost double the rates for other Americans.

(Some good news: suicide rates for children aged 10 to 14 have declined by 18%, and for those between 15 and 24 by 9%, bringing suicide rates in those groups back to pre-pandemic levels.)

What’s going on?

Maybe the widespread anxiety and depression, along with the near record rate of suicide, should not be seen as personal disorders.

Maybe they should be seen – in many cases – as rational responses to a society that’s becoming ever more disordered.

After all, whose notconcerned by the rising costs of housing and the growing insecurity of jobs and incomes?

Who (apart from Trump supporters)isn’tterrified by Trump’s attacks on democracy, and the possibility of another Trump presidency?

Who doesn’tworry about mass shootings at their children’s or grandchildren’s schools?

Who isn’taffected by the climate crisis?

Add increasingly brutal racism. Mounting misogyny. Anti-abortion laws. Homophobia and transphobia. Attacks on Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jews, Arab Americans and other minority groups. And the growing coarseness and ugliness of what we see and read in social media.

Consider all this and it would almost be stranger if you weren’t anxious, stressed and often depressed.

Studies show that women have nearly double the risk of depression as men. Black people also have higher stress levels – from 2014 to 2019, the suicide rate among Black Americans increased by 30%.

Are women and Black people suffering from a “disorder”? Or are they responding to reality? Or both?

White men without college degrees are particularly vulnerable to deaths from suicide, overdoses and alcoholic liver diseases, with contributions from the cardiovascular effects of rising obesity.

Are they suffering from a “disorder”, or are they responding to a fundamental change in American society? Or both?

In their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton argue that “the deaths of despair among whites would not have happened, or would not have been so severe, without the destruction of the white working class …”

Part of the problem, they say, is that the less educated are often underpaid and disrespected, and feel that the system is rigged against them.

Even if we had far more mental health professionals, what would they do against these formidable foes? Prescribe more pills? If anything, Americans are probably already overmedicated.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against better access to mental health care. In fact, quite the opposite. Increased staffing and improved access to mental health care are very much needed.

Mental health care is harder to find now than before the pandemic. About half of people in the US live in an area without a mental health professional, federal data shows, and some 8,500 more such professionals would be needed to fill the gap. Most people rely on family doctors for mental health care.

Officials are trying to widen familiarity with a national suicide and crisis lifeline that last year received a nationwide number, 988.

But in addition to providing more and better access to mental health care, and a suicide and crisis hotline, shouldn’t we try to make our societyhealthier?

Americans experience the least economic security of the inhabitants of any advanced nation. A healthy society needs more job security and stronger safety nets.

The distribution of income and wealth in the United States is the most unequal of any other advanced nation. A healthy society ensures that no one working full-time is poor, and levies high taxes on the wealthy to help pay for what society needs.

Guns and assault weapons are easier to buy in the United States than in any other advanced nation. A healthy society bans assault weapons and makes it difficult to buy guns.

A lower percentage of Americans has access to affordable medical care than in any other advanced nation. A healthy society keeps its people healthy.

The United States puts more carbon dioxide into the air per capita than almost any other advanced nation. A healthy society better protects the environment.

Big money plays a larger role in American politics than it does in almost any other advanced nation. A healthy society does not allow big money to buy politicians.

Some American politicians – like Donald Trump – gain power by stirring up racism, xenophobia and homophobia. A healthy society does not elect these sorts of people.

The list could be much longer, but you get the point. The anxiety disorders suffered by Americans are real, and they apparently are growing. But instead of regarding them solely as personal disorders, maybe we need to understand them at least partly as social disorders – and get to work remedying them as a society.

Granted, it would be difficult to achieve any of these criteria for a healthy society.

But without seeking to achieve them, no number of mental health professionals, and no amount of medications or hotlines, will be enough to substantially reduce the stress, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts that so many Americans are now experiencing.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

A Line In The Arctic Tundra

Posted on December 21, 2023

In September, President Joe Biden strengthened his standing as the most climate-ambitious president in our history. In a brave move, Biden canceled each and every oil- and gas-drilling lease in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—a response to Donald Trump’s illegal approval of leases there in the waning days of his administration.

It was a game-changing decision that will go a long way toward protecting Alaskan landscapes, Alaska Natives’ traditional ways of life, and the climate. But canceling leases is one thing; permanently protecting the Arctic’s ancient lands and waters is another. To do that, we need far more action from this administration.

It’s hard to understand just how big the Arctic Refuge is if you haven’t been there. At more than 19 million acres, it’s the largest wildlife refuge in the country. Its lands and waters, from rolling hills to vast plains to snowcapped mountains, have been left largely untouched by industry. I was left in awe upon experiencing just a tiny portion of this amazing place last summer. The majestic beauty of the refuge has left an indelible mark on my mind. The freedom from oil and gas extraction has allowed these landscapes to support wildlife and Alaska Native communities like the Gwich’in people since time immemorial. But oil companies are ready to destroy all this to pad their bottom lines.

That’s been Big Oil’s dream for decades—to replace the herds of Porcupine caribou with pumpjacks. As far back as the 1970s, supporters of Big Oil in Congress have had their sights on the Arctic Refuge. And for decades, the Gwich’in and their allies, including the Sierra Club, have worked to preserve those landscapes. With Biden’s cancelation of leases in the refuge, we won a major battle—though not a permanent one—in that struggle.

The truth is, we can’t stop now. Biden’s cancelations will last for the length of his administration, but they could be undone by a future Republican administration. Right now, leading Republicans are calling to not just restore those leases but to open up even more Arctic lands for oil and gas drilling. Combine that with the environmental and climate consequences of Biden’s misguided approval for ConocoPhillips’s Willow project on the North Slope and the situation facing the Arctic could go from cautiously optimistic to catastrophic overnight.

What we need are stronger protections that ensure the lands and waters of the Arctic are preserved for generations to come. The Biden administration has several immediate opportunities to help achieve that. The Department of the Interior can use the regular environmental impact statements that determine the management of the Arctic Refuge to limit the acreage open to oil and gas leasing to the smallest amount allowed. The agency can also develop a new administrative rule phasing out drilling in the Western Arctic, another reserve of millions of acres of public lands. Protecting these areas would not only preserve lands, wildlife, and Alaska Native communities but also get us much closer to achieving the goal of protecting 30 percent of all lands and waters by 2030.

To its credit, the Biden administration has taken promising steps, but the real, and necessary, goal remains unchanged and unfulfilled: ending all new oil and gas leasing in the Arctic. The White House has flirted with this, from the lease cancelations to making the Arctic Ocean off-limits for drilling. Now is the time to draw the line in the tundra and end leases in the Arctic once and for all.

We’re at a critical moment. This year will likely be the hottest year in history, and temperatures in 2024 could easily break new records. The Arctic is on the front lines of climate change. It’s also on the front lines of climate action. The decisions we make there reverberate beyond those landscapes—for good and for ill. We need President Biden to make the right call.

Inquiry Finds Pharmacies Fail To Protect The Privacy Of Americans’ Medical Records

Posted on December 20, 2023

Many Major Pharmacy Chains Provide Prescription Records to Law Enforcement Agencies Without A Court Order; Birth Control, Mental Health And Other Sensitive, Personal Conditions Can Be Revealed

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., with Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., revealed that major pharmacy chains fail to protect the privacy of their customers, in the results of a new inquiry released today. The members called on the Department of Health and Human Services to improve federal health privacy regulations to better protect Americans’ prescriptions and other health records held by pharmacies, and to conduct follow-up pharmacy privacy policy surveys and publish the findings.

Wyden, Jayapal and Jacobs began their inquiry following the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that repealed Roe v. Wade. They asked eight major pharmacy chains — CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Cigna, Optum Rx, Walmart Stores, The Kroger Company, Rite Aid Corporation, and Amazon Pharmacy — how the companies handle law-enforcement requests for prescription and other health records. These findings reaffirm the importance of revising federal privacy regulations to require a warrant for law enforcement demands for Americans’ medical records, so that Americans’ medical records would receive the same protections under federal law as their emails and location data, as 47 members of Congress called for in a July letter.

“Americans’ prescription records are among the most private information the government can obtain about a person,” the members wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. “They can reveal extremely personal and sensitive details about a person’s life, including prescriptions for birth control, depression or anxiety medications, or other private medical conditions.”

The members found that none of the major pharmacies require a warrant to share prescription records with law enforcement agencies, unless there is a state law that requires one. They also found that only CVS Health had committed to publish annual transparency reports about law-enforcement requests for records. During the inquiry Walgreen Boots Alliance and The Kroger Company also agreed to produce transparency reports.

The inquiry also found that three companies — CVS Health, the Kroger Company and Rite Aid — said they do not require demands for records to be reviewed by a lawyer or paralegal. Instead, pharmacy staff are instructed to respond immediately to law enforcement demands. Finally, only Amazon Pharmacy has a policy of notifying customers about law enforcement demands for records, absent a legal prohibition on doing so.

Wyden, Jayapal and Jacobs called on HHS Secretary Becerra to update federal health privacy regulations in light of their findings.

“Americans deserve to have their private medical information protected at the pharmacy counter and a full picture of pharmacies’ privacy practices, so they can make informed choices about where to get their prescriptions filled,” the members wrote. “Our oversight has uncovered significant differences between the practices of major pharmacy chains under current HIPAA regulation and this initial inquiry resulted in immediate policy changes at some of these companies. If the landscape were made clearer, patients will finally be able to hold pharmacies with neglectful practices accountable by taking their business elsewhere.”

Read the full letter here.

Compare each pharmacy’s privacy practices here.