The February 24th Russian invasion of Ukraine has rattled the world and has unleashed misery, death and destruction. What prompted Moscow's attack? From their perspective, the expansion of NATO, a U.S.-led military alliance, up to Russia’s borders threatens their national security interests. It went against assurances given by Washington that that would not happen. Years ago, George Kennan, the much venerated State Department diplomat warned against NATO expansion. With great foresight he said, it “would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Where does one start when talking about the Holocaust? The word derives from the Greek, a burnt offering, a sacrifice by fire. It is one of the greatest crimes in human history. And we are cautioned to learn its lessons. Historian Timothy Snyder argues that "The history that we might understand is rather different than the history that we generally remember and that if we did it right the lessons that we draw from the present and the future would be different lessons than the ones we draw now. And that's important," Snyder says, "because whether we like it or not we are already drawing lessons from the Holocaust. We do it all the time. But what if we understand the Holocaust incompletely or even incorrectly, then we've drawn the wrong lessons and we may be accelerating disaster rather than preventing it."

The Russian invasion of Ukraine with its horrific atrocities and massive refugee crisis has turned the world upside down. The war will have a huge impact on global food security as both countries are major exporters of wheat, barley and other grains. As usual, the media provide very little context and background. We are told ad nauseum that the Russian invasion was unprovoked. A careful look at history reveals a slightly more nuanced picture. To explain is not to excuse Moscow’s criminal attack. Meanwhile, as two-time legendary Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler reminds us, “War is a  racket.” U.S. weapons corporations are lining up to feed at the trough. Before the war is over many Ukrainians and Russians will die while Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman will make money hand over fist.

Capitalism’s origins, several centuries ago, can be traced to the expropriation of the commons and its transformation into private property. Since those hoary beginnings, it has evolved into an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its operation for profit. In the last forty years or so capitalism has evolved into its neoliberal phase characterized by deregulation, punishing bubbles, economic crises and jaw-dropping income and wealth inequality. The system’s egregious excesses are sometimes addressed by lawmakers who serve up temporary bromides to placate the restless many. But they are just tinkering around the edges making cosmetic changes. The system is fundamentally the same. There is no alternative we are told. Why isn’t there?

In the old communist countries, comrades who fell out of favor were crudely cut out of photographs. Today in the Digital Era it’s easy to electronically eliminate a person and/or their work. Take Chris Hedges. His show On Contact was aired on RT, a Russian state TV network. It was on YouTube when suddenly its six-year archive of programs disappeared. Hedges said this, “I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don't. I have a hard time seeing how a detailed discussion of Ulysses or the biographies of Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin.” And then he warns, “If this happens to me, it can happen to you.”

Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision which established a constitutional right to abortion is under attack. The Supreme Court with its super-conservative majority is poised to overturn Roe. According to an editorial in Against the Current: “Poll after poll reveals that the right to abortion care actually has more popular support today than when Roe v. Wade was decided. If that right can be mutilated now, precedent and public opinion be damned, then no rights are secure from reactionary assault. For right-wing sharks getting rid of Roe is blood in the water.” The New York Times estimates more than 20 states “are expected to ban or substantially restrict abortion if the Supreme Court permits it.” However, some states like Colorado are going in the opposite direction, passing legislation legalizing the right to an abortion.

The Digital Age has transformed the traditional media landscape. The so-called Fourth Estate is reeling. Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. Newsrooms have shrunk. Beats have been eliminated. Bureaus have closed. Many important stories are given short shrift or not covered at all. Investigative journalism may soon be an endangered species. City hall and statehouse coverage has been particularly hard hit. Large parts of the country are served by one or no local newspapers. Internet giants like Facebook and Google, swimming in cash, run stories from hard-working reporters without offering fair compensation. It's a brutal scene. An uninformed or half-informed citizenry undermines democracy. Craig Aaron of Free Press warns, “There are incredibly important decisions being made in Washington that shape the future of media. But they’re being done without the public’s involvement or consent.”

Extinction Rebellion, also simply known as XR, is a global environmental movement. It was founded in the UK with the explicit aim of using nonviolent civil resistance to compel government action to avoid ecological collapse. The latest UN IPCC report paints a dire picture of what the future will bring. By 2050, a billion people will face coastal flooding from rising seas. Using radical tactics, Extinction Rebellion draws inspiration from grassroots movements such as the civil rights movement.  XR aims to instill a sense of urgency to prevent further climate breakdown and the ongoing sixth mass extinction. A number of XR activists accept arrest and imprisonment. The movement’s symbol is a stylized, circled hourglass to serve as a warning that time is running out for us.

Concentrated wealth and power undermine democracy and advance plutocracy. The 1% have inordinate influence over the rest of us. Wall Street dominates Main Street. How do ordinary people break through the oligarchic system to assert their interests over the interests of the super-rich? As Ralph Nader says, "However we look at it, the wealthy few use the relentless mechanism of commercialism to trample democracy, the natural environment, and the common good. Our grievances are many, and the power of citizenship, community, and national pride should be enough to mobilize the population to organize resistance and change."

The conventional media image of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has him frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 giving his inspirational "I Have a Dream" speech. Little attention is paid to King's remarkable political and social evolution in the last five years of his life. He became a trenchant critic of the Vietnam War. In his classic sermon at the Riverside Church in New York he denounced the war and "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism." King increasingly saw the link between economic justice and racial equality and insisted that one was impossible without the other. His final days were spent in Memphis where he was actively supporting a strike by black sanitation workers and he was planning to launch a poor people’s march on Washington, D.C.. An assassin’s bullet ended his life on April 4, 1968. Recorded at the University of Denver.