Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Managing Editor + Contributor
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at the School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794 8036; emails: sjtpj@aol.com; steven.jonas@stonybrookmedicine.edu; tel. (631) 473-7228. He is a graduate of Columbia College (BA), Harvard Medical School (MD), the Yale School of Medicine (MPH), and New York University (MS). He is the author/co-author/editor of over 30 books, academic and trade, in the fields of health care delivery systems analysis, health promotion/disease prevention with an emphasis on regular exercise and weight management, and politics/history.
He is the Editorial Director and a Contributing Author for thepoliticaljunkies.org. He is also Senior Editor, Politics, for The Greanville Post. Further, he is a long-time columnist for a variety of left/progressive webmagazines: he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. Further, he is an occasional Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, BuzzFlash Commentary (for which he was along-time columnist), and Dandelion Salad.
His first political book was The New Americanism (1992, Thomas Jefferson Press, Port Jefferson, NY, available at http://www.amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com). In this book Dr. Jonas presented a vision for a 21st century United States, based on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, updated to meet the very real challenges of a nation facing the possible domination by a political party determined to pull it back to the 19th century, in social, economic, and political policy.
Dr. Jonas’ second book in the genre is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013). This is the third issue of this book, which was originally published in 1996 under the pseudonym Jonathan Westminster as The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022 (Port Jefferson, NY: Thomas Jefferson Press). The book presents a dystopic vision developed at the time for a future United States, based on the assumption that the Republican Religious Right eventually would gain control of significant governmental power at the Federal and state levels. Then it would implement many of the economic, political and social policies that it was already telling us in the mid-90s it would implement if it ever gained significant governmental power.
It is quite unfortunate that many of those Republican predictions of what they would do or propose doing, from criminalizing abortion, to vastly curtailing Social Security, to virtually eliminating trade unions, to vastly curtailing many Federal and state government services and operations other than the military, to eventually introducing a U.S. form of “Constitutional fascism,” are coming true. This book is available at: http://www.puntopress.com/jonas-the-15-solution-hits-main-distribution/; http://www.amazon.com/15%25-Solution-Steve-Jonas/dp/0984026347/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369071141&sr=1-1&keywords=The+15%25+Solution.
Recent Essays
By STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH - 02.14.2016
“On this day (January 8) in 1697, Scottish medical student Thomas Aikenhead, 18 or 19 years old, was hanged to death for blasphemy, in Britain’s last execution for blasphemy. The young Edinburgh student was found guilty of denying the trinity. . .[emphasis added]” (https://ffrf.org/news/day/, for January 8, 2016).
In 1996, as many readers of my columns know, I published the original version of the book now known as “The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S.: 1981-2022.”) (The current version of the book, the third, is published by my dear friend and comrade Patrice Greanville, Editor/Publisher of The Greanville Post and Publisher of Punto Press.) In that book, based entirely on what the Republicans and the Religious Right were already telling us back then...
By STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH, January 04, 2016
First question: what is terrorism? One definition is that it is an armed technique, usually used against non-combatants, in a conventional or non-conventional war situation. (Well yes, I did make that one up.) One dictionary definition is: “1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes; 2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization; 3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.” Another is: “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal; the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” But then the good old Wikipedia tells us that: “There is neither an academic nor an accurate legal consensus regarding the definition of terrorism. Various legal systems and government agencies use different definitions. Moreover, governments have been reluctant to formulate an agreed upon, legally binding definition. These difficulties arise from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged. “
By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - 12.07.15
“Modern Middle East Imperialist (MMEI) War III,” you say? How are you counting (?) might be the first question. Of course Western Imperialist Wars have been waged on the region at least since Alexander the Great marched through it in the 4th Century, BCE. But the modern (contemporary) set can be said to have begun when George H.W. Bush tricked Saddam Hussein into invading a Kuwait that, among other things, had been diagonal drilling across the Iraq/Kuwait boundary, stealing Iraqi oil. Militarily that war ended quickly. But through subsequent U.S. policy (e.g., the Bill Clinton “No Fly” zone) over the years it wreaked havoc on many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians (especially children). Then came Bush II’s infamous War on Iraq which, by all logic it seems to be, was waged in order to establish a state of Permanent War for the U.S., if not one or more other Western Powers, and perhaps to create the “Permanent Republican Majority” (or at least Presidency) in the U.S. that was the dream of Karl Rove’s Repubs. (and of course the nightmare for the rest of us).