Many Americans have a pattern of turning against wars they once supported. There would be less disillusionment, as well as a great savings in lives and resources, if they recognized the terrible costs of war before they rushed to embrace it.

Recently, the State University of New York (SUNY) has undergone a dramatic change in its mission. Pressured by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and SUNY administrators, the nation's largest university system has been turning into a loyal servant of big business.

Unless there is a substantial increase in the U.S. minimum wage, millions of American workers will continue earning poverty-level wages while giant corporations and the wealthy amass trillions of dollars at these workers' expense.

Can the world's biggest corporations act with impunity? When it comes to General Electric, the answer appears to be "yes." Despite GE's outsourcing of its work force, dumping of 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs into the Hudson River, designing of nuclear reactors that exploded at Fukushima, parking of $108 billion in profits overseas to evade U.S. taxes, and peddling of subprime mortgages, the giant corporation has been richly rewarded by the U.S. government with billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded handouts and a leading role in designing U.S. public policy.

What accounts for the fact that, since 1945, the world has avoided nuclear war? The conventional explanation is that the danger posed by nuclear weapons has "deterred" nations from waging it and, overall, has created a situation of nuclear safety. But the record shows that it has been popular protest that has blunted the nuclear ambitions of hawkish government officials and prevented the waging of nuclear war.

The apparent employment of chemical weapons in Syria should remind us that, while weapons of mass destruction exist, there is a serious danger that they will be used. This possibility is particularly alarming in the case of nuclear weapons, for there remain over 17,000 of them in existence, with thousands on high alert. Meanwhile all the nuclear powers are moving forward with plans to upgrade or modernize their nuclear arsenals.

Although the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a serious problem, a U.S. missile attack is a poor solution to it. A far better approach would be to draw upon the United Nations to provide a thorough investigation of what happened, to work out an appropriate response to it, and to find a political solution to the Syrian civil war.

Is the human race determined to snuff itself out through mass violence? There are many signs that it is, including the continued popularity of war, the employment of military forces for violent repression within nations, the epidemic of gun-related killings by civilians, and ongoing preparations for nuclear war.

Nearly a quarter century after the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold war, the U.S. government is still getting ready for nuclear war. This is illustrated not only by the Obama administration's recently-released "Nuclear Employment Strategy," but by its costly proposal to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons facilities and upgrade U.S. nuclear warheads, currently numbering 7,700.

As education becomes increasingly intertwined with corporations, it is showing more concern for the business-defined bottom line than for intellectual growth. This trend is satirized in "Option Three" -- a new, hilarious novel by Joel Shatzky.