Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Poet survivors of the merciless, savage US atomic bombing of Japan guide us to the deepest, most intimate loss and suffering of survivors, the hibakusha. Give back my Father give back my Mother. Give Grandpa, Grandma back; Give my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself. Give […]
Bailouts for Weapons Firms, Tent Cities for Vets: Covid Reveals U.S. Military Priorities
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – On May 18, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched a Salvation Army-like charity drive asking the public for donations of money, food, and mobile phones to help an estimated 40,000 homeless veterans during the pandemic. More than one-half of all homeless veterans are African American and Hispanic, […]
The Other Pandemic: We haven’t Even begun to Flatten the Curve on the Climate Crisis
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – We are living with two life-threatening crises: Covid-19 and the climate crisis. They pose a common stark fate for us – the risk of illness in the case of Covid, and injury and destruction of our environment in the case of climate; both are harbingers of death for […]
Covid-19: No, we’re not all in this Together; Some Americans are being put at much Greater Risk
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – There is a meme circulating in this time of pandemic that we are all in this together, that Covid-19 is, as New York Governor Cuomo stated, the “great equalizer.” From one vantage point, this appears to be true: last week a staff person to Vice President Pence and […]
How we gave up our Health, Environment and Diplomacy for Wars, Walls and Plutocracy
Greenfield, MA (Special to Informed Comment) -Budgets are moral documents (or immoral, depending on priorities). So also is tax policy. Consider Trump’s proposed $1.3 trillion discretionary budget for 2021. In snapshot, the Pentagon gets 55% and every other need of 331 million people–from health, education, agriculture, transportation, environmental protection to housing–is left with 45%. As […]
Civil Disobedience in the Time of Climate Crisis
On March 27, 2018, a Massachusetts judge found thirteen protestors who obstructed construction of a high-pressure fracked gas pipeline in West Roxbury, Massachusetts not responsible for their crime of trespassing and disturbing the peace. The judge ruled that the potential environmental and public health impacts of the pipeline – including the risk of climate change […]
Filthy Rich: How America’s Unprecedented Inequality is Literally Killing Us
“The 500 richest people in the world…gained a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth in 2019, further exacerbating inequities that have not been seen since the late 1920s…Eight of the 10 richest people in the world are from the U.S.” – Bloomberg, 12/27/2019 Greenfield, Ma. (Special to Informed Comment) – Why, in the richest of countries […]
Climate Crisis after Disappointing COP 25: “The Science is Screaming!”
(Special to Informed Comment) – In the wake of the disappointing UN COP 25 climate conference in Madrid, thousands of climate scientists are exhorting governments publicly, with an existential sense of urgency based upon the most up-to-date science, that we are doomed within decades if we do not act immediately to slow the climate crisis. […]
On Armistice Day: How WW I is at the Root of our Total Wars– Poison Gas, Aerial Bombing, Machine Guns
Watching Londoners reveling in the streets on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the war critic and pacifist Bertrand Russell commented that people had cheered for war, then cheered for peace –“ the crowd was frivolous still, and had learned nothing during the period of horror.” (1) (Informed Comment) – World War 1 was the first […]
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