Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – On Tax Day, there’s more than one elephant in the room, and they’re all in mansions. Elephants occupy the bulging mansions of 657 American billionaires, 43 of them new this past pandemic year. Their combined wealth soared to $4.2 trillion – up $1.3 trillion – between March 21, […]
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A New Chance, as 50 Countries Pledge no Nukes
( Portside ) – A nuclear darkness has engulfed the world for seven decades, with only intermittent breakthroughs of light when treaties among nuclear nations were negotiated. Some treaties have been violated for decades; others, walked away from by Trump. Any progress made on eliminating nuclear weapons has ceased. Worse, a new weapons upgrade is […]
50 Nations of UN seek A-Bomb Ban, but US, Russia, China, N. Korea are accelerating Dangerous Arms Race
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – We are living in the year 2020 AD, signifying two thousand twenty years after the birth of Christ. For the writer and atomic bomb survivor, Kyoko Hayashi, however, “the significance of the birth of Christ pales in comparison” with the event that demonstrated “humans had gained the means […]
Atomic Poet Survivors, Military Realists and Millennials: August 6 and 9
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 […]
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