Food Security

Dear Rats deserting Trump’s Sinking Ship: All those Times you didn’t Resign or Even criticize his Monstrous Deeds

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The rats are deserting Trump’s sinking ship, after he fomented the Great QAnon Capitol Insurrection, with two cabinet secretaries and some other officials having resigned. It is too late. The Insurrection did not tell us something about Trump we did not know. Those now leaving are perhaps attempting to avoid […]

Donald Trump

Where’s the Second Relief Act? The US Safety Net is working, but there are Capitalists who don’t Want it to

John Buell

Why can’t our political leaders learn to live with success? In an era marked by cynicism about politics both parties managed to enact an initial COVID-19 relief package that if anything exceeded expectations. Last June Jason DeParle, summarized academic research on this act by quoting Columbia University’s Zachary Parolin: “Right now, the safety net is […]

Development

When it Comes to the Pandemic, those he called “Shithole” Countries have run Rings around Trump

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Asked recently what he might do differently in managing the Covid19 pandemic the president responded, “Not much.” Little does he recognize or acknowledge the successes of and lessons to be learned from countries he has contemptuously labeled “shitholes.” What is lost to public health from this scorn […]

Donald Trump

A Warning Signal for US? Corruption, Gov’t Gridlock, Pandemic, drive half a Million Lebanese Children into Hunger

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Lebanon, a small country of 4.7 million citizens and another 1.5 million Syrian refugees and 400,000 Palestinian refugees, is facing a perfect storm. Its corrupt political elite has permitted a near-collapse of a once-solid banking system. Government services are paralyzed and there are electricity outages. The country, which is a […]

Epidemics

How the Corporate Food System Is Making the Coronavirus Crisis Worse

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The global food system has been very much front and center in the COVID-19 story. Everyone, of course, is aware that hunger is closely tracking the virus as its wreaks havoc in both the global North and global South. Indeed, one can say that, […]

Food Security

The US Public Now Wants Medicare for All and the Nordic Model– But a Social Movement is Needed

George Lakey

( Waging Nonviolence) – Surprisingly, for a mainstream daily newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer ended its March 22 editorial on the coronavirus by calling for system change, writing, “This crisis has laid bare some hard truths: that we’ve built a society that has removed protections for workers, supported the creation and growth of the gig economy, […]

Addiction

Socialism is Healthy: US Barracuda Capitalism is Literally Killing us

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US has fallen off a cliff on global health statistics, plummeting an unprecedented 21 places in the world index. Moreover, the US is expected to fall even further behind over the next 20 years. Mellan Solly at The Smithsonian Magazine analyzed the numbers in a just-published Lancet article While […]

Climate Change

To stop Global Heating, Meat Taxes are Coming

contributors

By Matt Mace | edie.net | (Euractiv.com) – – Estimates suggest that meat and dairy demand will mean agriculture will emit 20 gigatonnes of emission per year by 2050, out of the annual limit of 23 needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s targets. Investors say that the implementation of the Paris Agreement will lead some […]