BY POLLY MANN What can be done with guns? In 2012 after the rampage shooting of 20 school children and six educators, in Newtown, Conn., Connecticut lawmakers passed some of the toughest gun measures in the country: 1) expanding an existing ban on assault weapons; 2) prohibiting the sale of…
BY POLLY MANN Waning water supply produces civil war Certainly, most adult Americans are aware that the planet is growing warmer, which is not a good thing, but now we’ve another issue to be concerned about—our water supply. Yes, water, not only for drinking, but as one of the factors…
Good News The New York Times headline of Dec. 14 read, “The Pentagon Is Not a Sacred Cow.” Of course it isn’t, and our readers know it and so do we, but for the Times to acknowledge that is like finding a shoveled path to navigate after a winter snow…
BY POLLY MANN The New York Times headline of Dec. 14 read, “The Pentagon Is Not a Sacred Cow.” Of course it isn’t, and our readers know it and so do we, but for the Times to acknowledge that is like finding a shoveled path to navigate after a winter…
A wrongfully-convicted man’s vision During these depressing “Days of Trump” a little positive news is helpful. Therefore with anticipation I began to read the Oct. 6 New York Times article entitled “An Innocent Man Who Imagined the World as It Should Be.” His name was John Thompson, a resident of New…
Worldwide hunger It’s happening right now—day after day—hunger is threatening the lives of 20 million people according to the U.N. Of course they’re not Americans. We wouldn’t stand for it. It’s one thing that could produce a drastic decline in the military budget if we voters forced officeholders to legislate for…
BY POLLY MANN One of the most erudite and informed people on the planet is Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of countless books and a lecturer par excellence. The May 2017 edition of the London Review of Books contains reviews of three books written…
BY POLLY MANN Yemenis and Gazans are starving today, but lack of food is not the issue. The issue is politics. Saudi Arabia continues its three-year blockade of Yemen while Israel and Egypt continue their 10-year blockade of Gaza. Seven million people in Yemen, nearly 70% of the population, are…
BY POLLY MANN Several months ago in the Star Tribune was a tiny article about nuclear waste that caught my eye. I consulted my computer and the story it gave me was important. Recently a tunnel containing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear…
BY POLLY MANN It is a magnificent but somewhat ugly flying machine called the “Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the Joint Strike Fighter,” a U.S.-built “fifth generation” stealth jet with super-advanced avionics, which has been under development for over 20 years at a cost of many billions of dollars. Over…
BY POLLY MANN CEO pay may not be quite as high as it once was, but the numbers still dwarf the pay earned by the typical worker. Chief executives of America’s 350 largest companies made an average of $15.6 million in 2016, or 271 times more than what the typical worker…
BY POLLY MANN According to research on wealth by the Boston Counseling Group, by 2021 only 1% of American millionaires and billionaires will control 70% of the nation’s wealth. Currently more billionaires and millionaires live in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, with two out of five millionaires…
BY POLLY MANN The U.N. has announced that it is short $220 million of the $1.4 billion which was allocated for the starving children of Syria, saying it is the worst crisis it has faced since the start of the war there in 2011. Nearly 6 million children are without…
I just finished reading a long article about Prime Minister Abe of Japan, who is seeking to overturn Japan’s policy of nonviolence foisted upon it as a result of the settlement at the end of World War II. Why, why, I thought, would he want to do this? There are…
