guns

What’s the difference between these two Democrats, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Rep. Barbara Lee of California? Chris Murphy puts on a pointless, pompous filibuster to achieve a meaningless vote on gun control measures he knows will never pass. Rep. Barbara Lee is in her 15th year of quietly trying to persuade ANY other Representative or Senator to accept constitutional responsibility for deciding whether or not the US should go to war. Guess who gets more attention?

December 14, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza murdered his mother in her bed and then drove her car to the local elementary school, where he embarked on a shooting spree that left 20 first-grade students and 6 educators dead.

(ANTIMEDIA Op-Ed) United States — Democrats have decided to take a stand so tough, they’re staging a sit-in on the literal floor of the House in protest — not over the expansion of war; not over accepting refugees or deporting immigrants; not over increased domestic surveillance, which recently and yet again proved worthless to prevent a mass shooting; nor over anything productive or effective in any significant way.

The Church of St. Paul the Apostle, the Mother Church of the Paulist Fathers in Hell’s Kitchen, proudly celebrated diversity in this post-Orlando exhibition of solidarity.

It is official! The vast majority of Senate Republicans may be enemies of the people. Their photos could be posted on post office bulletins boards. Their faces could well be featured in the dossiers of FBI agents as friends of enemy combatants.

CEOs of evil are hard to identify, due mainly to the fact that they clothe their style in masquerade. Take the current election fiasco in America, for instance, which goes from ugly to uglier, and one gets the impression that the mask of exceptionalism and faux patriotism projected into the public domain is little more than a joke extended to the 99% by the 1%. It’s just another way of saying, ‘we’re making America great again’, so, ‘shut the fuck up’. After all, capitalism is only for those who possess loads and loads of money!

In Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag writes:

A painting or drawing is judged a fake when it turns out not to be by the artist to whom it had been attributed. A photograph—or a filmed document available on television or the internet—is judged a fake when it turns out to be deceiving the viewer about the scene it purports to depict.

The Orlando shooting on June 12 has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with US policies, both domestic and foreign.
By domestic, I’m referring to “soft power”* cultural destablization, intended for export around the world to keep the natives distracted and happy. Think Disney on steriods. By foreign, I’m referring to “hard power” US imperialist policies, neoliberalism (in former days, anti-communism).

Much of Britain is recoiling in the wake of the death of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed on Thursday in broad daylight outside the public library in Birstall to the shouts of “Britain first!” It was the first killing of a serving MP since Ian Gow, whose life was taken by Irish Republicans in 1990.
The suspect, Thomas Mair, was said to have carried what was an “old-fashioned” possibly homemade gun, and also brandished a knife in the attack. At around 1 pm, the shots and blows rained down upon Cox, who was declared dead less than an hour later.

In the aftermath of the horrific mass murder at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando over the weekend in which 50 people were killed, media including CNN, USA Today, NPR, NBC