Stephan: The facts about the effects of American gun psychosis are indisputable and irrefutable. We have what amounts to an addiction epidemic that separates us from the other countries of the developed world. Look at these charts. This is the profile of who we are as a society.
How does the US compare with other countries?
There were 14,400 gun-related homicides in 2019.
Killings involving a gun accounted for nearly three quarters of all homicides in the US in that year.
That’s a larger proportion of homicides than in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, and many other countries.
Who owns the world’s guns?
While it is difficult to know exactly how many guns civilians own around the world, by every estimate the US, with more than 390 million, is far out in front. The latest figures from the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based leading research project, are for 2018.
Switzerland and Finland are two of the European countries with the most guns per person – they both have compulsory military service for all men over the age of 18. The Finnish interior ministry says about 60% of gun permits are granted for hunting – a popular pastime in Finland. Cyprus and Yemen also have military service.
Dominic Erdozain, Research Fellow at Emory University - CNN
Stephan: The fantasy tale the gun psychotics tell themselves about the 2nd Amendment is nonsense. And the idea that today we have people wandering around with everything from pistols to military-grade combat weapons committing mass murders with almost daily regularity would appall the Founders.
The Founders ate the signing of the Declaration of Independence
Every time America suffers a mass shooting, I wonder how James Madison would have reacted.Despite the grinding familiarity of gun massacres, today’s America seems to have developed strategies of denial. Many on the right would arm everyone except “felons” and “the mentally ill,” and the left teaches a version of the same dichotomy: The problem is not “firearms themselves,” it is often argued. It is “who gets access to them.”
The founders did not think that way. They did not divide the world into good guys and bad guys, darkness and light. “If men were angels,” wrote Madison, “no government would be necessary.” But they are not. The founders held what may be termed a democratic theory of tyranny: a conviction that anybody is capable of violence. “Remember,” wrote Abigail Adams to her husband in 1776, “all men would be tyrants if they could.”The minds that framed the Constitution had none of the gun culture’s faith in “the law-abiding citizen”: the airy […]
Stephan: THe warnings have been coming for years, and we just haven't been taking them seriously enough because atmospheric CO2 is higher than it has ever been in 15 million years. And you can bet there are going to be major consequences resulting from this willful ignorance.
The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide surged past 420 parts per million for the first time in recorded history this past weekend, according to a measurement taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii.
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research station “began collecting CO2 measurements in the late 1950s, atmospheric CO2 concentration sat at around 315 PPM,” the Washington Postreported. “On Saturday, the daily average was pegged at 421.21 PPM—the first time in human history that number has been so high.”
Climate activist Greta Thunberg took notice of NOAA’s most recent data on CO2 levels. She described the first-ever documented eclipse of 420 PPM of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere as “truly groundbreaking.”
Exceeding 420 PPM of the heat-trapping gas “is a disconcerting milestone in the human-induced warming of the planet, around the halfway point on our path toward doubling preindustrial CO2 levels,” the Post noted, adding:
There is special significance in reaching and surpassing a concentration of 416 PPM. It means we’ve passed the midpoint between preindustrial CO2 levels, […]
Stephan: "Stay out of politics," Mitch Mcconnell tells corporations but, oh yes, please keep sending money. But, of course, in the United States thanks to Citizens United, the worst Supreme Court decision in the last 100 years, giving money is politics. You pay for what you support. And this is what a number of corporations support: Voter suppression to make it harder for non-Whites, the elderly, and the young to vote. Please stop doing business with these corporations if you presently do so. And you wonder why I keep saying our democracy is under the greatest threat it has faced since 1861?
Since 2015, AT&T, Comcast, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, and other big businesses have donated a combined $50 million to state Republican lawmakers who are currently supporting voter suppression bills across the United States—generous political spending at odds with recent corporate efforts to rebrand as defenders of voting rights.
A new report (pdf) released Monday morning by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that during the 2020 election cycle alone, U.S. corporations donated $22 million to Republican architects of voter suppression bills that are advancing through state legislatures nationwide.
“Corporations should keep their money out of our democracy—and Congress must put the people back in charge by swiftly passing the For The People Act.” —Rick Claypool, Public Citizen
“AT&T [since 2015] has given the most, $811,000,” Public Citizen found, citing data from The National Institute on Money in Politics. “AT&T is followed by Altria/Philip Morris, Comcast, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, State Farm, and Pfizer. Household names that fell just out of the top 25 list… include Nationwide ($182,000), Merck ($180,000), CVS ($174,000), John Deere ($159,000), and Caterpillar ($157,000).”
“This is why you follow the money, not the good PR,” Public […]
Stephan: "The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual ranking swelled by 660 to 2,755 — a roughly 30 percent jump from a year ago — and 493 of them are first-timers. Seven of eight are richer than they were before the pandemic. Forbes calculates net worth by using stock prices and exchange rates from March 5."
I think this may be the most obscene and offputting sentence I have ever published. At the same time this was happening 8 million Americans were reduced to poverty.
Could there be a clearer proof that something is fundamentally wrong with the American social order that makes profit its only social priority?
Here is my prediction: As climate change stresses human civilization in a thousand ways, those societies which make wellbeing their priority, and adapt and create the post-carbon, post-pollution world it will demand, will prosper and change geopolitics
The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual ranking swelled by 660 to 2,755 — a roughly 30 percent jump from a year ago — and 493 of them are first-timers. Seven of eight are richer than they were before the pandemic. Forbes calculates net worth by using stock prices and exchange rates from March 5.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with an estimated fortune of $177 billion, topped the list for the fourth year running. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk came in at No. 2 at $151 billion. The shares of both companies soared last year, largely contributing to both men’s net worth and causing them to toggle for the “richest man” title on various lists.
Bezos, who will step down as Amazon CEO and become executive chairman later this year, owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is developing rockets […]
