A week ago on May 18, 10 students were killed and 13 wounded at Santa Fe High school just south of Houston, within its metropolitan area.  The shooter was a student who, as can now be expected, had been bullied. While definitions of a mass shooting may vary, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 labels it as[Read More…]

The quaint, unassuming, elevated area south of Denver known as Columbine rarely, if ever, caught the attention of the average American residing outside the State of Colorado for just over 99% of the twentieth century. When it etched its way into the hearts and minds of shocked onlookers around the world 19 years before Friday, nobody predicted that it would[Read More…]

“People like me are not good for big business, like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses.  That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us.” Nasim Najafi Aghdam discussing YouTube She claimed to have detested it, issuing fiery calls on her social media outlets, and asserting that this creature was demonic in its effort to limit talent,[Read More…]

Co-Written by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox The United States government views human rights not as the foundation of human dignity but as an impediment to corporate profits. — Haley Pedersen & Jodie Evans, AlterNet, January 11, 2018. In the United States of America it’s all about the quantity, not the quality, of so-called freedom. That may be because[Read More…]

  “Violence and other potentially criminal behaviors caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.” — David Healy, UK psychiatrist and author (and co-founder of www.RxISK.org)   “The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and they don’t want to see the dangers of psychiatrically[Read More…]

Sonoma County, Northern California: Over a million students and allies walked out of classes in the U.S., from Maine to Hawaii, and elsewhere in the world on March 14. Ten days later, March 24, hundreds of thousands of defiant marchers flooded the streets in Washington, D.C., and at more than 800 places on every continent except Antarctica. What might they[Read More…]

  In the first 11 weeks of 2018, there have been 12 school shootings. Although shootings on school campuses only make up a tiny fraction of gun injuries and deaths annually, a March report from the Giffords Law Center focuses on the deep impact of gun violence on children in the USA, elaborating on how it extends far beyond the classroom.[Read More…]

Yesterday, in solidarity with the 17 students killed in Parkland, FL., students all across the country left their classes for 17 minutes.  These students echoed the moral determination of their grandparents, almost fifty years ago, in nationwide student strikes following the murder of four student antiwar protesters at Kent State.  Check the Congressional Record, and you’ll find one speech  commemorating[Read More…]

  Sonoma County, California: Driving through small-town Sebastopol on March 14 toward the Senior Center, this 73-year-old noticed groups of young students with signs gathering on downtown street corners and waving to motorists. These active participants in direct democracy joined thousands who walked out of schools across the U.S. and the world, organized by the Women’s March Youth branch. As[Read More…]

A superintendent threatens to suspend students protesting gun laws. But that’s not legal. Curtis Rhodes, the superintendent of the school district in Needville, a small town southwest of Houston, wrote a letter to students and parents that was distributed Tuesday on the social media page for the town’s high school. It began with a reference to the protests around the country[Read More…]

That there is a change in the air is evident this time.  Since the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, there have been demonstrations by school kids, their parents and others, confrontations of politicians including the president, and a general feeling that enough is enough. The most prominent opposition to gun control, the National Rifle Association (NRA)[Read More…]

It had been in the works.  Instead of engaging in the traditional revulsion associated with a mass shooting, or even digesting the grief of outraged students and grieving parents, US President Donald Trump’s solution to guns violence was elementary.  To target the perpetrator, it was necessary to arm instructors, mount the barricades, and raise the stakes. His address of February[Read More…]

  On February 14, 2018, it happened again. Young people, full of potential, their futures before them, shot down… at school, supposedly a place for learning, growing, having fun, making friends, even falling in love. This time the murderous violence struck Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A former student wielding a semiautomatic rifle massacred 17 people—14 students,[Read More…]

The scene is the House of Commons; the date May 7, 1940.  A simple motion to adjourn for the ten-day Whitsun recess is of little concern to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who has a comfortable 213 seat majority.  Then things take a turn.  A plan approved by the first First Lord pf the Admiralty Winston Churchill to land troops in[Read More…]

“Sixty-eight percent of U.S. citizens believe that ‘better mental health screening’ would help to reduce the number of school shootings, but one has to ask what’s considered mentally healthy in our spiritually-anemic, sick society.” — Richard Martin Oxman Relationships and loyalties within a family are the strongest and most important ones, say most people. [Pause.] Yes, blood is thicker than[Read More…]

Seventeen people were killed and at least 14 more wounded Wednesday afternoon in the latest horrific school shooting in the United States. The tragedy unfolded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, located some 30 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, in Broward County. According to reports, a former student started shooting from outside and then entered the school[Read More…]

  The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in 1787 as the replacement-Constitution for this country, replacing the prior Articles of Confederation, which had bound the United States together as the nation’s first Constitution. We Americans live under America’s second Constitution, but the terms-of-reference in it are the same as[Read More…]

  The Las Vegas gunman wasn’t operating merely as a gunman but as a sniper, and yet the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment makes no distinctions whatsoever regarding handguns versus snipers’ weapons — automatic (or semi-automatic) rifles which spew bullets so fast the Las Vegas shooter was able in the brief time-span of only around ten minutes to murder at least[Read More…]

Introduction Contrary to the Hegelian assumption that civilization progresses in a linear mode, the contradictions of capitalism between the promise of prosperity for all, on the one hand, and the reality of perpetual capital concentration, on the other, undermines bourgeois democracy and leads toward a more militaristic-police state. The nexus of structural and behavioral violence has not been lost even[Read More…]

Yet another mass shooting in the U.S., this time at Ft. Lauderdale airport, Florida’s second largest.  A certain Esteban Santiago flew from Alaska changing planes en route at Minneapolis.  Arriving, he headed to the baggage collection area, claimed his suitcase, opened it in the privacy of a toilet, removed a gun, methodically loaded it, and began shooting in the baggage[Read More…]