This is the weekly selection of news
and opinion from sources outside the mainstream media. Today we look
at the Senate vote on universal background checks for gun sales and,
on a more pleasant note, Earth Day 2013.
US Gun Control
What can you say about a political system where the will of 80-90% of
the country is thwarted by a minority filibuster vote ? In one of
its more gutless acts, the US Senate was unable to muster the
required 60 votes to pass universal background checks designed to
keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally disturbed. The
lies and robocalls of the NRA did their job. But why? The huge
amount of money the NRA spent trying to defeat Obama in 2012 was
ineffective. He won. They lost. What are the Senators afraid of ?
Mother Jones has a series of excellent short articles related
to the debacle:
Cerberus Capital Management is trying to sell its ownership of Freedom Group, the manufacturer of the gun used in the Newton CT tragedy. Relating the difficulty of finding investors to buy them out MJ writes: "In this case, it seems
that Wall Street has a better sense of American public opinion than
the Senate, which failed to pass a bipartisan background check bill
on Wednesday."
They also look at the four Democrats who voted no on backegroundchecks - turns out they are all up for election in 2014 and all hail
from states that went for Romney in 2012. [Kudos on the other hand to John McCain and the other 5 Republicans who votesd for the background checks.]
MJ then takes on the gun lobby myth that guns stop crime. Charts are
provided that show, among other myths, that "that less than 3
percent of gun-related homicides are committed in self-defense "
and that the "typical gun is more likely to be stolen than to be
used in an attempt to stop a crime".
They then give you some screen shots of the Mitch McConnell Facebook Page posted "after the defeat of the watered-down
Manchin-Toomey background checks compromise".
Finally there's an update on other gun bills soon to be voted on (or not).
This TomDispatch article explores the actual causes of violent crime as opposed to the fear-mongering of the right. "To
acknowledge what really threatens us is to upset two of the most
guarded citadels in this country: the military and masculinity. They
are perhaps the same force on different scales. Armed intervention
is imperial machismo in the same way a raging husband or father is
the military dictator of a household."
Earth Day 2013
News from Europe, Asia, and Africa on plans for Earth Day 2013...
The town of Cefalu on the north coast of Sicily is organizing three
days of activities - among them "a Conference on sustainable
issues, guided excursions on the rock of Cefalù, concerts, wine
tasting of organic products, sports performances, environmental
awareness-raising campaigns also at the various schools, and a
photographic exhibition on planet Earth, designed as a multi-sensory
experience (images, sounds, scents '), which will be held at the St.
Catherine's Octagon."
[From the Earth Day Italia website as translated by Microsoft Bing.]
In Japan Kids Weekend at Earth Day Tokyo is again organizing a recreational
tour for children from Fukushima (the site of the 2011
tsunami-caused nuclear accident).
And in South Africa, the day is being used to raise environmental
awareness. The Greenworks South Africa website asks people to commit
to "a billion acts of green" while nicely summarizing the
world's and South Africa's environmental challenges: "Earth Day
is a global movement to highlight and address environmental issues.
These are just some of the major environmental issues our Planet
faces: global warming and climate change... destructive energy
sources... toxic waste... groundwater contamination, abuse of water
resources, wetland destruction, and pollution of waterways and the
oceans... litter... overfishing and unsustainable
fishing...destruction of rainforests...and expanding deserts."
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