Economy

By Lindsay Owens and Hebah Kassem | – ( Afterwords.org) – Amid the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine, rising gas prices, and the existential threat of climate change, policymakers in Washington have a long list of crises to address. But there’s one step that could help mitigate all of them: reducing our dependence on oil — […]

Campaign Finance

A Republican Tried to Introduce a Commonsense Gun Law. Then the Gun Lobby Got Involved

ProPublica

By Megan O’Matz | – ( ProPublica ) – Cole Wist was a Republican state House member in Colorado with an A grade from the NRA. Then, in 2018, he supported a red flag law, sponsoring a bill to allow guns to be taken away — temporarily — from people who pose an immediate threat […]

Guns

6 Charts show key role Firearms Corporations play in America’s Gun Culture

The Conversation

By Michael Siegel, Tufts University | – Americans have blamed many culprits, from mental illness to inadequate security, for the tragic mass shootings that are occurring with increasing frequency in schools, offices and theaters across the U.S. The latest, which occurred on May 24, 2022, at a Texas elementary school and left at least 19 […]

Inequality

One-Off Demonstrations are not Enough: Progressives need Standing Mass Organizations

Tomdispatch

By Beverly Gologorsky | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – To begin, an anecdote. This past summer, a pigeon walked through my open balcony door while my attention was elsewhere. I shooed it out, but when I turned around two more pigeons walked out of my bedroom. In the 20 years I’ve lived in my apartment, […]

Guns

People Die as Weapons Industry Profits

F. Douglas Stephenson

Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – Citizens are waking up to the fact that so many politicians can be so easily bought by the weapons industry, an industry that doesn’t care how many people must die to protect their huge profits. SafeHome.org reports that after a record year in 2020, gun sales in the […]

Guns

How the NRA evolved from backing a 1934 Ban on Machine Guns to blocking nearly all firearm Restrictions Today

The Conversation

By Robert Spitzer, State University of New York College at Cortland | – The mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, just 10 days apart, are stirring the now-familiar national debate over guns seen after the tragic 2012 and 2018 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, […]

Far Right

When it comes to Guns, the US is a Third World Country run by Corporate Lobbyists for a Profit

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 21 are dead in another mass shooting, including 19 schoolchildren. The white slavers of the Old Souoth used to call US slavery our “peculiar institution.” Nowadays we have another peculiar institution, the gun culture. And we are peculiar. When it comes to gun violence, the United States is less like […]

Carbon Footprint

Extinction Rebellion inspires Shell Consultant to Resign over Company’s Bad Faith on Climate Emergency, Call for More Resignations

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a letter of resignation to the Shell executive committee that she posted to her Linkedin page, Caroline Dennett, the director of the Clout consultancy, explained that she was leaving because Shell is “operating beyond the design limits of our planetary systems” and “is not implementing steps to mitigate the […]

Authoritarianism

Iran: Arrests Amid Economic Protests: Attempt to Suppress Growing Social Movements

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities have arrested several prominent activists on baseless accusations amid labor union strikes and ongoing protests against rising prices, since May 6, 2022, in dozens of small towns, Human Rights Watch said today. Those arrested include a prominent sociologist and four labor rights defenders. News outlets close to […]