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Updated. 2013 Reprint edn. Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775 Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638 (Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders) Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders) Number of […]

Alex Jones’s angry appearance on Piers Morgan’s CNN interview show on Tuesday has provoked a lot of discussion, but what strikes me is that Jones threatened to launch an armed insurrection (1776) if the government attempted to outlaw semi-automatic weapons (or as he put it “to take our guns.”) Of course, Jones got away with […]

I cannot thank enough the hundreds of supporters who donated or proffered a voluntary subscription to Informed Comment this year! We had an ambitious goal, and we more or less met it (certainly it will be met this quarter). I and the Informed Comment support team of tech professionals who keep the site humming like […]

Not controversial: John Brennan: Served in CIA during the torture program, designed the current US drone program that has extra-judicially killed hundreds, including children and including at least 2 American citizens. Controversial: Chuck Hagel: Thinks war should be a last resort, doesn’t think an air strike on Iran would be effective, wants to do diplomacy […]

I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics. Unless his views have changed, we certainly would not agree on gay rights. ( He says, at least, that his views have in fact changed and has apologized for remarks in the […]

Bill McKibben writes at Tomdispatch Change usually happens very slowly, even once all the serious people have decided there’s a problem. That’s because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in slow currents.  Since change by definition requires going up against powerful established interests, it can take decades for those […]

Beleagured President Bashar al-Assad addressed the nation on Sunday, in a “Baghdad Bob” moment, in which he more or less denied he has lost control of much of the country or that most of his countrymen consider him a monster. Meanwhile, the civil war had raged all around the country. A mortar landed in north […]

Joaquin Sapien writes at ProPublica: Following the mass shooting in Connecticut, the Obama administration and lawmakers around the country have promised to re-examine gun control in America. ProPublica decided to take a look at what’s happened legislatively in states where some of the worst shootings in recent U.S. history have occurred to see what effect, […]