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What matters more? War around the world, or mass shootings at home?

hat’s the difference between these two Democrats, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Rep. Barbara Lee of California? Chris Murphy puts on a pointless, pompous filibuster to achieve a meaningless vote on gun control measures he knows will never pass. Rep. Barbara Lee is in her 15th year of quietly trying to persuade ANY other Representative or Senator to accept constitutional responsibility for deciding whether or not the US should go to war. Guess who gets more attention?

What is wrong, truly, profoundly wrong with Democrats? Republicans are easy, they embrace their commitment to naked power without principle beyond a simple-minded checklist of ideological bumper sticker thoughts. That made voting for NRA-sponsored mass murder a no-brainer for Republicans (except those in states with a possibly conscious electorate).

I feel the finger on the trigger. I also feel it on the button.

“Dear President Obama,” the letter begins. It goes on to remind him of something he said in his 2008 presidential campaign: “Keeping nuclear weapons ready to launch on a moment’s notice is a dangerous relic of the Cold War. Such policies increase the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculation.”

The letter, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, is signed by 90 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. It continues: “After your election, you called for taking ‘our nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.’”

Presidential campaigns, mass killings, war . . . nuclear war. Washington, we have a problem.

  Whether Britain remains in the European Union or not will soon be decided.  However, the more important question should be, “Who will be Britain’s Bankers?”  The more important problem that arises with the election to exit or remain with the EU, is that it does not address the currency problems.  All EU countries need to remain within the EU Trading Union, to have access to market goods, but they need their own sovereign currency, to retain control of their economies, within their borders.  These problems mirror the problems the states have in the US, because they do not have sovereign currency within state borders.  Public State Banks would provide the local currency to fund all government long-term infrastructure projects, solar energy expansion, and provide millions of jobs to everyone that wants one.  Public State Banks can also provide the source for guaranteed income to all residents.  The solution for Britain, Members of the EU and all the individual States in the US, is to create local sovereign currency, via a debit card from the state.  Every taxpayer would automatically have a local state bank account, and if working for the

 

Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama have radically different views on what is involved in doing away with nuclear weapons.

Reading Gorbachev's new book, The New Russia, is a bit disappointing, but it contains some key insights. It may also be a cure for insomnia; it's no page turner. It's part decades-long diary and travelogue, part petty self-aggrandizement (by someone in no need), and part ill-informed conservatism.

Gorby claims that Obama "honoured his promise to withdraw from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan." In fact, both are still raging, the never completed withdrawal from Iraq fell wildly short of the campaign-promise schedule, and Obama actually promised to escalate in Afghanistan, which he did, tripling the U.S. presence and making that war primarily his own in terms of deaths, days, and dollars. The fact that smart well-informed people abroad, like Gorbachev, fall for common U.S. myths is an indication of how very difficult foreign relations can be.

In what's being called the worst mass killing by the United States in the past six months, numerous mentally disturbed individuals, with the extensive backing of a well-financed terrorist organization, and support from a growing circle of allied gang members, have gruesomely slaughtered 1,110 to 1,558 innocent men, women, and children.

This incident, which has left shocked and speechless a handful of people who've heard and thought about it, took place between December 1, 2015, and May 31, 2016, during which interval the killers got off 4,087 airstrikes, including 3,010 over Iraq and 1,077 over Syria.

Aiding and abetting the slaughter, and now also being sought by law enforcement, are France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, and Canada. In what is widely understood as an appeal for judicial mercy, Canada has expressed remorse. None of the other alleged perpetrators has done so. Several have openly acknowledged their participation, including by displaying the gang symbol of a U.S. flag tattooed on their glutei maximi.

 

By Center for Citizen Initiatives delegation currently visiting Russia

 

In what's being called the worst mass killing by the United States in the past six months, numerous mentally disturbed individuals, with the extensive backing of a well-financed terrorist organization, and support from a growing circle of allied gang members, have gruesomely slaughtered 1,110 to 1,558 innocent men, women, and children.

This incident, which has left shocked and speechless a handful of people who've heard and thought about it, took place between December 1, 2015, and May 31, 2016, during which interval the killers got off 4,087 airstrikes, including 3,010 over Iraq and 1,077 over Syria.

Aiding and abetting the slaughter, and now also being sought by law enforcement, are France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, and Canada. In what is widely understood as an appeal for judicial mercy, Canada has expressed remorse. None of the other alleged perpetrators has done so. Several have openly acknowledged their participation, including by displaying the gang symbol of a U.S. flag tattooed on their glutei maximi.

 

As with becoming a whistleblower or an activist or an artist there must be numerous reasons why any individual becomes a terrorist -- whether military, contract, or independent. Various irrational hatreds and fears (and promises of paradise after death) and the ready availability of weaponry certainly play roles.

But did you know that every single foreign terrorist in the United States in recent decades, plus domestic terrorists claiming foreign motivations, plus numerous poor suckers set up and stung by the FBI, plus every foreign terrorist organization that has claimed or been blamed for attempted or successful anti-U.S. terrorism have all claimed the same motivation? I'm not aware of a single exception.

If one of them claimed to be motivated by the needs of Martians, we might set that aside as crazy. If every single one of them claimed to be acting on behalf of Martians, we would at least get curious about why they said that, even if we doubted Martians' existence. But every single one of them says something much more believable. And yet what they say seems to be a secret despite being readily available information.

One of the film capital’s top movie-paloozas, LA Film Festival, has taken place near Culver Studios, where Gone With the Wind’s Atlanta set was burned down and giants like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles made movie history. From June 1-9 LAFF screened scores of Hollywood features, foreign films, indies, shorts and documentaries. For the first time the U.S. State Department co-presented a roundtable discussion of Global Media Makers, featuring filmmakers from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon Morocco and Turkey.

The filmfest’s more commercial popcorn-munching fare included The Conjuring 2, a horror flick starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga projected at what had been Grauman’s Chinese Theatre - where stars’ footprints are enshrined in concrete - on Hollywood Boulevard. As their reboots prepared to launch, the original Ghostbusters and Independence Day were shown in Downtown L.A., while 2001’s Shrek was screened at Culver City’s ArcLight Cinemas in Los Angeles, where most Festival movies were presented.