Chris Hedges: Murder Is Our National Sport. (Image: Jailed hands via Shutterstock)Murder is our national sport.
We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. The Common Denominator in Gun Massacres Is Military-Style Weapons Championed for Profit.
(Image: The New Press)In the battle for reducing gun violence in America, Tom Diaz, author of The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It, points to the culture wars of white male gun owners and the firearms industry, which tends to stay lurking in the background, signing the checks.
It is the gun industry, he contends, which has turned the once basic revolver and rifle into a marketing machine for highly lethal militarized weapons. One recent study found that in the four major mass shootings in the second half of 2012, an AR-15 assault weapon was the single common denominator. The study, published in Art on Issues, concludes: "Assuming no bias in selection, the odds of a member of the AR rifle family being selected simply by chance in any of the individual events amongst all available types of rifles and shotguns becomes about 2.4 in 100 (0.024).
Support Truthout's mission. The Consensus Behind Militarism. While the U.S. media has some spirited debate over politics and social issues – i.e.
Fox News vs. MSNBC – there remains a broad consensus about foreign adversaries whose behavior is almost always cast in the harshest light, a reality that colors how America reacts to the world, as Jeff Cohen writes. I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV – at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Selection of the AR-15 Rifle in Premeditated Indiscriminate Mass Shootings « Art on Issues. A total of four independent, premeditated and indiscriminate mass shootings occurred in the latter half of 2012.
There was no connection between the shooters and the victims, and no reason was established in the selection of victims other than inflicting mass casualties. An AR-15 rifle was the weapon used in all four of these events. The odds of this particular weapon being selected for all four of these independent events simply by chance was estimated to be less than one in a million using two different approaches. The intentional selection of this firearm is additionally supported by the behavior of all four shooters.
It is felt that this finding fundamentally changes the assault weapon debate.
Control Arms: Teken nu voor een sterk wapenhandelverdrag! War Without End. U.S.
Marines occupy Baghdad in front of the Al Fanar hotel that housed Voices activists throughout the Shock and Awe bombing. (Photo: WNV/Iraq Peace Team)Ten years ago today, Iraqis braced themselves for the anticipated “Shock and Awe” attacks that the United States was planning to launch against them. Democrats Share the Blame for Tragedy of Iraq War. U.S.
Army Soldiers training at Camp Buerhing, Kuwait, Feb. 14, 2010, in preparation for a security mission prior to deploying to Iraq. (Photo: The National Guard)The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized that vote by making false claims about Iraq's WMD programs - a minority of Democrats, but much over-represented in Democratic leadership councils - were responsible for allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq's alleged threat. Scahill: Dirty Wars Institutionalized Despite Obama Promises. Combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues the corporate media!
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and keep independent journalism strong. President Barack Obama delivers a speech on counterterrorism at the National Defense University in Washington, May 23, 2013. A day after admitting the killing of four Americans in drone strikes, Obama on Thursday announced new limits on the targeted attacks and a renewed effort to shut Guantanamo prison. Les mines anti-personnel. Le poids des dépenses militaires.
Les civils premières victimes des guerres. Iraq: War's Legacy of Cancer. Bombsites like this one in Fallujah remain toxic and likely continue to cause illnesses.
(Photo: Dahr Jamail / Al Jazeera) Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq. Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates. There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah. Toxic environments Fallujah babies Basra and Southern Iraq. Dirty Wars.