The US’s obsession with death and killing and guns

The flip side of the US’s obsession with preserving the death penalty despite all its well-documented horrors is its obsession with the idea that the more that people carry powerful guns everywhere all the time, the safer they will be. Coupled with expanded ‘stand your ground’ and ‘castle doctrine’ legislation that enables people make much broader claims of self-defense, this has even led people to set traps for burglars, tempting them to enter their homes so that they could kill them.
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May Day celebrations around the world

Today is the day when the world (except the US of course, because as the one true exceptional nation, we don’t need no stinking worker solidarity) acknowledges the rights of workers and their hard-won achievements all over the globe that have made our lives so much better, and calls for greater unity among workers to achieve yet more.

Here is a nice compilation of photographs of May Day parades and celebrations.

How will the Cliven Bundy story end?

I’ve been wondering how the impasse with rancher Cliven Bundy will end. While the government seems to be perfectly willing to give immunity from prosecution to the one-percenters, it cracks down hard on ordinary people who violate the law, such as the outrageous case of a recent widow whose home was seized and sold because she had not paid a $6.30 interest fee that she said she was not even aware of. That is how an oligarchy maintains control of a society.
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Jon Oliver interviews Keith Alexander

In order to try and build up buzz for the new show, HBO has out the entire first episode of Jon Olver’s new show Last Week Tonight on YouTube that you can see here. It seems to be similar to The Daily Show in style. To his credit, Oliver covered the Indian election currently going on, something ignored by much American media, and he excoriated them for it. He also covered the POM Wonderful v. Coca-Cola Supreme Court case in which there are no good guys.
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The Israel-Palestinian issue in rap

The so-called Middle East ‘Peace Process’, which needs to be relabeled to the more accurate ‘Delay and Deny Palestinian Rights Process’, has been called off for the umpteenth time since the Israeli government objects to the fact that the Palestinian Authority, that governs the Occupied Territories in the West Bank, has applied for recognition from various international agencies and has also arrived at a unity agreement with Hamas that governs Gaza.
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Don’t show emotions if you are a woman politician

The Daily Show uses the absurd fuss over the news of the future birth of Hillary Clinton’s grandchild to examine how differently the media scrutinize male and female politicians. Although the clips are funny, it is not really a laughing matter. Talking of laughing matters, do people recall the time when she was running for president in 2007 and there was a period of intense focus on the way she laughed and whether it was an unbecoming cackle? It was ludicrous.
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