Orlando’s horrific domestic extremist attack demonstrates that with the constant, cyclical negation of private and public rights there cannot be win-win solutions in a modern democracy that has foundationally resisted the notion of a theocratic state.
An acceptable measure of public safety is possible with a society and economy based on exchange-values that exceed use-values whether it’s interest charges, taxes, or simple profit based on consumer price ignorance.
And then there’s credit and debt, and all the possible hard feelings that can cause conflict over property, public and private.
And there’s even a micro-aggression for all of the above with the attendant offenses of everyday life — misinterpreted stereotyping and disrespect with posturing ranging from offensive t-shirts to open-carrying firearms.
But there’s never absolute public safety, whether it’s poor driving or basic actions while not caring about self or others. At what moment is inflammatory speech actionable intelligence when ignorance is the core meaning for major party candidates.
“Pulse usually hires armed off-duty police officers who stay in the parking lot outside”
Trying as a former CIA officer attempted to do in a CBS interview today by drawing a direct line to Daesh does not address the fundamental psychological and terror threat disqualifications for firearms operation and purchasing.
Safe places are never safe when even as a guard can exchange fire with the assailant and yet most of the carnage may have all occurred within the first minutes as the attacker fled into the restroom.
There will be the hypothetical of thinking that safety could have come from identifying and regulating the assailant’s possible bi-polar condition should have disqualified him from firearms purchases or that even that that condition may have come from a failure to find personal peace from commitment to an ideological practice that included pilgrimages to international sacred sites.
Had Orlando’s attacker taken an isolated rural wildlife refuge hostage rather than a gay club bathroom, it could have had a different outcome with lower loss of life, but would still be a terrorist act with the same kinds of legal violations and breach of a social contract for ideologically suspect reasons no less pathological nor with less potential lethality. Tarps are not Burkas, but terrorist intentions do share the same levels of cultural psychosis about safety and trust.
And armoring every public space or arming every person is not like trying to promote a safer society not predicated on firearms use or possession and all the political exploitation of that capital.
And yet we focus more on firearms than peace and threats about hateful dominance rather than loving cooperation.
In her foreign policy speech last week, Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time bashing Donald Trump, implying as Daniel Lazare says, “that because Trump is bonkers, Hillary must be the opposite, i.e. thoughtful and mature,” before going on to point out that “this is a woman who has had a hand in five or six of the major foreign-policy disasters of the post-9/11 period.”
Clinton says our alliances make us strong. But, friendship in common interest is one thing; “entangling alliances”* inherent in the unavoidable differences in interests between our friends and ourselves are another.
*From the title and text of the article, “entangling alliances” is a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address pledge for “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.”
–o-O-o–
Hillary Clinton’s ‘Entangled’ Foreign Policy
Daniel Lazare, June 12, 2016, Consortiumnews.com
Exclusive: Besides bashing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton offered few specifics in her big foreign policy speech which stressed the value of “friends.” But those “entangling alliances” helped create today’s global chaos, writes Daniel Lazare.
_________
Now that Hillary Clinton has clinched the Democratic nomination, her June 2 foreign-policy speech is looking more and more important. The reason is simple: Clinton is going to be all over Donald Trump in the coming months, punching away at his racism and xenophobia, his thinly veiled appeals to violence, and his fraudulent business practices.
But what she’ll no doubt hit him hardest on is his general unfitness to be anywhere near the nuclear button. As she put it in San Diego: “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”
It’s hard to disagree – the man does seem out of control. But what has critics choking on their morning coffee is the implication that because Trump is bonkers, Hillary must be the opposite, i.e. thoughtful and mature. As opponents ranging from ConsortiumNews’s Robert Parry toPaul R. Pillar, Jeffrey Sachs, Jeet Heer, Diana Johnstone, and Gary Leupp have pointed out, this is a woman who has had a hand in five or six of the major foreign-policy disasters of the post-9/11 period. So where does she get off calling Trump reckless? … Continue reading
Morning Reads: The Preventable Tragedy in Orlando; Billionaires Out to Destroy Press Freedom
Orlando –> Sometime just before 2 a.m. Sunday, a man named Omar Mateen entered a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and using an assault rifle and a handgun began the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Fifty are dead, including the assailant, and 53 injured. Though the man had twice been investigated by the FBI about “inflammatory” comments he had made and “possible ties” with a suicide bomber, he purchased the AR-15 assault weapon — called by the NRA the “most popular gun in America” — within the last two weeks. This is legal under current federal and Florida gun law. Continued.
Click through to BillMoyers.com to continue reading their roundup of stories about the shooting in Orlando, campaign finance reform, Peter Thiel’s bankrolling of the Hulk Hogan’s case against Gawker, and the ever changing English language.
Walking with Walt Whitman
A daily installment from Leaves of Grass
Inscriptions
“Beginnings”
How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a paradox appears their age,
How people respond to them, yet know them not,
How there is something relentless in their fate all times,
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.
~ ❦ ~
Leaves of Grass – Wikisource
Image – Walt Whitman, age 35, from the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison (my frame) ~ Wikipedia
FACT: Too Many People Are DYING – Because even if there’s a court order to keep you away from your terrified ex, because even if you have a history of mental illness or violent behavior, you can still walk into a gun show, hand over $695 to a dealer, and get an AR15 without a background check, head for a crowded place, and open fire.
It’s happening all over America, over and over and over and over AGAIN.
Using FBI data and media reports, Everytown for Gun Safety developed an analysis of mass shootings that took place between January 2009 and July 2015. The analysis found that there have been at least 133 mass shootings in the nearly seven-year period.
The FBI defines “mass shooting” as any incident where at least four people were murdered with a gun.
There was a noteworthy connection between mass shooting incidents and domestic or family violence. In at least 76 of the cases (57%), the shooter killed a current or former spouse or intimate partner or other family member, and in at least 21 incidents the shooter had a prior domestic violence charge.
Under federal law, domestic abuse only prohibits firearm ownership when the perpetrator has been married to the victim, has a child with them, or cohabits with them. In 23 percent of mass shootings in which the perpetrator killed a former or current partner (13 of 56), there was no evidence the pair had ever married or had a child together.
High-capacity magazines — or assault weapons likely equipped with them — were used in at least 15 of the incidents (11%). These incidents resulted in an average of 13.3 total people shot — 155% more people shot than in other incidents (5.2) — and 7.5 deaths — 47% more deaths than in other incidents (5.1).
The AR15 assault rifle shown above costs less than $700.
The Coffee Shopis an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.
—oooOooo–
This is an open thread. There are several hosts, each host being responsible for picking a “theme of the day” and starting the discussion. However, there is no hard and fast rule about staying on topic, especially if you have a personal story burning a hole in your pocket trying to escape.
This is an Open Thread. Grab your cup, pull up a chair, sit a spell and share what’s on your mind today.
Remember this scene in the movie The Graduate?
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Well, Mr. McGuire might be right. Welcome to the brave new world of 3-D printers.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
.jpg){kind=link}
Posted without comment*
____________________________________
*alternately said, Read my mind.
Share this: