USA: The other public health crisis: Gun violence spikes in the U.S. amid pandemic

More than 12,000 shooting deaths have been recorded in the U.S. so far this year and the political establishment in the US can still not come up legislating strong gun control laws.Scandalous.

Read more at: The other public health crisis: Gun violence spikes in the U.S. amid pandemic | CBC News

USA: Hundreds of Casualties Reported in Shootings Across U.S. Over July 4th Weekend: by Mary Ellen Cagnassola

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which compiled data from cities across the country showing hundreds of injuries and deaths over a 72-hour period, the Fourth of July weekend was the most violent weekend in the United States so far this year.

Roughly 233 people were killed in the U.S. and hundreds more injured — from 5 p.m. Friday through Monday, according to the GVA data. The organization reported numbers exceeding 600 injuries as of Tuesday morning and is still finalizing numbers collected from police, media and government sources in real time.

Read more at: Hundreds of Casualties Reported in Shootings Across U.S. Over July 4th Weekend

US mass shootings: At least 45 in the month starting with the Atlanta spa shootings - by Madeline Holcombe

The US has seen at least 147 mass shootings in 2021, according to data from the GVA, a non-profit based in Washington.

Read more at: US mass shootings: At least 45 in the month starting with the Atlanta spa shootings - CNN

USA: The Colorado attack is the 7th mass shooting in 7 days in the US

The mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday took place less than a week after eight people were killed in a series of attacks on spas in Atlanta.

The two incidents are likely to spur discussion about gun control legislation in the United States, where firearm deaths are tragically common.

Reaqd more at: The Colorado attack is the 7th mass shooting in 7 days in the US - CNN

USA - Gun Control: 2019 saw most mass killings on record, US database reveals

Thirty-three of 41 incidents involved firearms, research shows.

Read more at :
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/28/mass-killings-2019-us-database?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Firefox

Global warming - Opinion: COP25 fails to keep pace with the people

Public concern over climate change has escalated since the Paris Agreement in 2015. But Ruby Russell says that COP25 only narrowly avoided a repeat of Copenhagen's collapsed talks a decade ago.

Note EU-Digest: Global warming  has now become a direct fight between "We the People" and Corporate interests, supported by the political establishment, which has done very little to curb the alarming  disrespect of our environment by the leadership of the Industrial Complex.  This disastrous turn of events, if not stopped by strong People Power resistance in the streets and in the workplace, will certainly cause the destruction of our planet.

Read more at::
https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-cop25-fails-to-keep-pace-with-the-people/a-51693888

Britain - Brexit: Customs Union at Centre of compromise talks

Brexit: customs union at centre of compromise talks ahead of crucial EU summit

 Note EU Digest : The problem is that Theresa May has not been able to put a concrete proposal together supported by a parliamentary majority in the British parliament, and keeps wasting EU members time and finances discussing "pies in the sky".

It is high time now the EU starts to play some hard ball  with Theresa May, and gives her an "indefinite extension" until she can come up with a concrete proposal, which is backed by a majority in the British parliament.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com/2019/04/07/brexit-uk-prime-minister-says-there-is-still-a-chance-of-a-compromise-deal

EU: Europe needs new political alignment

Read more:
 

https://www.socialeurope.eu/back-to-the-future-the-necessary-realignment-of-european-politics

USA: Disturbing facts about the US Infrastructure and a variety of other problems which are getting worse by the day

The US infrastructure and the country is in dire need of repair

Someone once said that you can tell a lot about a nation by the condition of the infrastructure.

So what does the US infrastructure say about America?  It says that America is in a very advanced state of decay.

At this point, much of America is being held together with spit, duct tape and prayers.  Roads are crumbling and thousands of its bridges look like they could collapse at any moment.  The power grid is ancient and over a trillion gallons of untreated sewage is leaking from aging sewer systems each year.

US  airports and seaports are clogged with far more traffic than they were ever designed to carry.

Approximately a third of all of the dam failures that have taken place in the United States since 1874 have happened during the past decade.  The national parks and recreation areas have been terribly neglected and the US railroads system is a bad joke.

Recent hurricanes which hit America showed how vulnerable the  levees and dikes are, and drinking water systems all over the country are badly outdated.  Sadly, at a time when we could use significant new investment in infrastructure,  the spending on infrastructure is actually way down.

Back during the 50s and the 60s, the U.S. was spending between 3 and 4 percent of GDP on infrastructure.  Today, that figure is down to about 2.4 percent.  But the US does not have any extra money to spend on infrastructure because of reckless spending and because of the massive amount of national debt that it has accumulated.

Here are 21 facts about America’s failing infrastructure

#1 The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America’s crumbling infrastructure an overall grade of D.
#2 There are simply not enough roads in the United States today.  Each year, traffic jams cost the commuters of America 4.2 billion hours and about 2.8 million gallons of gasoline.
#3 It is being projected that Americans will spend an average of 160 hours stuck in traffic annually by the year 2035.
#4 Approximately one-third of all roads in the United States are in substandard condition.
#5 Close to a third of all highway fatalities are due “to substandard road conditions, obsolete road designs, or roadside hazards.”
#6 One out of every four bridges in America either carries more traffic than originally intended or is in need of repair.
#7 Repairing all of the bridges in the United States that need repair would take approximately 140 billion dollars.
#8 According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, our decaying transportation system costs the U.S. economy about 78 billion dollars annually in lost time and fuel.
#9 All over America, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel roads because they are cheaper to maintain.  The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt roads into gravel roads, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have transformed at least some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.
#10 There are 4,095 dams in the United States that are at risk of failure.  That number has risen by more than 100 percent since 1999.
#11 Of all the dam failures that have happened in the United States since 1874, a third of them have happened during the past decade.
#12 Close to half of all U.S. households do not have access to Public bus or rail transit.
#13  The US's aging sewer systems spill more than a trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year.  The cost of cleaning up that sewage each year is estimated to be greater than 50 billion dollars.
#14 It is estimated that rolling blackouts and inefficiencies in the U.S. electrical grid cost the U.S. economy approximately 80 billion dollars a year.
#15 It is being projected that by the year 2020 every single major container port in the United States will be handling at least double the volume that it was originally designed to handle.
#16 All across the United States, conditions at many of our state parks, recreation areas and historic sites are deplorable at best.  Some states have backlogs of repair projects that are now over a billion dollars long….
#17 Today, the U.S. spends about 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure.  Meanwhile, China spends about 9 percent of GDP on infrastructure.
#18 In the United States today, approximately 16 percent of our construction workers are unemployed.
#19 China has plans to build 55,000 miles of highways by the year 2020.  If all of those roads were put end to end, it would be longer than the total length of the entire U.S. interstate system.
#20 The World Economic Forum ranks U.S. infrastructure 23rd in the world, and we fall a little bit farther behind the rest of the developed world every single day.
#21 It has been projected that it would take 2.2 trillion dollars over the next 5 years just to repair our existing infrastructure.  That does not even include a single penny for badly needed new infrastructure.

So where did the US go wrong?

Well, one of the big problems is that the US have become a very materialistic "me first" society that is obsessed with short-term thinking.  Investing in infrastructure is something that has long-term benefits, but these days Americans tend to only be focused on what is happening right now and most politicians are only focused on the next election cycle.

Another major problem is that there is so much corruption and waste in the US  system these days. Special interest groups and corporations have basically total control over the US political system

The government certainly spends more than enough money, but very little of that money is spent wisely. Too much is going into military spending, without questions asked; No one in America seems to have figured out that the US is not obliged to be the global cop to keep the weapons industry happy.

And sadly, the US simply does not have the money that it  needs for infrastructure because of all the debt that it has have piled up.

Unless the Trump Administration puts their money where their mouth is ( which they have not done so far) the federal government, state governments and local governments are all struggling to stay afloat in an ocean of red ink, and unfortunately that means that spending on infrastructure is likely to be cut even more in the years ahead.

It is high time everyone in America wakes up to the reality that "business as usual" is not working anymore and that radical change is needed. So far no one has seriously stepped up to the plate. 

EU-Digest

USA: March on DC - Students lead March for Our Lives and single out "NO-ACTION" politicians

"Since the time that I came out here, it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds," she said finally. "The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest."

She added: "Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job."

In the 39 days since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Gonzalez and her fellow student survivors have galvanized a nationwide movement for gun reform.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of students gathered in the nation's capitol and at sister marches across the country and around the world to deliver a powerful, unified message: Enough is enough.

For Photo reportage click here: Photos: Students lead March for Our Lives

USA - Florida Massacre: Emma Gonzalez's passionate anti-gun speech calls out politicians and tells trump he should take action instead of money from NRA

The strong message of a student who survived the mass shooting at a Florida high school this week reverberated across social media Saturday after a passionate speech at an anti-gun rally.

Emma Gonzalez's name was trending on Twitter for much of the afternoon as she took on President Trump, the National Rifle Association, politicians and every argument against tightening gun laws, starting a chant of "shame on you!" in the crowd of hundreds at the rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 

The deaths of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday has started the familiar debate on gun laws after a mass shooting — but what's different is students are leading the charge and becoming a powerful voice.

Emma's speech caused a firestorm at the rally and on social media, many calling her a hero and a new leader in the fight against gun violence.

Note EU-Digest: Bravo Emma Gonzalez, Hopefully the students of America will organize a mass Rally in Washington against the NRA and politicians who have accepted donations from the NRA for political gain, and for strong Gun Control laws. 

Read more: Emma Gonzalez's passionate anti-gun speech calls out politicians

Retribution: Not Part Of The Human Moral Code And The Consequences For Those Who Think It Is

Almost all violence emerges with some kind of rationale that justifies its use.  Warfare, capital punishment, or corporal punishment all follow a self-conscious logic.  At the core of this “logic” usually rests a commitment to the necessity of retribution, justifying violence as the appropriate response to wrongdoing.  When wrongdoing violates the human divined moral order, “justice” requires retribution or punishment, repaying wrongdoing with punishment, pain and often also death.

This human interpretation of retribution, which is still being applied is some kind of an "historical short-circuit" that occurred in which certain concepts were taken from their biblical context, interpreted through the lens of Roman law, then used to interpret the biblical texts.

The result has been an obsession with the retributive themes of the Bible and a neglect of the restorative ones— in other words a basic theology of a retributive God who desires violence. 

Consequently the legitimacy of retribution has become an accepted cultural given around the world.

Is this correct, absolutely not.

Genesis 9 verse 6 warns: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image".

Or as we read in Deuterenomy 32 verse 35:  "it is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."

Mankind can not take the law of retribution in its own hand, because that right belongs to God. 

If we look at the state of the world today, nobody has to tell you that the situation is extremely grim, maybe even hopeless for some.

Political structures are falling like a deck of cards, natural disasters are happening daily.

America and Britain, which led a "coalition of the willing" under false pretenses into a war with Iraq, which has now spread into Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, resulting in millions of casualties of innocent civilians, large numbers of refugees, will not escape divine retribution.

As a matter of fact, the results of these divine retributions are already visible. Britain's economy and its Pound Stirling are crumbling, after they voted in favor of Brexit.

The US is not only plagued today by a meltdown of its political system, but is also experiencing one natural disaster after the other.

The EU is going through an inner revolt between member states wanting closer unity and nationalistic populists, who want to turn the clock back to independent statehood.

Last but not least, on the subject of divine retribution, if you wonder why Haiti has been so hard hit recently by hurricane Matthew, and just a few years earlier by a devastating earthquake, followed by an epidemic of cholera, think again.

Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Haiti, but voodoo may be considered the country's national religion. The majority of Haitians believe in and practice at least some aspects of voodoo. Most voodooists believe that their religion can coexist with Catholicism, which is a myth. Former Haiti President François Duvalier recruited voodoo specialists to serve as "tonton makouts" to help him control all aspects of Haitian life. Duvalier also often indicated that he retained power through sorcery.

There are many more of these examples of retribution showing up daily around the world,  as the day of judgement draws closer.

Yes indeed, the power of retribution is not really a part of our "human objectives" during our temporary sojourn on this planet. It belongs to God.
©
EU-Digest

Spain: Political crises

Spanish parliament rejects acting PM's bid to form govt http://f24.my/2bSOTGy

US Politics: Are We Witnessing the Death of America's Political Establishment? - by Robert Reich

Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred.

A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, and garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada, of all places.

And a 69-year-old billionaire who has never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party has taken a commanding lead in the Republican primaries.

Something very big has happened, and it’s not due to Bernie Sanders’ magnetism or Donald Trump’s likeability.

It’s a rebellion against the establishment.

The question is why the establishment has been so slow to see this. A year ago – which now seems like an eternity – it proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush shoe-ins.

Both had all the advantages – deep bases of funders, well-established networks of political insiders, experienced political advisors, all the name recognition you could want.

But even now that Bush is out and Hillary is still leading but vulnerable, the establishment still doesn’t see what’s occurred. They explain everything by pointing to weaknesses: Bush, they now say, “never connected” and Hillary “has a trust problem.”

A respected political insider recently told me most Americans are largely content. “The economy is in good shape,” he said. “Most Americans are better off than they’ve been in years. The problem has been the major candidates themselves.”

I beg to differ.

Economic indicators may be up but they don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans still feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience.

Nor do the major indicators show the linkages Americans see between wealth and power, crony capitalism, declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and a billionaire class that’s turning our democracy into an oligarchy.
Median family income lower now than it was sixteen years ago, adjusted for inflation.

Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to top.

These gains have translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, trade deals, and increasing market power – all of which have further pushed down wages pulled up profits.

Those at the very top of the top have rigged the system even more thoroughly. Since 1995, the average income tax rate for the 400 top-earning Americans has plummeted from 30 percent to 17 percent.

Wealth, power, and crony capitalism fit together. So far in the 2016 election, the richest 400 Americans have accounted for over a third of all campaign contributions.

Americans know a takeover has occurred and they blame the establishment for it.

There’s no official definition of the “establishment” but it presumably includes all of the people and institutions that have wielded significant power over the American political economy, and are therefore deemed complicit.

Read more: Robert Reich: Are We Witnessing the Death of America's Political Establishment? | Alternet

Europe’s reaction to NSA spying ‘totally inadequate, no action, nothing more than words’

EU reaction to NSA spying inadequate

So far European governments reactions to the people’s anger about NSA spying on European Citizens has been totally inadequate, says Paul Murphy, Irish Member of the European Parliament from the Socialist Party in an interview with Russian TV station RT. He says this mainly is the result of the fact that most governments have put a lid on it, as the interests of big businesses prevails.

"What it illustrates", said Murphy,  "is the deep-rooted hypocrisy of the leaders of all countries of Europe and really around the world. Whereby they are happy to criticize other people spying on themselves, but they are all engaged in this, all of the major powers in the world are engaged in massive spying against each other. But also most importantly, states are involved in spying against their own people and other peoples around the world. I think what should come out from ordinary people across Europe is a clear message that we are opposed to the building of a security state, which is what’s happening, we are opposed to this massive surveillance of people and of elective representatives, and we demand people’s right to privacy".

"I think the response of the EU has been entirely inadequate", says Murphy, "and it’s being words and nothing more than words, while they continue, for example, with the negotiations on the EU-US free-trade agreement. I think it’s because they know the whole thing is full of hypocrisy and they know they are guilty probably as much as their technical capacities allows relative to the US. And I think it’s only through developing a movement and big pressure from below that the most important issue here – people’s, individuals’ rights of privacy, individual rights not to be spied upon, that that can prevail and can become a factor in the situation"

Basically the EU Commission and the EU parliament are sitting on their hands when it comes to properly handling the NSA spying affair on EU Citizens. It is  another example of why the confidence in the political establishment of the Europe Union has reached an all-time low.

EU-Digest

Europe Eyes Shift from Austerity to Growth - by Carsten Volkery

When European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn presents the European Union's spring forecast for the bloc's economy on Friday, one word will be a leitmotif during his speech: growth. Once a favorite buzzword of eurocrats, it is now back in fashion these days.

Even prior to François Hollande's victory in the presidential election in France, growth had been on the Brussels agenda. Now, it is near the top. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has invited the 27 EU leaders to a special summit on growth on May 23. And the plan is to adopt a "growth pact" at the next regular EU summit at the end of June.

At first glance, this seems like a fundamental about-face. After two years of rigid austerity aimed at combating the European debt crisis, the EU would appear to be changing its course. Disappointing economic data in southern Europe and the recent Greek election, where voters made their rage at the mainstream political parties clear, has apparently led to a rethink. European leaders have come to the realization that austerity alone just makes the situation worse. Now, the time to invest has arrived.

But Europeans should not get their hopes up too soon. The limited EU funds that are currently the subject of discussion are not sufficient to give the economy in southern Europe a significant boost. It would not be the first growth pact which was announced with much fanfare in Brussels and then fizzled out. The Lisbon Strategy of 2000, for example, was supposed to transform the continent into the most competitive region in the world within 10 years. Instead, Europe found itself in a less enviable position in 2010 -- as the world's number one cause of economic concern.

Note EU-Digest: change in the EU  can only happen through political cooperation and moving away from the hidden agenda by the political right which is based on "that what is good for Wall Street is good for the World".

For more: EU Considers Proposals to Boost Growth - SPIEGEL ONLINE

USA - The dysfunction of America : The rule of greed - by Peter Blaikie

The U.S. economy remains the most powerful, creative and dynamic in the world, but it faces major difficulties. No longer is it a true capitalist free-market system. It has become a gigantic welfare state whose prime beneficiaries are the rich and major corporations.

Think of the legions of millionaire lobbyists in Washington; the shuttle-bus-type ferrying of people back and forth between senior Washington positions and executive suites in the business world; the enormous subsidies paid to myriad industries, including agriculture; the complex loopholes that render the tax code incomprehensible to all but the beneficiaries; the deregulation of the financial system that led to the crisis of 2007 and 2008, followed by the trillion-dollar bailouts; and that's to say nothing of the dramatically increasing inequality of income distribution.

Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko famously declared in Wall Street, but it is good only for the rich. Almost without exception, independent experts and analysts (a group that, sadly, excludes all active politicians), know that to put America's financial house in order requires both tax increases and spending cuts. President Barack Obama's proposed tax increase for Americans earning $1 million a year, which will never become law, is an almost invisible drop in the deficit bucket. The chances of anyone who advocates serious tax increases, in whatever form, being elected are not merely slim; they are zero.

For more: The dysfunction of America (i): The rule of greed