School shootings are horrific and heartbreaking, but they remain statistically rare
Another senseless mass shooting, another national wave of mourning and anger, another presidential visit to a grief-stricken community. But as President Biden faces the cameras in Uvalde, Texas, this weekend, as he and other leaders offer their prescriptions for easing the public’s fears, let me suggest a more practical and immediate way for Americans to cope with this tragedy: turn off the television.
Whatever its outcome, the Russian war against Ukraine, now in its fourth month, is already studied by many analysts with emphasis on two issues. First, will it put an end to Vladimir Putin’s ambition to surround his Russia with autocratic regimes or “illiberal democracies”?
Of the 15 nations that emerged as independent entities after the fall of the Soviet Union, only three, the Baltic republics, have managed to build Western-style capitalist democracies, becoming full members of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, all three, annexed by Stalin, were never fully Sovietized.
I remember that during a visit to Latvia in August 1974, our “minder” from Moscow observed that Riga, the Latvian capital, was “almost like Europe.”
Where once the Hebrew Bible’s value system was our guiding light…all of our early presidents knew and revered the Hebrew Bible…today we take orders from AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
A sickness has infected America
Suddenly, the televised Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial is not the main event anymore here in America.
Something else happened.
Interesting how intrusively real-life steps in while you’re having fun.
Heard-Depp was a nightmare of a marriage made in Hollywood, presented for the pleasure of knowing that, in comparison, you have it pretty good.
A scientific analysis commissioned by the FBI shortly before agents went digging for buried treasure suggested that a huge quantity of gold could be below the surface, according to newly released government documents and photos that deepen the mystery of the 2018 excavation in remote western Pennsylvania.
The report, by a geophysicist who performed microgravity testing at the site, hinted at an underground object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density consistent with gold. The FBI used the consultant’s work to obtain a warrant to seize the gold — if there was any to be found.
The government has long claimed its dig was a bust. But a father-son pair of treasure hunters who spent years hunting for the fabled Civil War-era gold — and who led agents to the woodland site, hoping for a finder’s fee — suspect the FBI double-crossed them and made off with a cache that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The FBI has a massive credibility problem.
The port city of Berdyansk had been occupied by Russian troops for less than a week, but a new pro-Kremlin online media outlet had already moved in.
The company, whose name translates as Southern Front, makes and distributes pro-Vladimir Putin propaganda across YouTube, social media app Telegram, and through a website that targets areas newly under Russian control.
The Southern Front news site posted its first message on day one of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now has several correspondents filing stories on a daily basis.
The founder of one of the most feared terrorist organisations of the 1970s has walked free from a Japanese prison after completing a 20-year sentence for the siege of the French embassy in the Netherlands.
Once described as “the empress of terror”, Fusako Shigenobu founded the Japanese Red Army, a radical leftist group that carried out armed attacks worldwide in support of the Palestinian cause.
On Saturday, 76-year-old Shigenobu left the prison in Tokyo with her daughter as several supporters held a banner saying “We love Fusako”.
Firearm-related homicides have gone up 37 per cent over the past 11 years and handguns were the most commonly used weapon in such crimes, a report from Statistics Canada has found, but it warns there are large data gaps in information collection.
… The proportion of homicides where a firearm was used rose from 26 per cent in 2013 to 37 per cent in 2020, it said. Handguns were the weapon of choice in 59 per cent of the firearm crimes, it added.
“Firearm-related violent crime typically represents less than three per cent of police-reported violent crime in Canada,” said the report.
Logan Paul had a message for his six million Twitter followers: He was “all in” on a new cryptocurrency called Dink Doink.
According to the project’s creator, Dink Doink investors would receive shares of a cartoon character, entitling them to a portion of the proceeds if the googly-eyed figure ever appeared in a TV show or movie. Last June, Mr. Paul, a 27-year-old boxer and social-media influencer, praised Dink Doink on Twitter and in a public Telegram chat, before endorsing it again on his podcast, “Impaulsive.”
But by mid-July, the price of Dink Doink had plummeted to a fraction of a cent, and Mr. Paul was facing an online backlash. In his endorsements, he had failed to mention some relevant information: He and the project’s creator were friends, and they had come up with the idea for the cryptocurrency together. He had also received a large allocation of Dink Doink coins when it launched.
Buy BCF Coin!
Ronnie ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins, a musician and impresario who helped discover and develop The Band and numerous other musical acts that emerged out of Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s, died around mid-day on Sunday.
h/t Osumashi
The Department of Justice on Sunday announced a review of the response by local and federal authorities to last week’s school shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas
In a statement, DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said that Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin (R) had asked the department to conduct a Critical Incident Review.
Coley also said that the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing will handle the investigation.
There is a replacement of civilization and the media is not even covering it.
Sept pas vers l’enfer (“Seven Steps to Hell”), the new book by Alain Chouet, the former number two of the DGSE, the powerful French counter-intelligence service, is an indictment of the European élites. Chouet recalls:
“I have been invited every year to give a lecture on the problems of the Arab world in Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels. One day I was there… when Philippe Moureaux, the city’s socialist mayor and big boss of the Belgian Socialist Party, took the front row flanked by two imposing bodyguards in djellabas, beards and white berets. To the audience, Moureaux said I was not qualified to discuss the Arab world, as I came from a country that had tortured Muslims in Algeria. His reasoning is significant in the way in which, since the late 1980s, the European left has allowed itself to be taken by the sirens of militant Salafism. The management of Molenbeek is exemplary in this sense: authorizations granted easily and without any control for the opening and functioning of mosques, Islamic private schools, cultural and sports clubs generously subsidized by Saudi Arabia”.
25 out of 89 member of the Brussels Regional Parliament are not of European origin.
Mattel recently launched a new transgender Barbie doll to honor trans celebrity Laverne Cox on the occasion of Pride month. But reading the fine print on the box reveals the doll is manufactured in Indonesia, where gay and transgender people still experience widespread discrimination and same-sex marriage is illegal.
A climate change activist diagnosed with eco-anxiety has requested a medically assisted death, a sign that some observers say indicates restrictions on the practice have quickly become flimsy since legalization in 2016.
Howard Breen, a 68-year-old eco-activist from Ladysmith, B.C., is a member of the group Extinction Rebellion, which describes itself as an international movement that uses “non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the climate and ecological emergency.”
According to a recent article in Vice magazine, in 2017 Breen’s doctor diagnosed him with eco-anxiety and biosphere-related depression. He told Vice his condition had become “debilitating.”
Russia’s ambassador to Britain has told the BBC he does not believe his country will use tactical nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine.
Andrei Kelin said that according to Russian military rules, such weapons are not used in conflicts like this.
He also described allegations of war crimes in the town of Bucha as “a fabrication”.
#Ukraine: Foreign Volunteers (American, British, and possibly Canadian) targeted a Russian BTR-80 APC with a RGW-90 HH launcher, damaging it and causing ammo to cook off.
Note that a Czech RPG-75M appears to fail to function correctly. pic.twitter.com/eVLEMdEIBx
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 27, 2022
New record-keeping requirements for nonrestricted firearms began this month, but the origins of Canada’s so-called crime guns are largely unknown.
A drone lifted off from Michigan this month and flew across the St. Clair River toward Port Lambton, Ontario. Its spooked pilot aborted the landing after being spotted by a neighbor, leaving the police to later fish the drone out of a tree and discover 11 handguns strapped to it with plastic bags, tape and carabiner clips.
