"Don’t look to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting" - Richard Wolffe

They say there’s no one more optimistic than an American teenager. But now we’re teaching them how to save their lives from a gunman

"The deterrence myth" - David P. Barash

Nuclear deterrence continues to dominate international relations. Yet there is no proof it ever worked, nor that it ever will

"Why Americans won’t give up their guns" - Gary Younge

The United States needs new gun laws. But first it needs to shed the myths that sustain its reliance on weapons

"Stop weapons to South Sudan"

Government forces have chased civilians through swamps, crushed them with tanks, and even used attack helicopters to fire on a hospital. The opposition, for its part, has lured children into battle by giving them new guns. An arms embargo could help to curb these abuses.

In response to the latest round of slaughter, the UN Security Council recently decided to send 4,000 more peacekeepers to South Sudan. Many countries asked for an immediate arms embargo as well, but US officials said they will support an embargo only if South Sudan blocks these new peacekeepers. Using the embargo as a bargaining chip has been tried before. The South Sudanese increasingly see it as an empty threat.

"GUNS AND HOTDOGS - How the U.S. Military Promotes Its Weapons Arsenal to the Public"

America’s wars take place far away — Kabul is 6,700 miles from New York or, traveling in the other direction, 7,400 miles from San Francisco. They also involve fewer and fewer Americans — the Army now has about 475,000 active duty soldiers, the lowest number since World War II.This leaves the Pentagon free to promote itself to a country that largely has no idea what war actually entails. In addition to standard TV advertising and flyovers at the Super Bowl, the U.S. military spends tens of millions of dollars each year on live events that function half as recruitment pitches and half as visceral plugs for its spectacular high-tech weaponry.Photojournalist Nina Berman has spent 10 years traveling to Fleet Weeks and air shows to document the peculiar collision between the Pentagon’s idealized self-image and the people who pay for it but have little comprehension of what they’re truly buying.

"Documents on 2012 Drone Strike Detail How Terrorists Are Targeted"

Early in 2012, worried that suicide bombers might pass through airline security undetected, American counterterrorism officials ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill a doctor they believed was working with Al Qaeda to surgically implant explosives in operatives, according to British intelligence documents.

"What does gun violence really cost?"

It was a mild, crystal clear desert evening on November 15, 2004, when Jennifer Longdon and her fiance, David Rueckert, closed up his martial-arts studio and headed out to grab some carnitas tortas from a nearby taqueria. They were joking and chatting about wedding plans—the local Japanese garden seemed perfect—as Rueckert turned their pickup into the parking lot of a strip mall in suburban north Phoenix. A red truck with oversize tires and tinted windows sideswiped theirs, and as they stopped to get out, Rueckert's window exploded. He told Longdon to get down and reached for the handgun he had inside a cooler on the cab floor. As he threw the truck into gear, there were two more shots. His words turned to gibberish and he slumped forward, his foot on the gas. A bullet hit Longdon's back like a bolt of lightning, her whole body a live wire as they accelerated toward the row of palm trees in the concrete divider.

"Ukraine, Syria: Incendiary Weapons Threaten Civilians"

Incendiary Weapons: Recent Use and Growing Opposition:
Memorandum to Convention on Conventional Weapons Delegates - November 2014

Síria - "Is Obama in retreat?. Is François Hollande now isolated?" - por Bernard-Henri Lévy

At the present hour, with 110,000 Syrians dead and two million displaced, after the massacre of August 21 and those that led up to it, after two and a half years of shutting our eyes to a war against a civilian population that has gone from one atrocity to another, what was one more week to Syria ? Maybe the American president is right after all to call for a little more time, to try to rally Congress behind his decision to strike Damascus, and thereby to imbue the promised action with as much democratic legitimacy as possible. The pause will allow him to lay out clearly the conclusive evidence of the chemical massacre to those of his fellow citizens who are prone to conspiracy theories and suspicious of official explanations.

"Celebrating the Prince of Peace in the Land of Guns" - Michael Moore

After watching the deranged, delusional National Rifle Association press conference on Friday, it was clear that the Mayan prophecy had come true. Except the only world that was ending was the NRA's. Their bullying power to set gun policy in this country is over. The nation is repulsed by the massacre in Connecticut, and the signs are everywhere: a basketball coach at a post-game press conference; the Republican Joe Scarborough; a pawn shop owner in Florida; a gun buy-back program in New Jersey; a singing contest show on TV, and the conservative gun-owning judge who sentenced Jared Loughner.

So here's my little bit of holiday cheer for you:

These gun massacres aren't going to end any time soon.

I'm sorry to say this. But deep down we both know it's true. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep pushing forward – after all, the momentum is on our side. I know all of us – including me – would love to see the president and Congress enact stronger gun laws. We need a ban on automatic AND semiautomatic weapons and magazine clips that hold more than 7 bullets. We need better background checks and more mental health services. We need to regulate the ammo, too.

Na íntegra aqui.

"More Guns = More Killing"

IN the wake of the tragic shooting deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month, the National Rifle Association proposed that the best way to protect schoolchildren was to place a guard — a “good guy with a gun” — in every school, part of a so-called National School Shield Emergency Response Program.

Grã Bretanha vende armas a ditaduras

British prime minister David Cameron lands in the Gulf today on a highly embarrassing mission to sell weapons to repressive regimes. Cameron is there to try to persuade the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to buy more than 100 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets. The deals could be worth more than £6bn to the UK – and are yet another example of the lucrative trade ties that have muted criticism of these autocracies from Britain and its allies.

Assustador! (continuação) - 2

  Um artigo de Nick Turse no The Nation

It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie. In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing night-vision goggles, grabbed hold of a thick, woven cable hanging from a MH-47 Chinook helicopter. Then, in a flash, each “fast-roped” down onto a ship below. Afterward, “Mike,” a Navy SEAL who would not give his last name, bragged to an Army public affairs sergeant that, when they were on their game, the SEALs could put 15 men on a ship this way in 30 seconds or less.

Assustador! (continuação)

Um artigo de Clive Stafford Smith, fundador da Reprieve

We are sleepwalking into the Drone Age, unaware of the consequences

Assustador!

Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us -- less than 1% -- serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans. And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the National Security Complex continues to accelerate. The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself, with a staggering budget at a moment when no other power or combination of powers comes near to challenging this country’s might.

"A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto"

Petição - "Pela eliminação das minas"

Assinem!

"Demand a bullet-proof Arms Trade Treaty! "

The People's Arms Trade Treaty must be bullet-proof

Every minute, one person dies as a result of armed violence. Thousands more each day are injured, raped, brutally repressed, traumatised or forced to flee their homes. At the end of 2008, 26 million people were internally displaced due to armed conflict. Families are torn apart and millions of men, women and children live in fear.

Governments must stamp out the irresponsible arms trade

Weapons are the only products specifically designed to kill and injure. Treaties regulate global trade of many products, even bananas and dinosaur bones, but not guns and bullets.
Through the efforts of the Control Arms campaign, governments are finally starting negotiations in July 2010. Now is the time to show Governments what kind of treaty people need.

Adira!