Henry Porter wrote an article that caught my attention on the 21st of September, 2013.

But more than the article itself, which was a delightfully worthy piece of satire, I was intrigued by the responses.

American gun use is out of control. Shouldn't the world intervene?

The death toll from firearms in the US suggests that the country is gripped by civil war

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.

The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.

To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.

That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.

Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; by 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929).

Plainly, there's no equivalent effort in the area of privately owned firearms. Indeed, most politicians do everything they can to make the country less safe. Recently, a Democrat senator from Arkansas named Mark Pryor ran a TV ad against the gun-control campaign funded by NY mayor Michael Bloomberg – one of the few politicians to stand up to the NRA lobby – explaining why he was against enhanced background checks on gun owners yet was committed to "finding real solutions to violence".

About their own safety, Americans often have an unusual ability to hold two utterly opposed ideas in their heads simultaneously. That can only explain the past decade in which the fear of terror has cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in wars, surveillance and intelligence programmes and homeland security. Ten years after 9/11, homeland security spending doubled to $69bn . The total bill since the attacks is more than $649bn.

One more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

But no nation sees itself as outsiders do. Half the country is sane and rational while the other half simply doesn't grasp the inconsistencies and historic lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery. Astonishingly, when owning a gun is not about ludicrous macho fantasy, it is mostly seen as a matter of personal safety, like the airbag in the new Ford pick-up or avoiding secondary smoke, despite conclusive evidence that people become less safe as gun ownership rises.

Last week, I happened to be in New York for the 9/11 anniversary: it occurs to me now that the city that suffered most dreadfully in the attacks and has the greatest reason for jumpiness is also among the places where you find most sense on the gun issue in America. New Yorkers understand that fear breeds peril and, regardless of tragedies such as Sandy Hook and the DC naval yard, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, conservative-inclined politicians and parts of the media will continue to advocate a right, which, at base, is as archaic as a witch trial.

Talking to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington shooting last week.

There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point where it has ceased to be a domestic issue. The world cannot stand idly by.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter

Remember the United States government has presently been hijacked by a group of renegade politicians the NRA has in it's hip pocket. The radical right wing who firmly believe that gun ownership is a God given right, but not healthcare. Everyone must pay or pray for health.

But the article caused such an international furor that readers posted almost 3,500 comments in the short period of time The Guardian permitted comments to be made. Of course, the radical right wing were livid and took it as a sure sign that the UN was going to invade the United States and make everyone hand over their personal arsenal. 

Watching the reaction to a satirical piece of journalism was akin to watching ants when you step on an ant hill. Mass chaos.

 I am neither pro or anti gun control legislation. I am a Bible believing, born again Christian conservative who happily sits on the fence  bemused at the reactions that I see from those who are armed to the back teeth. 

So I started asking people why they felt a need to collect weaponry like it's going out of style. I expected "personal defense in the case of home intrusions" to be the primary reason.

To my amazement the majority of people I spoke to immediately turned to the 2nd Amendment, specifically citing "armed resistance against the government"

I countered that argument. "But the government have drones and bombs, tanks and armored vehicles. Even the most sophisticated weapons available on the market are not protection from the military hardware."

That reality made not a dent in the delussional logic I was listening to.

Pierce Morgan - another Englishman - made a national brew-ha when he made a comment about gun control, and this is a fairly recent conversation between Pierce Morgan and Breitbart.com editor, Ben Shapiro:

SHAPIRO: I told you, why the general population of America, law abiding citizens, need AR-15s.

MORGAN: Why do they need those weapons?

SHAPIRO: They need them for the prospective possibility for the resistance of tyranny. Which is not a concern today, it may not be a concern tomorrow.

MORGAN: Where do you expect tyranny to come from?

SHAPIRO: It could come from the United States, because governments have gone tyrannical before, Piers.

MORGAN: So the reason we cannot remove assault weapons is because of the threat of your own government turning on you in a tyrannical way.

SHAPIRO: Yes.

  
The lack of rationality and logic knows no bounds.
 

I don't think I will be buying a gun in the near future, but I am sure this post is going to get me 30 lashes...

  

The History Of Political Spin

We can blame Ramses for introducing "spin" into the political arena - not that it wouldn't have been invented by someone else at a later date, for necessity is the mother of invention after all.

Ramesses went to the throne at the age of just 15. He immediately faced serious challenges. The Egyptian empire was under threat from the Hittites, who lived in what is now Turkey. They were far more advanced than the Egyptians and were already pushing against the northern border of Egypt's empire.

An inexperienced, young king presented them with the perfect opportunity to extend their own empire. Within a few years, they had invaded and captured the strategically important trading town of Kadesh.

Ramesses raised an army and sped off to fight the Hittites. He was a young man, highly confident, but also impulsive. This would cause him some serious problems. 

The Egyptian advance party camped outside Kadesh and waited for the others to catch up. He was not expecting battle any time soon and the capture of two spies confirmed that the Hittites were still some distance from the Egyptian camp. Ramesses believed them and didn't bother sending out any scouts of his own.

This was a massive mistake: the spies were Hittite agents sent to lull the Egyptians into a trap. The Hittites were actually camped just across the river, ready to attack. At the very last minute, Ramesses discovered their plan and immediately sent for reinforcements.

But it was too late. The Hittites attacked. The Egyptians soon crumbled and the battle looked all but lost. Luckily, the reinforcements which Ramesses had ordered arrived just in time. They surprised the Hittites and left the Egyptians holding the battlefield.

Ramesses had been fortunate, but had not achieved the decisive victory he wanted. He knew the Hittites would return to attack towns like Kadesh.

Despite this, Ramesses began a huge campaign that claimed that he had won the battle single-handed. Across Egypt, temple walls were carved with this official version of the battle. It was spin-doctoring on a grand scale.

Today, with the internet highway in almost every home, there are no limits or boundaries to the spin the average person is subjected to. It costs a lot of money to spin. It costs a lot of money to shut a government down by 20%.

But somehow along the way humor is interjected, and when it is, it becomes priceless.

Here come the political cartoonists, not quite as impressive as the battle Ramesses portrayed on his monuments, but twice as funny :

But we have to be very cautious not to allow voter apathy prevail for the United States government officials ARE elected officials, public servants. They are not demigods, even if they think they are.

Across the globe reactions cannot be ignored.

From the Chinese government:

"Zhu Guangyao, the vice-finance minister, told reporters in Beijing: “The United States is totally clear about China's concerns about the fiscal cliff. We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way before 17 October the political [issues] around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure safety of Chinese investments in the United States and the global economic recovery. This is the United States' responsibility.”

From the South China Morning Post:

The world looked on with a little anxiety and a lot of dismay, and some people had trouble suppressing smirks.

"To be honest, people are making a lot of jokes," said Justice Malala, a political commentator in South Africa.

Over the years, Malala said, South Africa often has been lectured about good governance by the United States as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are heavily influenced by Washington.

"They tell us, 'You guys are not being fiscally responsible'," Malala said. "And now we see that they are running their country a little like a banana republic. So there is a lot of sniggering going on."

Many analysts abroad said they were dumbfounded at the game of political chicken playing out in Washington. They worried that instability in the United States would further damage the already shaky world economy.

"It would be great if we didn't add something more onto this precarious recovery; we really don't need this," said Jorge Castaneda, a Mexican academic and former foreign minister.

"Everything that happens in the United States affects us directly," he said. "The last thing we want right now is another problem in the United States which will make things worse in Mexico."

In Britain, there was a sense of incredulity about the looming US shutdown.
In the Guardian newspaper, columnist Michael Cohen decried Senator Ted Cruz as the Republican Party's "self-made monster".

He argued that Republicans had reached the "point where Cruz's brand of crazy, heartless, morally wanton, uncompromising conservatism is now the default position of the party".

A Times of London editorial slammed President Barack Obama along with the tea party, saying: "An argument that is so bitter, prolonged and apparently incapable of resolution cannot but damage America's diplomatic standing."

In South America, where US proselytising about fiscal responsibility has rankled with some countries, economists and policymakers watched the shutdown drama with disbelief.

"It's incredible, it's surrealism," said Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister of Colombia. "I had to negotiate budgets and debt ceilings in Colombia, and this situation is frankly unreal."

Ocampo said he was astonished at Republican efforts to overturn Obama's health-care law, a key factor contributing to the potential shutdown. "I don't remember, as minister of finance of Colombia, a blackmail so absurd," said Ocampo, who teaches at Columbia University.

In Pakistan, analysts noted that the country's 66-year-old national government has never had a formal shutdown.
Economist Saqib Shirani said there "are lessons to learn" for Pakistan from events in Washington. In a country with 12 major political parties, he said, "there must be political consensus on economic issues, and taking the political bickering to extreme can backfire".

In India, a government minister said the US problems were similar to the struggle between his government and political opponents trying to block its policies.
"It's heartening to note that administrative paralysis is not unique to a particular democracy," said Manish Tewari, India's information and broadcasting minister.In the Middle East, few expressed interest in a crisis seen as complex, distant and unlikely to affect the Arab world.

But in a region where political strife stemming from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings has battered economies, some analysts were sympathetic to Washington's politically driven financial woes.
"It's a political struggle that is being played out on the economy's battlefield," said Rashad Abdo, a finance professor at Cairo University.

The US crisis has received only fleeting attention in Moscow, where the government is wrestling with budget problems.
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1322428/us-government-shutdown-greeted-disbelief-around-world