Sunday, June 21, 2015

Israel - Neither a Friend Nor an Ally of the US

More on Bernie Sanders Last Night In Denver Colorado

Bernie Sanders drew a bigger crowd than any Republican candidate, as 4,500 supporters filled his event in Denver.

According to the Sanders campaign:

Thousands of cheering and chanting Coloradans – one of the biggest crowds for any presidential candidate so far this campaign – showed up here on Saturday night to hear Bernie Sanders tell them they were sending a message to the billionaire class that “‘You can’t have it all. This is our country too.'”

….

By the university’s count, 4,500 people were in the gym, atrium and lacrosse field to see Sanders, the candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and a U.S. senator from Vermont.

When the crowd chanted his name, Bernie stopped them. “This campaign is not about me,” he said. “It is not about Hillary Clinton or any other candidate,” he added. “This campaign is about you, your kids and your parents. It is about creating a political movement of millions of people who stand up and loudly proclaim that this nation belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”

Sen. Sanders drew the second biggest crowd of the entire campaign in Denver. The only bigger crowd by official count wasHillary Clinton’s rally in New York last weekend. Sen. Sanders is pulling off the most impressive feat of the campaign. People are excited and showing up for his events.

Unlike Ted Cruz who drew a big crowd for his campaign launch by holding it a university event that students were forced to attend, the enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders is real. He doesn’t pay actors to come to his rallies and support him like Donald Trump did. His supporters are excited about their candidate.

The media and Republicans drone on about the depth of the Republican field, but early on in 2016, one trend continues for Democrats. Democratic candidates have the enthusiastic supporters. Republican candidates didn’t draw large crowds in 2008 or 2012, and the lack of GOP grassroots support is continuing in 2016.

Bernie Sanders are outdrawing Republican all across the country, and this is a good sign for the Democratic Party as the nation gears up to elect a new president.

PoliticalUSA

Being Ruled By A Gaggle Of Idiots

Paul Craig Roberts’ Address to the International Conference on the European/Russian Crisis Created by Washington

June 19, 2015 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |

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Paul Craig Roberts’ address to the Conference on the European/Russian Crisis, Delphi, Greece, June 20-21, 2015

 Paul Craig Roberts, formerly Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, Associate Editor, Wall Street Journal, Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University, William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

The United States has pursued empire since early in its history, but it was the Soviet collapse in 1991 that enabled Washington to see the entire world as its oyster.

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the rise of the neoconservatives to power and influence in the US government. The neoconservatives have interpreted the Soviet collapse as History’s choice of “American democratic capitalism” as the New World Order.

Chosen by History as the exceptional and indispensable country, Washington claims the right and the responsibility to impose its hegemony on the world. Neoconservatives regard their agenda to be too important to be constrained by domestic and international law or by the interests of other countries. Indeed, as the Unipower, Washington is required by the neoconservative doctrine to prevent the rise of other countries that could constrain American power.

Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative, penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine shortly after the Soviet collapse. This doctrine is the basis of US foreign and military policy.

The doctrine states:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Notice that Washington’s “first objective” is not peace, not prosperity, not human rights, not democracy, not justice. Washington’s “first objective” is world hegemony. Only the very confident so blatantly reveal their agenda.

As a former member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger, I can explain what Wolfowitz’s words mean. The “threat posed formerly by the Soviet Union” was the ability of the Soviet Union to block unilateral US action in some parts of the world. The Soviet Union was a constraint on US unilateral action, not everywhere but in some places. Any constraint on Washington is regarded as a threat.

A “hostile power” is a country with an independent foreign policy, such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have proclaimed. Iran, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, and North Korea also proclaim an independent foreign policy.

This is too much independence for Washington to stomach. As Russian President Vladimir Putin recently stated, “Washington doesn’t want partners. Washington wants vassals.”

The Wolfowitz doctrine requires Washington to dispense with or overthrow governments that do not acquiesce to Washington’s will. It is the “first objective.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in Boris Yeltsin becoming president of a dismembered Russia. Washington became accustomed to Yeltsin’s compliance and absorbed itself in its Middle Eastern wars, expecting Vladimir Putin to continue Russia’s vassalage.

However at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin said: “I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.”

Putin went on to say:
“We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law, and independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”

When Putin issued this fundamental challenge to US unipower, Washington was preoccupied with its lack of success with its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Mission was not accomplished.

By 2014 it had come to Washington’s attention that while Washington was blowing up weddings, funerals, village elders, and children’s soccer games in the Middle East, Russia had achieved independence from Washington’s control and presented itself as a formidable challenge to Washington’s uni-power. Putin blocked Obama’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran. The unmistakable rise of Russia refocused Washington from the Middle East to Russia’s vulnerabilities.

Ukraine, long a constituent part of Russia and subsequently the Soviet Union, was split off from Russia in the wake of the Soviet collapse by Washington’s maneuvering. In 2004 Washington had tried to capture Ukraine in the Orange Revolution, which failed to deliver Ukraine into Washington’s hands. Consequently, according to neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Washington spent $5 billion over the following decade developing Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that could be called into the streets of Kiev and in developing Ukrainian political leaders willing to represent Washington’s interests.

Washington launched its coup in February 2014 with orchestrated demonstrations that, with the addition of violence, resulted in the overthrow and flight of the elected democratic government of Victor Yanukovych. In other words, Washington destroyed democracy in a new country with a coup before democracy could take root.

Ukrainian democracy meant nothing to Washington. Washington was intent on seizing Ukraine in order to present Russia with a security problem and also to justify sanctions against “Russian aggression” in order to break up Russia’s growing economic and political relationships with Europe. Washington feared that these relationships could undermine Washington’s hold on Europe.

Sanctions are contrary to Europe’s interests. Nevertheless European governments accommodated Washington’s agenda. The reason was explained to me several decades ago by my Ph.D. dissertation committee chairman who became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. I had the opportunity to ask him how Washington managed to have foreign governments act in Washington’s interest rather than in the interest of their own countries. He said, “money.” I said, “you mean foreign aid?” He said, “no, we give the politicians bags full of money. They belong to us. They answer to us.”

Recently, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte wrote a book, Bought Journalists, in which he reported that every significant European journalist functions as a CIA asset.

This does not surprise me. The same is the situation in the US.

As Europe is an appendage of Washington, a collection of vassal states, Europe enables Washington’s pursuit of hegemony even to the extent of being driven into conflict with Russia over a “crisis” that is entirely a propaganda creation of Washington’s.

The media disguises the reality. During the Clinton regime, six mega-media companies were permitted to acquire 90% of the US print, TV, radio, and entertainment media, a concentration that destroyed diversity and independence. Today the media throughout the Western world serves as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington. The Western media is Washington’s Ministry of Truth. Gerald Celente, the trends forecaster, calls the Western media “presstitutes,” a combination of press prostitutes.

In the US Putin and Russia are demonized around the clock. Every broadcast alerts us to “the Russian threat.” Even Putin’s facial expressions are psychologically analyzed. Putin is the New Hitler. Putin has ambitions to recreate the Soviet empire. Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin is going to invade the Baltic states and Poland. Putin is a threat on the level of ebola and the Islamic State. US Russian experts, such as Stephen Cohen, who state the facts are dismissed as “Putin apologists.” Any and every one who takes exception to the anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda is branded a “Putin apologist,” just as 9/11 skeptics are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.” In the Western world, the few truth-tellers are demonized along with Putin and Russia.

The world should take note that today, right now, Truth is the most unwelcome presence in the Western world. No one wants to hear it in Washington, London, Tokyo, or in any of the political capitals of Washington’s empire.

The majority of the American population has fallen for the anti-Russian propaganda, just as they fell for “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” Iranian nukes,” the endless lies about Gaddafi, 9/11, shoe bombers, underwear bombers, shampoo and bottled water bombers. There is always a new lie to keep the fear factor working for Washington’s endless wars and police state measures that enrich the rich and impoverish the poor.

The gullibility of the public has enabled Washington to establish the foundation for a new Cold War or for a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia. Some neoconservatives prefer the latter. They believe nuclear war can be won, and they ask, “What is the purpose of nuclear weapons if they cannot be used?”

China is the other rising power that the Wolfowitz Doctrine requires to be constrained. Washington’s “pivot to Asia” creates new naval and air bases to control China and perpetuate Washington’s hegemony in the South China Sea.

We come to the bottom line. Washington’s position is not negotiable. Washington has no interest in compromising with Russia or China. Washington has no interest in any facts. Washington’s deal is this: “You can be part of our world order as our vassals, but not otherwise.”

European governments and, of course, the lapdog UK government, are complicit in this implicit declaration of war against Russia and China. If it comes to war, Europeans will pay the ultimate price for the treason of their leaders, such as Merkel, Cameron, and Hollande, as Europe will cease to exist.

War with Russia and China is beyond Washington’s capability. However, if the demonized “enemy” does not succumb to the pressure and accept Washington’s leadership, war can be inevitable. Washington has launched an attack. How does Washington back off? Don’t expect any American regime to say, “we made a mistake. Let’s work this out.” Every one of the announced candidates for the American presidency is committed to American hegemony and war.

Washington believes Russia can be isolated from the West and that this isolation will motivate those secularized and westernized elements in Russia, who desire to be part of the West, into more active opposition against Putin. The Saker calls these Russians “Atlanticist integrationists.”

After two decades of Russia being infiltrated by Washington’s NGO Fifth Columns, the Russian government has finally taken action to regulate the hundreds of Western-financed NGOs inside Russia that comprise Washington’ subversion of the Russian government. However, Washington still hopes to use sanctions to cause enough disruption of economic life within Russia to be able to send protesters into the streets. Regime change, as in Ukraine, is one of Washington’s tools. In China the US organized the Hong Kong “student” riots, which Washington hopes will spread into China, and Washington supports the independence of the Muslim population in the Chinese province that borders Kazakhstan.

The problem with a government in the control of an ideology is that ideology and not reason drives the action of the government. As the majority of Western populations lack the interest to search for independent explanations, the populations impose no constraint on governments.
To understand Washington, go online and read the neoconservative documents and position papers. You will see an agenda unconstrained by law, by morality, by compassion, by common sense. You will see an agenda of evil.

Who is Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for the Ukrainian part of the world? It is the neoconservative Victoria Nuland who organized the Ukrainian coup, who put in office the new puppet government, who is married to the even more extreme neoconservative, Robert Kagan.

Who is Obama’s National Security advisor? It is Susan Rice, a neoconservative.

Who is Obama’s Ambassador to the UN? It is Samantha Power, a neoconservative.

Now we turn to material interests. The neoconservative agenda of world hegemony serves the powerful military/security complex whose one trillion dollar annual budget depends on war, hot or cold.

The agenda of American hegemony serves the interests of Wall Street and the mega-banks. As Washington’s power and influence spreads, so does American financial imperialism. So does the reach of American oil companies and American agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto.

Washington’s hegemony means that US corporations get to loot the rest of the world.

The danger of the neoconservative ideology is that it is in perfect harmony with powerful economic interests. In the US the left-wing has made itself impotent. It believes all the foundational government lies that have given America a police/warfare state incapable of producing alternative leadership. The American left, what little remains, for emotional reasons believes the government’s 9/11 story. The anti-religious left-wing believes the threat posed to free thought by a Christian Russia. The left-wing, convinced that Americans are racists, believes the government’s account of the assassinations of Martin Luther King.

The left-wing accepts the government’s transparent 9/11 fable, because it is emotionally important to the American left that oppressed peoples strike back. For the American left, it is emotionally satisfying that the Middle East, long oppressed and exploited by the French, British and Americans, struck back and humiliated the Unipower in the 9/11 attack.

This emotional need is so powerful for the left that it blinds the left-wing to the improbability of a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, outwitting not merely the FBI, CIA, and NSA, which spies on the entire world, but as well all 16 US intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies of Washington’s NATO vassal states and Israel’s Mossad, which has infiltrated every terrorist organization, including those created by Washington itself.

Somehow these Saudis were able to also outwit NORAD, airport security, causing security to fail four times in one hour on the same day. They were able to prevent for the first time ever the US Air Force from intercepting the hijacked airliners. Air traffic control somehow lost the hijacked airliners on radar. Two airliners crashed, one into the Pennsylvania country side and one into the Pentagon without leaving any debris. The passport of the leader of the attack, Mohammed Atta was reported to be found as the only undamaged element in the debris of the World Trade Center towers. The story of the passport was so preposterous that it had to be changed.

This implausible account did not raise any eyebrows in the tame Western print and TV media.

The right-wing is obsessed with immigration of darker-skinned peoples, and 9/11 has become an argument against immigration. The left-wing awaits the oppressed to strike back against their oppressors. The 9/11 fable survives as it serves the interests of both left and right.

I can tell you for a fact that if American national security had so totally failed as it is represented to have failed by the official explanation of 9/11, the White House, the Congress, the media would have been screaming for an investigation. Heads would have rolled in agencies that permitted such massive failure of the national security state. The embarrassment of a Superpower being so easily attacked and humiliated by a handful of Arabs acting independently of any intelligence agency would have created an uproar demanding accountability.

Instead, the White House resisted any investigation for one year. Under pressure from the 9/11 families who lost family members in the World Trade Center Towers, the White House created a political commission consisting of politicians managed by the White House. The commission sat and listened to the government’s account and wrote it down. This is not an investigation.

In the United States the left-wing is focused on demonizing Ronald Reagan, who had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. The left-wing hates Reagan because he had to use anti-communist rhetoric in order to keep his electoral basis while he strove to end the Cold War in the face of the powerful opposition of the military/security complex.

Is the left-wing more effective in Europe? Not that I can see. Look at Greece for example. The Greek people are driven into the ground by the EU, the IMF, the German and Dutch banks and the New York hedge funds. Yet, when presented with candidates who promise to resist the looting of Greece, the Greek voters give the candidates a mere 36% of the vote, enough to form a government, but not enough to have any clout with creditors.

Having hamstrung their government with such low electoral support, the Greek people further impose impotence on their government by demanding to remain in the EU. If leaving the EU is not a realistic threat, the Greek government has no negotiating power.

Obviously, the Greek population is so throughly brainwashed about the necessity of being part of the EU that the population is willing to be economically dispossessed rather than to leave the EU. Thus Greeks have forfeited their sovereignty and independence. A country without its own money is not, and cannot be, an independent country.

Once European intellectuals signed off on the EU, they committed nations to vassalage, both to the EU bureaucrats and to Washington. Consequently, European nations are not independent and cannot exercise an independent foreign policy.

Their impotence means that Washington can drive them to war. To fully understand the impotence of Europe look at France. The only leader in Europe worthy of the name is Marine Le Pen. Having said this, I am immediately denounced by the European left as a fascist, a racist, and so forth. This only shows the knee-jerk response of the European left.

It is not I who shares Le Pen’s views on immigration. It is the French people. Le Pen’s party won the recent EU elections. What Le Pen stands for is French independence from the EU. The majority of French see themselves as French and want to remain French with their own laws and customs. Only Le Pen among European politicians has stated the obvious: “The Americans are taking us to war!”

Despite the French desire for independence, the French will elect Le Pen’s party to the EU but will not give it the vote to be the government of France. The French deny themselves their independence, because they are heavily conditioned by brainwashing, much coming from the left, and are ashamed to be racists, fascists, and whatever epithets have been assigned to Le Pen’s political party, a party that stands for the independence of France.

The European left-wing, once a progressive force, even a revolutionary one, has become a reactionary force. It is the same in the US. I say this as one of CounterPunch’s popular contributors.

The inability even of intellectuals to recognize and accept reality means that restraints on neoconservatives are nowhere present except within Russia and China. The West is impotent to prevent Armageddon. It is up to Russia and China, and as Washington has framed the dilemma, Armageddon can only be prevented by Russia and China accepting vassal status.

I don’t believe this is going to happen. Why would any self-respecting people submit to the corrupt West?

The hope is that Washington will cause its European vassals to rebel by pushing them too hard into conflict with Russia. The hope that European countries will be forced into an independent foreign policy also seems to be the basis of the Russian government’s strategy.

Perhaps intellectuals can help to bring this hope to fruition. If European politicians were to break from Washington’s hegemony and instead represent European interests, Washington would be deprived of cover for its war crimes. Washington’s aggressions would be constrained by an independent European foreign policy. The breakdown of the neoconservative unipower model would be apparent even to Washington, and the world would become a safer and better place.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Since 9/11, Jihadists Have Killed 26 Americans On U.S. Soil - Here Are The Statistics On Domestic Killers Of Us Citizens

11 essential facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States

By Max Ehrenfreund and Zachary A. Goldfarb June 18 Washington Post

America is a land of guns. It was true when twelve people died in Aurora, Colo., when a gunman opened fire in a movie theater. It was true when a gunman killed 27 people, including 20 children, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. And it remains true this morning, as police search for the gunman who is accused of killing nine people at an historic African American church in Charleston, S.C.

In this post, adapted from previous versions* that we released after mass killings in the past, we explore America's unique role among advanced countries as a place where support for guns is widespread -- and violence involving firearms is equally widespread. There are some perhaps surprising findings -- gun ownership in the United States is declining overall, for instance. But despite mass killings -- which have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years -- support for gun rights is still resolute in America.

Here are answers to a few questions you might have about guns and mass shootings, including:

How common are mass shootings in this country?
How many people own guns?
Are mass shootings becoming more common?
When were deadliest shootings in U.S. history?
Is the United States an especially violent place, compared to other countries?
Where is violence most common in America?
Is the number of guns related to the number of homicides?
Is gun control?
Is there public support for gun control?
What about for particular gun control policies?
How do mass shootings affect public opinion on this issue?

1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.

Mother Jones tracked and mapped shooting sprees over the three decades from 1982 to May of last year. They counted "at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii," they found.

A Congressional Research Service report published in 2013 counted 78 incidents over roughly the same period, in which 547 were killed. Definitions of mass shootings vary. The report excludes those for whom terrorist ideology or criminal profit was a motivation. The Mother Jones staff limited themselves to indiscriminate killings of at least four people in public places by lone shooters.

Since we don't know what drove the gunman in Charleston, it's too early to speculate on how this latest incident would alter these counts.

In most cases, the Mother Jones staff found, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:

Since they published their analysis, five people were killed in a shooting spree in Las Vegas that authorities said was driven by anti-government views. In February, a man named Joseph Jesse Aldridge killed seven people in Texas County, Mo., including several of his relatives, before taking his own life. His motivations remain unclear.

2. Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall, but nearly a third of households still have a gun.

The General Social Survey has been asking Americans about whether they have a gun in their home for decades, and last year essential tied the record low level of gun ownership reached in 2010. As you can see the chart below, 31 percent of adults reporting having a firearm in their household in 2014. That is 17 percentage points below the peak gun ownership from 1977 to 1980.

Survey data released last year by the Pew Research Center broke down the demographics of gun ownership more broadly. They wrote:

Overall, about a third of all Americans with children under 18 at home have a gun in their household, including 34% of families with children younger than 12. That’s nearly identical to the share of childless adults or those with older children who have a firearm at home.

The new research also suggests a paradox: While blacks are significantly more likely than whites to be gun homicide victims, blacks are only about half as likely as whites to have a firearm in their home (41% vs. 19%). Hispanics are less likely than blacks to be gun homicide victims and half as likely as whites to have a gun at home (20%).

Pew found that gun ownership is concentrated among older adults, rural residents, and whites, especially white Southerners. Whites in the South are more likely to own guns than whites in other regions.

3. Active shooter events have become more common in recent years.

A report published by the FBI last year, studying active shooting situations between 2000 and 2013, found that these kinds of incidents were happening more and more recently. The first seven years of the study found an average of 6.4 active shootings per year, while the last seven years of the study found that number jumped up to 16.4 incidents per year.

Active shooting incidents are defined by federal agencies as "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area." (This is different from mass killings, which are episodes where three or more people are killed; while many active shooting incidents wind up being mass killings, more than half of the episodes in the FBI study did not meet that definition.)

4. Of the 12 deadliest shootings in the United States, six have happened from 2007 onward.

As this map by The Washington Post shows, several of the deadliest shootings ever in the United States have happened in just the past few years -- including the massacres at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. These were the two shootings that claimed the most lives, and the third deadliest shooting was in 1991 in Killeen, Tex.

Wednesday's incident in Charleston would not be among this group of the deadliest shootings in modern American history.

5. America is an unusually violent country. But we're not as violent as we used to be.

Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, made this graph of deaths due to assault in the United States and other developed countries. We are a clear outlier -- along with Estonia and Mexico. Yet this country is a far less violent place than it was 40 years ago, with the rate of deaths due to assault declining by roughly half.

As Healy writes, "The most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—and recently, decline—there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself."

6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.

In a subsequent post, Healy drilled further into the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in different regions of the country. Just as the United States is a clear outlier in the international context, the South is a clear outlier in the national context:

7. More guns tend to mean more homicide.

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there's substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders.

This holds true whether you're looking at different countries or different states. Citations here.

8. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.

In 2011, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive:

"The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state," Florida said in 2012. "It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place - assault weapons' bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48)."

9. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular -- and its popularity has been declining lately.

Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter.

The answer, increasingly, is that they don't.

"Less than half of Americans, 47%, say they favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, similar to views found last year," Gallup says. "But this percentage is significantly below the 58% recorded in 2012 after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, spurred a nationwide debate about the possibility of more stringent gun control laws. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict."

10. While general gun control isn't that popular, particular policies are.

While many Americans strongly support the right to bear arms, they also support specific restrictions, such as background checks, assault weapons bans and a federal database to track guns. Here's 2013 data from Pew Research Center.

11. Shootings don't tend to substantially affect views on gun control.

That is what the Pew Research Center found after polling Americans after mass shootings in the United States. In fact, Pew reported late last year that for the first in more than 20 years, Americans showed more support for gun rights than gun control. That's what Pew found after Newtown.

And before other mass shootings, as well:

In fact, more people say gun ownerships protects people from a crime.

*Earlier versions of this post were authored by Ezra Klein, and in places some of the original language is retained. Mark Berman contributed to this post.

This post has been updated to correct the number of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.

The Most Amazing First Account Sea Story From WWI - An English Sailor Writes a Letter To His Mummy (Please read the linked pdf of the letter)

WW1: The letter that reveals a brutal day at Scapa Flow

By Marek PruszewiczBBC World Service

The mighty ships of the German High Seas Fleet were scuttled by their own sailors in Scapa Flow in Orkney on 21 June 1919. A newly discovered letter paints an extraordinary picture.

It was the single greatest loss of warships in history, and the sailors killed that day were the last fatalities of World War One.

One young British officer not only witnessed the astonishing events, but recorded his own dramatic involvement in an account which has remained unpublished until now.

Edward Hugh Markham David - Hugh, or "Ti" (short for "Tiny") to his family - was 18 years old in 1919, but had already been in the Royal Navy for two years.

By June he was a sub-lieutenant aboard the battleship HMS Revenge, flagship of Admiral Sir Sydney Fremantle.

Fremantle was the man charged with guarding the interned ships of the German High Seas Fleet in the Orkney anchorage of Scapa Flow.

On the morning of Sunday 21 June, the British fleet steamed out on exercise. Hundreds of miles away, in Paris, the wrangles over the peace treaty to officially end the Great War were reaching a climax. The fate of the magnificent German warships was due to be decided.

The German commander, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, believed that his ships were about to be seized as spoils of war and divided up between the victorious Allies. He felt duty-bound not to let that happen.

null — A total of 52 ships sank to the seafloor

At 10:30 von Reuter's flagship, Emden, sent out the seemingly innocuous message - "Paragraph Eleven; confirm". It was a code ordering his men to scuttle their own ships.

Beneath decks, German sailors immediately began to open seacocks - valves that allow water in - and smash pipes.

There have been many accounts of the drama that followed, but Hugh David's version of events has never been published.

My Dearest Mummie, I am writing this at sea, after witnessing perhaps the grimmest and certainly the most pathetic incident of the whole war..."

David wrote the very next day to his mother from HMS Revenge, as the battleship steamed south to Cromarty, loaded with German sailors, now prisoners-of-war.

Even after nearly a century, the words are clear. So too are the feelings of the young man. In the emotion of telling his story, David got the date of his letter wrong - recording it as 26 June instead of 22 June.

Read the full letter from Hugh David to his mother [76,000 KB]

HMS Revenge received a message at around 12:45 on 21 June that its captive German ships were sinking. The fleet turned back at full speed. It was too late.

"The sight that met our gaze as we rounded the Island of Flotta is absolutely indescribable," wrote David.

"A good half of the German fleet had already disappeared, the water was one mass of wreckage of every description, boats, carley floats, chairs, tables and human beings, and the 'Bayern' the largest German battleship, her bow reared vertically out of the water was in the act of crashing finally bottomwards, which she did a few seconds later, in a cloud of smoke bursting her boilers as she went."

The Germans took to small boats to escape their sinking ships. From one of them Admiral von Reuter was taken aboard HMS Revenge.

"About the most dramatic moment of the whole day was the meeting of the English and German Admirals," wrote David. "The two men were about the same height, both fine looking and tall."

As the German climbed wearily over the side there was a deadly hush on board. I was a few feet behind von Reuter so heard every word..."

Although von Reuter later recalled this conversation in his memoirs, David's record appears to be the only contemporaneous one:

"At first there was a pause, the German standing at the salute then the following conversation -

Fremantle: I presume you have come to surrender?

Von Reuter: I have come to surrender my men and myself (with a sweeping gesture towards the fast sinking ships) I have nudding else.

Pause

Von Reuter: I take upon myself the whole responsibility of this, it is nothing to do with my officers and men - they were acting under my orders.

Fremantle: I suppose you realise that by this act of treachery [hissing voice] by this act of base treachery you are no longer an interned enemy but my prisoner of war and as such will be treated.

Von Reuter: I understand perfectly.

Fremantle: I request you remain on the upper deck until I can dispose of you.

Von Reuter: May my Flag Lieutenant accompany me?

Fremantle: Yes, I grant you that.

The drama recorded by David took place at about 16:00 that Midsummer Day. It seems David was then ordered to join a boarding party to try to save the few German ships still afloat.

"I strapped a revolver round my waist grabbed some ammunition and leapt into the drifter with an armed guard and took off to save the Hindenburg," wrote David.

The Hindenburg was the biggest German battlecruiser. She sank as Hugh's small boat drew alongside but before he climbed on board "very nearly taking us with her."

David's launch turned instead for the giant battleship Baden, sister of the Bayern. She was the only German battleship the Royal Navy succeeded in saving.

"We then got alongside 'Baden' who was going down fast and hurried below to see what we could do to save her - we closed watertight doors which kept her up temporarily but she eventually had to be towed ashore," explained David.

"We found one little German sub-lieut (sic) below who was dragged onto the upper deck."

The flag captain told him he would be shot at sunset if he did not immediately take us below and show us how to shut off the valves..."

The German said that he didn't mind if he was shot straight away. David, however, doesn't record whether the unfortunate man was shot, but there's no doubt that others were. They were the final casualties of World War One - the Treaty of Versailles was signed a week later on 28 June 1919.

"The terrible part of the whole show, to my mind, was that the Huns hadn't got a weapon between them and it was our bounden duty to fire on them to get them back to close their valves," wrote David. He describes the British as being in an "awful position".

It was quite obvious that the huns would die to a man rather than save their ships so that there was no point in going on firing – yet what could we do?"

Andrew Choong, Curator of Ships, Plans and Historic Photographs at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, has read a transcript of David's letter.

"I think it's an absolutely fascinating account. Our knowledge and analysis of this event are based on the recollections of the great and the good, like von Reuter and official reports. I haven't ever seen an account of a similar experience. Here's a mid-level officer placed right in the middle of it all."

Choong was struck by David's feelings. "Here is a man who comes across first as a human being and is obviously very uncomfortable about the whole thing," he says.

"I think it's very moving because there is no relish in what he's doing and he finds time to mark the acts of German bravery. It's a remarkable document."

After his eventual return to Germany, von Reuter helped to put together a government report on "British breaches of international law" against the German sailors, charges consistently denied by Britain.

Choong says the British would have had justification to fire in some cases. "The rules of engagement were that if you saw a German opening a seacock or giving orders to others to do so you could order him to stop - and if he refused, you could shoot him," he says.

However, there's evidence, including in David's letter and a subsequent one he wrote a few days later to his Uncle Walter, to suggest some British sailors went further, firing on Germans who were trying to escape from their sinking ships.

"Today you would say there's probably no excuse, but that's to impose a modern view of the situation which then was very unclear and very uncertain," says Choong. "In one or two places in the letter it makes it sound like a bit of a massacre but in fact only nine men were killed and 16 wounded out of hundreds and hundreds."

The tumultuous events of that day clearly had their effect on Hugh David.

I have seen men killed for the first time in my life and at that without the crash of action to keep ones spirits up, and it has made me think, God, it has made me think..."

He died in 1957. His letter to his mother eventually passed to his daughter, Hilary Chiswell Jones. It was her decision to make it public, after 96 years.

"I probably didn't read it until I was 25 or so," explains Hilary. "I remember being impressed by the way he portrayed the event and also by his awareness of how awful it was for the Germans."He obviously had compassion for them and I admired him for it - I was pleased he showed it, especially at 18, when you tend to be perhaps a bit cocky. I thought that showed his humanity.”

Does she think her father did fire on the German sailors?

"I think he would have told his Uncle Walter in his letter to him had he shot anyone, so I don't think so."

Within months of the scuttling, David had left the Royal Navy. He joined the fledgling RAF, where he served with distinction until 1950, rising to the rank of Group Captain.

But it seems unlikely he ever forgot the extraordinary things he witnessed at Scapa Flow.

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