Our money is on the LGBTQ community. They’ve got the moral high ground. The horror in Orlando – 49 people murdered with an assault weapon – was a hate crime perpetrated against gay people. Conservative efforts to shift blame and label the massacre an act of political terrorism have been discredited. Right-wing religious bigotry combined with easy access to rapid fire weapons designed for war drove the deadly Orlando rampage.

This past weekend, mass gun violence was unleashed yet again. This time in Orlando, in a crowded night club. Something like 50 people, fellow human beings, murdered and an equal number injured by one extremist psychopath, armed with an assault rifle. The most casualties in a single gun incident in our nation’s history.

In Colorado, the Mesa Valley School District sent out emails to parents encouraging them to send their daughters to see a media presentation called, ‘Wake up Sleeping Beauty: Worship at his Feet’.  The idea behind this is that young girls should strive to be ‘pure’ in mind and spirit in order to be worthy of becoming a good wife.  The clear implication: the only proper role for females in society is to be subjugated in the home, subordinate to patriarchal rule. (more…)

Russell Brand is an amiable cynic. He is a comedian reinvented as social critic. Brand tells us the world as we know it is in big trouble.  He talks candidly and fearlessly about climate change, Earth stewardship, political corruption, and an economic system that feeds all the wealth to the elite… (more…)

Investigative reporter and cultural critic, Naomi Klein’s latest book is This Changes Everything.  In it, she makes a powerful case that the predatory brand of capitalism currently practiced in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world fosters egregious inequality and is highly destructive to human well-being and the health of the biosphere, on which we all depend. (more…)

A report was  released earlier this year by Oxfam International. It showed that a handful of people have managed to take control of more of the world’s privately held wealth than the other 99% of us combined. They have given new definition to the word, greed. (more…)