As more U.S. companies were showing support for stricter gun laws this week, two foreign governments announced Wednesday that they had made significant progress on restricting access to firearms.

In Australia, authorities revealed that citizens had handed over 57,000 illegal firearms between July and September last year during a gun amnesty. In total, more than 35,000 rifles and more than 12,000 shotguns were turned in, among other firearms.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian government now appears to have a majority for its plan to ban semiautomatic rifles — similar to those used in a string of deadly mass shootings in the United States — by 2021, despite protests from farmers and hunters.

If passed, the Norwegian law would classify previously legal rifles used by hunters as “military-style” weapons. It would be accompanied by other measures, such as upgraded background checks before handgun purchases, according to Peter Frolich of the Norwegian parliament’s judicial affairs committee, who spoke to the Associated Press.

Both initiatives indicate the lengths to which governments have gone in response to mass shootings in their respective countries.

Australia’s firearms amnesty is based on a nationwide scheme that followed a mass shooting at a tourist site in the country in 1996 that left 35 people dead. At the time, the Australian government decided to buy back firearms and strengthen gun-control laws, managing to significantly reduce the number of weapons in circulation.

The Australian measure is based on the assumption that any reduction of the number of available weapons that could fall into the wrong hands can help prevent shootings -- and there is some statistical evidence for this. In his study published in 2016, “Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries,” University of Alabama's Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminology, found a link between the number of guns and mass shootings that killed four or more people. The data set ranged from 1966 through 2012.

Since 1996, countries including Canada, Britain and Norway have tried out modified versions of Australia’s measures, allowing owners of illegal weapons to hand them in without fear of legal repercussions.

Gun control advocates are pushing for an assault weapons ban in the wake of the Florida shooting. Here's a breakdown of the heated arguments around a ban. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

In Norway, lawmakers’ willingness to reduce the number of firearms in circulation can mainly be traced to the 2011 Utoya shooting, in which a right-wing gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in one of Europe's most gruesome terrorist attacks. Most of the victims were children or teenagers. One of the weapons Breivik used was a semiautomatic rifle.

Since then, the Norwegian government has pondered the feasibility of a much broader ban of semiautomatic rifles than is in place elsewhere. A commission proposed such restrictions last fall, and lawmakers are now set to approve the measures.

In Australia and in Norway, two major shooting massacres appear to have changed the national debate over gun ownership, but both examples also show the limits of such approaches in the United States. Gun amnesties on illegal firearms naturally worked only if certain types of firearms were banned or their access was limited.

“Taking these unregistered firearms off the streets means they will not fall into the hands of criminals, who might use them to endanger the lives of innocent Australians,” Law Enforcement Minister Angus Taylor said Thursday.

But based on numbers provided by Canadian authorities, amnesties mostly help to reduce the number of illegal firearms accidentally inherited by daughters or sons of gun owners. Hence, such initiatives are ill-equipped to directly combat illegal weapons ownership among criminals or individuals willing to commit attacks.

To prevent massacres, amnesties tend to work only if deployed in tandem with the European-style measures deeply loathed by American conservatives: broad bans or restrictions on firearms ownership.

“In the United States, of course you have the gun lobby and the Second Amendment,” said Anders Romarheim, associate professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies and an expert who advised the commission looking into the Utoya attack. “But in Norway, we don’t really have anything similar to that. So, once the idea came up to restrict firearms access, it was a done deal.”

(The Washington Post)

By Matt Agorist

Illustrating the gluttonous nature and disturbing spending habits of the empire that is the United States, the US Treasury released its financial report from 2017 showing that the government lost $1.2 TRILLION dollars in 2017.

Yes, that is TRILLION, with a ‘t’.

The Goldman Sachs insider who was appointed as the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, celebrated the report, noting that he was “pleased to present the Financial Report of the United State Government,” which showed a loss of $1.2 trillion.

After the opening message celebrating their utter incompetence in managing a budget, the report goes on to note how the US government spent a trillion more dollars than they had. This loss of money will ensure that future generations will be forever burdened with the impossible task of paying back the debt to the Federal Reserve.

According to the report:

The Government’s gross costs of $4.6 trillion, less $431.9 billion in revenues earned for goods and services provided to the public (e.g., Medicare premiums, national park entry fees, and postal service fees), plus $356.5 billion in net losses from changes in assumptions (e.g., interest rates, inflation, disability claims rates) yields the Government’s net cost of $4.5 trillion, an increase of $128.8 billion or 2.9 percent over FY 2016. Deducting $3.4 trillion in tax and other revenues, with some adjustment for unmatched transactions and balances, results in a “bottom line” net operating cost of $1.2 trillion for FY 2017, (an increase of $105.0 billion or 10.0
percent) over FY 2016.

To put this into perspective, the US government lost five times more money than the entire Mexican economy. The loss of $1.2 trillion equates to losing $2,283,105.02 every single minute of 2017—or, $38,051.75 a second.

In 2017, the United States lost over $3 billion every single day and somehow these people think this is sustainable.

What’s so ominous about this loss is the fact that, in 2017, the US government took in a record high $3.3 trillion in taxes and they still managed to lose $1.2 trillion.

As Mnuchin points out in the opening statement, the United States experienced amazing growth, consumer and business confidence are at two-decade highs, and inflation is low and stable. Yet still, they lost $1.2 trillion!

Imagine for a moment what that loss would look like in a recession, or a financial crisis.

As Simon Black points out in an article on Sovereign Man,

If the government loses $1.2 trillion in a GOOD year, how much do you think they’ll lose in a BAD year? How much will they lose when they actually do have a recession to fight? Or another war. Or a major banking crisis?

More importantly, how long can something so unsustainable possibly last?

The answer to that question is, not long.

The national debt is a ticking time bomb. As indicated in their own report, the US government calculated its net worth and the result is mind-boggling.

On their balance sheet, the feds calculated the value of every aircraft carrier, tank, missile, building, national park, government vehicle, all the cash in the bank, all of its property, and then subtracted how much money it owes to the central bank. All the government’s assets, minus what it owes to the bankers equals negative $20.4 TRILLION.

As Black notes, it gets worse:

And according to the government’s own calculations (on page 58), the “total present value of future expenditures in excess of future revenue” for Social Security and Medicare is MINUS $49 TRILLION. Essentially this means that the two largest and most important pension and healthcare programs in the United States are insolvent by nearly $50 trillion. Altogether, the government is in the red by almost $70 trillion.

What’s more, no one in the mainstream media is reporting on this. Everyone is simply riding the runaway train acting like everything will be just fine.

The commander of the Lebanese military said Thursday that his troops are prepared to defend the country against any potential Israeli attack or incursion.

Lebanese Commander General Joseph Aoun made the remarks during an inspection of Lebanon’s Third Intervention Regiment in the Ras Beirut neighborhood of the capital city, Beirut. As disputes with southern neighbor Israel over natural resources, a border wall and Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah threaten a new war between the longtime foes, Aoun stressed that Lebanon’s armed forces would not be caught off guard.

“The army maintains its readiness on the southern border to confront any Israeli military aggression or any attempt to encroach on parts of its land and maritime borders,’ Aoun said, according to the official website of Lebanon’s military.

“The army has the complete will to defend Lebanese rights through all of its available means and capabilities, no matter how much the enemy’s threats and provocations may escalate,” he added.

The U.S. has considered both Israel and Lebanon to be its allies in the Middle East, but the latter’s relationship to militant groups opposed to Israel and U.S. foreign policy has strained Lebanon’s ties with the U.S. Lebanon underwent a devastating sectarian civil war from 1975 to 1990. In the middle of this conflict, Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Palestinian nationalist fighters using the war-torn country as a base of operations to attack Israel.

During this time, the recently established Islamic Republic of Iran helped establish a Shiite Muslim resistance force called Hezbollah, which led efforts to force Israel to Lebanon. Israeli forces withdrew in a 2000 ceasefire. When Israel invaded again in response to Hezbollah cross-border attacks in 2006, Hezbollah again fought back, and Israel withdrew roughly a month later after a massive air campaign.

The U.S.-backed Lebanese military and Iran-backed Hezbollah do not officially cooperate with one another, but the latter formed the second-largest political faction in the ruling March 8 Alliance. The Free Patriotic Movement, founded by Lebanese President Michel Aoun (no relation to General Joseph Aoun), formed the largest.

While Israel and Hezbollah have since occasionally clashed at the border, recent violence has been focused across Lebanon’s eastern border in Syria, another Arab nation opposed to Israel. Hezbollah, along with other militias and Russia, has helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces overcome a 2011 rebel and jihadi uprising backed by the West, Turkey and Gulf Arab states, but the Lebanese group’spresence in Syria has made it a target for Israeli airstrikes.

As Hezbollah helped both the Syrian and Lebanese militaries defeat the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in their respective countries, new crises have emerged between Israel and Lebanon.

Israel has begun construction on a new, controversial wall along its border with Lebanon. Lebanon disputes Israeli claims to 13 points along the United Nations–designated boundary, as Israeli daily Haaretz reported. President Aoun described the wall on Tuesday as “an additional assault on Lebanese sovereignty that Lebanon rejects,” according to Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.

Another row has developed over conflicting claims to oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon has recently signed agreements allowing international companies permission to drill in reserves, including the Block 9 field that Israel claimed as its own. Despite Israeli warnings, Lebanon has said it would go through with the project and Hezbollah said last month it was prepared to fight for the natural resources.

“We reiterate our firm and unequivocal position in decisively confronting any aggression against our oil and gas rights, defending Lebanon’s assets and protecting its wealth,” Hezbollah said in a statement sent to Newsweek at the time.

(newsweek)