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Today, in Britain, a Member of Parliament was murdered. Forty-one year old Jo Cox, a Labour MP for the Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen, was gunned down, then repeatedly stabbed, as she left her local office. It has been said that the man who committed this crime shouted, “Britain First,” as he killed her.

Sparrow Chat is no friend of politicians, but Jo Cox wasn’t of the usual breed. She actually cared, and not just about those she represented. She had compassion for the whole human race, a rarity indeed in today’s politicians.

Shootings are virtually unheard of in Britain. Witnesses described the gun as either ‘very old’ or ‘homemade’. Hand guns have been banned for many years. Incalculable numbers of lives have been saved because of that law.

Britain is not America, and guns are considered only weapons of destruction, not to be glorified but avoided and shunned at all costs. The British do not have a diseased mindset about firearms, like so many Americans. Shootings are commonplace in America. Most never make the headlines. The disease is covered up, except when it explodes into mass murder such as occurred this week in Orlando.

When news of Jo Cox’s assassination reaches the United States one can be sure the ‘gun lobby’ will react as they always do when a shooting occurs in their own country: “if she’d only carried a gun, she could have defended herself,”; “if only the bystanders had been allowed to ‘pack heat’ (Americans gun owners adore that phrase, it makes them feel macho) they might have saved her.”

It’s a disease of the mind; a sickness that has spread over America like an epidemic. It’s to be hoped the ‘American disease’ will never take hold in Britain.

Undoubtedly, Mrs Cox’s killer was unhinged. He was possibly a supporter of the far right-wing party, ‘Britain First’, that believes Britain should shun the European Union, Islam should be banned in the U.K.(Donald Trump?), the death penalty re-introduced for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers, the BBC abolished, introduction of ‘chain gangs’ for prisoners, new laws guaranteeing citizens the right to protect their own homes (shades of “Stand Your Ground”?), and other nefarious ideals.

Jo Cox believed Britain’s place was in Europe. With a referendum on whether the nation should remain in, or leave, the E.U. only a week away, she was likely murdered for holding that view.

Jo Cox’s death could probably have been avoided. This forthcoming referendum should never have been proposed in the first place. It was voiced by the British prime minister, David Cameron, as a means of securing votes to ensure his election victory in 2010. Had he been in favour of leaving Europe, it might have been more comprehensible. As it was, when campaigning to be leader of the nation, he turned the decision over to the general public, even while he, himself, firmly believed it was best for the country to retain its membership. It’s rather like a wartime general saying to his troops, “Well, lads, I’m in favour of engaging the enemy – but I’ll leave it up to you.”

The result has been a long and bitter round of infighting between politicians on the “Remain” side, and those dedicated to the “Leave” campaign (many of the latter, it must be said, spurred on by the possibility of achieving greater political power by adopting the stance). The media has, of course, whipped up both sides to a frenzy and forced the public to take sides as though the whole thing was a political football match (which, in many respects, it is).

Cameron’s self-centred, promise of a referendum on Europe should he be elected, and proffered only to boost his chances of becoming prime minister, has served to generate ill-informed passions and hatreds that may well have indirectly contributed to the foul assassination of Jo Cox this afternoon.

One can only wonder if Mister Cameron has a conscience.

Jo Cox was a rare breed of politician. The nation couldn’t afford to lose her – unlike many who take on the job. She’ll be sorely missed, not least by her husband and two small children.

An isolated case of the ‘American disease’ reared its evil head in Britain today. Let us hope there’s not another like it for a very long time.

Once again the U.S. media switches rapidly to ‘hysteria mode’ as yet another mass shooting occurs. This time it’s in Orlando, Florida. For a moment, there almost seemed a hint of celebration from some, as the total killed becomes a new record for America – the most ever slaughtered in a single mass shooting, possibly since records began.

It’s a great excuse to bandy about the emotive word, “terrorism”, and it may well have set another record, for the most used word on U.S. television in a single half-hour segment.

It’s strange how words can be changed to suit the mood. Surely anyone who points a loaded gun at another is guilty of terrorism. Who wouldn’t be “terrified” to be on the receiving end of such an act of potential violence? But now, it means something much more narrowly defined – the act of a person, or persons, acting on behalf of, or at the behest of, a politico/religious organization generally of Middle Eastern origin.

We were told by half a dozen reporters, local Orlando dignitaries, politicians, the police, and eventually, the President himself, that it’s vital to discover whether this man acted alone, or was part of a “terrorist plot”,

Why? Why is that the factor of over-riding importance in this disgusting affair? Will it bring the dead back to life? Will it make the despicable act of mass murder of innocents anymore acceptable if this man is found to have been perusing Islamic State websites?

It’s likely the murderer did peruse such sites, but it doesn’t make him a ‘terrorist’ in the sense of working for I.S., or al Qaeda, or any other Muslim fundamentalist organization. He had a grudge against gay people; that’s why he chose a gay bar.

One more sad result of this mass shooting in Orlando is that only two days earlier, less than twenty minutes from the scene of this latest carnage, a young singer, Christina Grimmie, was senselessly gunned down as she was signing autographs after a concert. Her death, at the age of twenty-four and with a promising career ahead of her, has been totally eclipsed by this latest tragedy.

Two major shootings in two days is rapidly becoming a norm in America. Most don’t make headlines anymore.

This one did. But then, it’s one for the record books – until another surpasses it.

Orlando, Florida, was once known throughout the world as the home of Disney World. Now it’s earning a less enviable reputation.

^{[1] “Orlando gay nightclub shooting: 50 killed, suspect is Omar Mateen” BBC, June 12th 2016}

^{[2] “Former Voice contestant Christina Grimmie shot dead in Orlando” BBC, 11th June 2016}

With Democratic contender, Hilary Clinton, now set to become the party’s nominee for president, many outside America are left wondering why Bernie Sander’s hopes have been dashed so decisively, and the ‘Establishment’ contender allowed to gain outright victory.

Throughout the primary season, Republican voters have made a clear statement of their views towards the Washington establishment by turning out en masse in support of the somewhat bizarre Donald Trump. If his landslide victory weren’t a rebellion against the U.S. political establishment, then it’s hard to know what else it could be.

With corruption, corporate-control, and the will to bring government to a halt in order to get their way now rife in Washington politics, it seems almost unbelievable to outsiders that Democratic voters should yet again choose the Devil they know, rather than someone who promises to fight their corner in Washington on the issues they’re supposed to believe in.

Much is being made in the popular press of the possibility of a first U.S. woman president, but that hasn’t been the issue in this campaign. Clinton hasn’t made it to the nomination because she’s a woman. She won precisely because she is Washington establishment, and the American Left isn’t yet quite ready to embrace a contender who unashamedly calls himself a Socialist.

In America, socialism is equated with communism. The propaganda of the Cold War years still weighs heavy on the American mindset, particularly among older voters. It’s no coincidence that the majority of Sander’s supporters are too young to have been affected by McCarthy, in an era that judged anyone who dared question capitalism a communist.

America isn’t yet ready to jettison its capitalist ideals in favour of socialism. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton are both evidence of that. The average Joe still clings firmly to the belief that America will one day rise again from the doldrums of Empire and take its place as the true leader of the free world.

They have yet to realise that it’s the very capitalism they worship that is inexorably strangling the world’s freedoms and confining us all to the fetters of a corporate-controlled society determined to abolish culture and humanity in favour of the artificial concrete jungle of marketing blandness that is so evident throughout the U.S. heartlands, with its Walmarts, Lowes, McDonalds, and a multitude of other conglomerates, dominating the landscape of every state, city, and one-horse township.

The American Democrat desperately seeks change, but not at any cost. For them, Bernie Sanders is a price too high. So, for now, they’ll conveniently forget the abysmal record of the first Clinton administration: the ‘three-strikes” law; ending Glass-Steagal; NAFTA; the Defense of Marriage Act; expansion of the War on Drugs (prison population doubled from about 600,000 to about 1.2 million during the Clinton years); 1994 crime bill (which expanded the death penalty to 60 additional crimes including three that don’t involve murder: espionage, treason and drug trafficking in large amounts.); the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that provided 50% of Sudan’s medicines; doubling of Iraq sanctions (begun by Republican president George H.W. Bush) causing infanticide in Iraq; failing to act when U.S. intelligence knew in advance of the upcoming Rwanda genocide that claimed nearly a million lives, and the escalation of foreign drug wars by multi-million dollar military aid to right-wing factions of the Columbian military that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, with hundreds of thousands displaced.^[1]

It’s not a great legacy for his wife to inherit, should she be elected president in November. One can’t help thinking that ‘more of the same’ will be the norm, if there’s yet another Clinton administration.

Frankly, the choice for voters come November is not an enticing one. The film, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ depicted a battle between two evils, one portrayed by Dr. Frederick Chilton, the jailer, and the other, the infamous Hannibal Lecter. It is, perhaps, too extreme to cast either Trump or Clinton in either role, but nevertheless, when U.S. voters go to the polls in November they will have to decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils.

As for Bernie Sanders, due to the present unease in American politics it’s likely that some form of social reform is not too distant. Unfortunately, unless he’s able to remain fit and healthy into his nineties, by the time the outcry is sufficiently loud to gain majority support among a normally reticent Democratic public, there may well be no Bernie Sanders around to take up the cause.

^{[1] “15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World” AlterNet, June 22nd 2015}