I was thrown into a panic this morning by Alan Ritch's reference in 'AWADmail Issue 317' to "the nine people who, almost literally, hold our lives in their hands". My God - who are these nine people?! Why didn't I know about this?! How could I have been living with a false sense of security for decades, unaware that my life was in the hands of nine shadowy individuals??

And then I realised - Mr. Ritch of Berkeley was probably referring to the US Supreme Court. A body which has jurisdiction over only 1 out of the 192 generally recognised countries - or only 4.6% of the global population. Phew! I'm still safe and sound here in Ireland. But then one has to ask - why was the term "our lives" used by Mr. Ritch? He would do well to remember that AWAD is a global phenomenon. Like so many scribes on the internet, he is guilty of that form of hegemonious US-centredness which makes the author completely forget that American culture and institutions are, in fact, very much the minority.

That said, I'd have to agree with Mr. Ritch's overall point of the ludicrousness of "the right to bear arms" as it still pertains in the US. I hope that the US will soon leave the 19th Century, and join the many of us enjoying tranquillity in the 21st.

a similar thought occurred to me but with less heat. Many US citizens online seem to have a hic sunt dracones view of the world. Try asking them to name the twenty-eight states of the world's largest democracy and then count how many reply "there are 50, not 28". From what I've seen here though, the US citizens who post here have a much broader world view.

Because the impovershed English language doesn't have finer divisions in its first person plural pronouns.

name the twenty-eight states of the world's largest democracy

Good trivia question. I can only manage about ten, and I probly misspelled some or simply got them wrong: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andra Pradesh, Goa, Pondicherry, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Rajastan, Punjab, Kashmir, Bihar, Assam, and Delhi got its own state now, too, IIRC. Most children I met in India had a much better sense of world geography than most adults in the States. Now off to Wikipedia to score myself.