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benajahccjoseph · 6 years

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https://therapistfortherest.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/opioid-advanced-treatment

hat We Now Know that You Knew Before:

The War on Addicts and the Path to Recovery

The War began before any of the new combatants were born. It began as legitimate. It began as a worthy attempt to combat what had been tried, one hundred years prior, with alcohol. Sadly, the 2nd foray of the United States Government into controlling its populations’ personal choices is ending in much the same way as the first; with violence, the rise of a criminal underclass, the destruction of the family and with more and more users of the illicit and legal but non-medical substances. The opioid crisis often referred to as an epidemic has once again put a face on the beast of addiction. In this study, I will examine the birth, growth, spread and evolution of opiate use in the United States. I will then set about relaying how our government, medical community, religious and recovery community is responding. I will discuss the newest data and how new methods of treatment are having unprecedented affect (Netherland, 2015).

Introduction

In the basement of Hell sat the executives around a cauldron of boiling oil where they were slowly dropping in piece-by-piece of opium plant bulbs. But it wasn’t opium, it just looked like it and smelled like it, in fact it did everything that opium did but it was better for it wasn’t illegal and they believed if they worked the angle just right…they could get doctors to be the new face of the new ad campaign…not for the heart of America. But it’s eternal spirit and soul.

The year is 2006 and two physicians from the Dominican Republic have just opened the 4th Pain Management Clinic in the sleepy little town of Deerfield Beach, Florida. The Pain Clinic on A1A is a Non-emergency clinic, it opens Sat morning at 630 and there is a line before the door opens, occasionally before the sun comes up. In the line are men, women and some children drinking Fanta Orange in dirty Elmo shirts. They are young and old, variegated ethic and racial mixes. Some are wealthy, arriving in Porches’ or Lamborghinis, some are working on their broke down cars in the parking lot. Several young Haitian boys are riding their bikes in the parking lot, occasionally stopping to discuss and collude with those in line and standing about. There are three large men with neck tattoos and scrubs on moving about the line and speaking quietly to anyone who causes a problem or is too loud. There is a tension in the air and fear bubbles. These men and women have come to Florida from as far away as New Hampshire and Maryland, from West Virginia and Missouri. Some have flown but 90% of the patients drive. In the overflow parking lot across the street people are getting in and out of cars with license plates from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio and Virginia. At 8 a.m. a semi pulls into the lot and backs slickly into a yellow lined spot. Getting out are two burly men dressed in medical scrubs. The 2nd part of the operation is hanging out its shingle and it says MRI’s 235$. The MRI machine cost three quarters of a million dollars and is mobile, just an everyday occurrence in Opioid-Land. In order for the Board Approved pain physician to see you, you must have an MRI, so they have brought the machine it to the scene of the crime (Joseph, 2017).

As the line begins to wrap around the building as the morning wears on, water is passed out. But that is not the story here. They are addicted Americans and they are standing on the chopping block, for this is “ground zero for the systemic and flagrant abuse of the people that the medical community is supposed to be protecting.” (Garland, 2015) They are some of the sickest persons in America, for everything they do, every day, is to keep taking opiates to “stay well.” The body’s detoxification process from any analgesic is painful. It affects the stomach muscles and nervous system. The only way to avoid this is the ingest more opiates. Between the years of 2005-20015 the state of Florida, in 3 counties alone, sold 7 out of every 10 opioid pills sold in the United States. 70% of an infinite number. (McIntosh et. al., 2000) This staggering figure adds up to enough pills for every American to take 3 a day for 2 years. So, it goes on for years and years, America’s descent into the worst epidemic of pharmaceutical and heroin abuse in our nation’s history, which started with but a small lie.

How it Evolved

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the medical community was on top of the world. Anti-depressants, such as Prozac, were introduced onto the market and were a huge success. AstraZeneca, Roche, Purdue and Eli-Lilly were growing exponentially through the increased efficacy of their product design branches. The small firm of Perdue was at this time looking very closely at the current pain management drugs and had developed a new way to treat pain. (McIntosh et. al., 2000) The drug was called OxyContin but there were others, Norco, Percocet, Darvon. Darvocet and RoxyContin all basically hit the market at the same time.

On December 12, 1995, the Food and Drug Administration approved for use the opioid analgesic OxyContin. It hit the market in 1996. In first fiscal statement Purdue claimed OxyContin accounted for $45 million in sales for its manufacturer, Stamford and the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharmaceutical. By 2000 that number would be inflated from $1.1 billion to $3.12 billion. The strong opioid accounted for 30 percent of the painkiller market. Three of every 10 pills were OxyContin and by then end of 2012 seven out of 20 prescriptions for painkillers were written in the state of Florida. Purdue controlled nearly a third of the entire United States market for pain pills. (SAMHSA, 2013-2016).

The Pharmaceutical Companies, referred to as Big Pharma, primarily Purdue at the beginning, were utilizing a study done by their research teams and an independent auditor that claimed unequivocal success of the new class of analgesics. The study said simply that people would not get addicted to this drug like they had with Morphine Sulfate. From 1996 to 2015 the study done by Perdue would be found wanting, from 1996-2015 America grew dependent, nay addicted to another face of heroin. Legal and pro-offered heroin. Where they could always find a ready supply, the small urgent-care clinics that popped up like gold had just been found. The enslavement, debasement and fatal nature of the opioid addiction in the United States of America is staggering and sickening. Generations of Americans are dying. The author of this study has known personally 73 people who have died from overdose of heroin or narcotic pain pills. It is worse in some places than others, but none left totally out of the problem. In Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia there are now triple the deaths from pain medication and heroin than vehicle related deaths. It is now the single greatest existential threat to Americans. It is destroying a way of life for anyone who has lived through a loved one being involved opioid drug addiction. The Center for Disease Control released a study in 2014 that indicated what Americans living in the interior already knew, that opioid addiction is everywhere. Quite simply there is no longer any safe place in America. Illegal narcotic use is at an all time high and white, suburban, educated, wealthy and rural kids were the ones shooting these drugs into their veins (CDC, 2014).

Pill–Mills to Heroin Delivery

The direct influence of large Pharmaceutical Companies to be so absolutely evil is but one face of the endemic. Capitalism cannot be judged for it is but a system but couple it with greed and little governmental oversight and what emerges is an unregulated caustic virus seeking to destroy the American family. The next evolution was from the pseudo-legal pill-mills to the heroin. How did this occur?

America is known for many things but restraint is not one. America is a country of massive over reaction. In the 1980’s the scourge of crack cocaine led to the systemic and habitual imprisonment of African Americans, Latinos and the nation’s poor. This is not in debate. This is fact. Because of our draconian drug laws the United States has a greater percentage of its population locked up than any other country in the world. Housing inmates costs the country almost $600 billion a year. Despite the rising imprisonment rates over the last 20 years, addiction is up. The rates of arrest and prosecution are way up. (American Medical Association, 2012 par.1-38) This schism can be firmly be attributed to mandatory sentencing over drug convictions and over-zealous drug laws in general (McGinty, 72).

So, America became addicted then jailed and yet the numbers of overdoses and deaths keep rising. Incarceration is not the answer. Like General Petraeus said regarding the war with Islamic terrorists, “you cannot kill your way to victory.” ( America cannot imprison its way to health.

In 2010 America woke up a bit, it woke up to its children with needles their arms, overdosing and being imprisoned with no succor in sight and what did it do. It shut down the rampant pill mills that were providing the pills to half of America and began to regulate and keep careful track of the physicians that were writing the prescriptions for opioid. This had an effect. (Meier, 2007) The non-medical use of opiate pain pills went down drastically, then the government began looking a general prescribing practices and doctors began slowly to step into the light that they had been ignoring. No longer would these drugs be made so readily available. This was good but…we have a neighbor to our south who when we need a cup of sugar, has got enough to keep everything sweet.

So, the war now rages on in a new role, a revamped and upgraded new way to wage war. The cartels, including Sinaloa, Knight Templar, Juarez, Zetas, Gulf and Brownsville, have been operating for a long time and the entire US illicit-drug market is controlled by these seven Mexican cartels, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary:

Trafficking heroin, meth, cocaine, and marijuana, these organizations will continue to dominate throughout the US, according to the DEA. Estimated to be worth more than three hundred billion dollars a year, the global industry has pumped huge resources into criminal empires decade after decade (2015).

These gangs have adopted entirely new ways of doing business within the borders of the U.S., far away from the border wars. They now deliver heroin to your doorstep, like a pizza. The violence surrounding the drug deal is gone. The drug dealers are Mexican country boys from Jalisco and Nuevo Laredo. They don’t practice violence and seek to just make enough money to support loved ones at home. If they get arrested then they are deported and sneak back across eventually to do it again. Put up a wall, they will climb under or fly over. When there is a need and a supply, nothing can stop the production and distribution of heroin. So what is to be done?

We Do Recover

People are dying. People are living in a perpetual state of self-destruction, suicide rates

among users are the highest since the mid 80’s, Hepatitis C is rampant, HIV is once again

making itself known through shared needles and sexual exchange for drugs. In the face of all of this, a golden thread of reality can be seen woven into the black and red of our nations fabric. In the early 1920’s the Washitonian’s and the Oxford Group pioneered a new way, a spiritual way to recover from alcohol dependence and addiction. In the 1950’s Narcotics Anonymous came along side of Alcoholics Anonymous to support those struggling with drug addiction. (Meier, 2007) Its methods were simple. Meet with the group. Develop a moral stance on life. Repay what ills you have done and find a meaning or a god to help. (Rattan, 208) There are 12 steps in all and the end product is having been overall a huge success, yet it is still not enough. The newest studies indicate that a year of peer based recovery is recommended now to be done in stages. Detoxification, Stabilization, Recovery, Reward. (Meier,2007) The rate of the addicted and dying are much greater than those recovering (Joseph, 2016). Why? The reasons why are plentiful including inertia, the will of the government to switch tactics and the large corporate interests which now include a privately-owned prison sector that is invested in keeping America incarcerated

At this point with heroin and pills and new synthetics all one the market and being aggressively sold the only way to stop this plague is for the United States Government to take an active role in creating and implementing grass roots plans for extended and expensive rehabilitation efforts. Unfortunately, the news on this front is very bad. Very bad. The Trump presidency is proposing:

gut the budget of the White House “drug czar” by 95 percent, effectively eliminating the decades-old Office of National Drug Control Policy, the lead federal agency responsible for managing and coordinating drug policy, according to a memo that its acting director sent Friday to agency employees. The draft budget plan comes as the nation is struggling with an escalating opioid epidemic. Ending opioid addiction was a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he drew support from many of the rural areas and small working-class towns hit hardest by the drug crisis. In March, President Trump commissioned a new addiction task force to help combat the opioid crisis, tapping his friend and former rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to lead the fight (SAMHSA 2017).

But in a memorandum from the acting chair of the Drug Czar Agency, Mr. Baum, said the government’s proposed reductions for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1st 2017 “reflects a nearly 95 percent reduction in the agency’s budget. The proposed $364 million cut would leave a budget of just $24 million and eliminate its two major programs.” (McGinty, 12).

If this happens and there is little help from the Trump Administration

Conclusion

The newest information that we have in the fields of Addictionology and Recovery is

hard but crucial to hear. The addicted brain will not turn itself off. America will not recover on its own. The government must step in, to a greater degree, in order to save a generation of young lives. Lives that Matter. Addicted Lives Matter. Warden Daley of the Orleans Parish Prisons system said, “it is much less expensive to provide an option to go to Drug Counseling classes than to house an inmate, in the short run almost equivalent, over the course of the years the drug addict would be in and out of the system, millions and millions in wasted time, life and money.” (2013) America is also recognizing that law mandated minimums for drug crimes are a merciless idea. Lengthy sentences are being reduced and people are given the opportunity to obtain some State and local help for addiction while incarcerated. Large-scale drug dealers can afford lawyers and bonds, most addicted person cannot, therefor the law is immediately set against them. Some pharmaceutical companies have reacted poorly and have been sued and penalties extracted but it is trifling in relationship to the problem it generated. Some malevolent doctors in South Florida, Ohio and Oklahoma have gone to jail and “out-of-state residents can no longer get prescriptions written for them in Florida for painkillers.” (SAMHSA, 129) The painkiller scripts are still being written and many people will continue to abuse and die from the medications. But heroin and the synthetics such as Fentanyl an CarFentanyl now are now an added threat. These drugs are killers and only immense interdiction by the Drug Counseling community backed by DEA and Office of the President can halt the trend towards the loss of our nation’s youth (125).

This has been a study on the resurgence of an epidemic addiction in America. It can be traced back to the companies that study, construct and create the drugs and the physicians that were utilized as proxy drug dealers. I thoroughly examined how wealth motivated the businessmen coupled with greed of medical doctors who operated without governmental oversight. This miasma has produced tan addiction cycle among American youth that will not fix itself. America must renew it commitment to examine why the war on drugs continues to fail and what the lasting effects will be. An entire generation left to fight and die alone? It is now time for the war on drug addicts to be over and Americans to heal (Meier, 2007).

Drug Enforcement Agency. (2015). District Office, Map 2. United States: Areas of Influence of Major Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations within the DEA Field Divisions Area of Responsibility. DOI. 2552536626.2

References

International Journalists Addiction. (2016). Terror in the New Golden Triangle. Report Issued to Advise. New Haven, Conn.

Joseph, Benjamin. (2002-2015). Eye witness accounts.

Kaplan, L. (2008). The role of recovery support services in recovery-oriented systems of care. Rockville, MD: Centre for Substance Abuse Treatment.

“Lawyer Behind West Virginia County Lawsuit Against Opioid Distributors”. NPR.org. Retrieved 2017-7-12.

McGinty, E. (summer 2017). “Criminal Activity or Treatable Health Condition? News Media Framing of Opioid Analgesic Abuse in the United States”. Psychiatric Services. 67: 405–411.

McIntosh, J., & McKeganey, N. (2000). Addicts’ narratives of recovery from drug use: constructing a non-addict identity. Social Science & Medicine, 50(10), 1501- 1510.

,). Narcotic maker guilty of deceit over marketing. New York Times, 10.

Nelson, L. S., & Perrone, J. (2012). Curbing the opioid epidemic in the United States: the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS). Jama, 308(5), 457-458.

Netherland, J. (Summer 2017). “The War on Drugs That Wasn’t: Wasted Whiteness, Dirty Doctors, and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuse”. Cult Med Psychiatry. 40: 664–686.

Pletcher, M. J., Kertesz, S. G., Kohn, M. A., & Gonzales, R. (2008). Trends in opioid prescribing by race/ethnicity for patients seeking care in US emergency departments. Jama, 299(1), 70-78.

Rattan, A. K., Koo, K. L., Tejwani, G. A., & Bhargava, H. N. (1992). The effect of morphine tolerance dependence and abstinence on immunoreactive dynorphin (1–13) levels in discrete brain regions, spinal cord, pituitary gland and peripheral tissues of the rat. Brain research, 584(1), 207-212.

Regier, D. A., Farmer, M. E., Rae, D. S., Locke, B. Z., Keith, S. J., Judd, L. L., & Goodwin, F. K. (1990). Comorbidity of mental disorders with alcohol and other drug abuse: results from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) study. Jama, 264(19), 2511-2518.

Ross, H.E., Lin, E., & Cunningham, J. (1999). “Mental health service use: A comparison of treated and untreated individuals with substance use disorders in Ontario”. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 44, 570−577.

Abuse, S. (2016). Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) Results from the 2016. US Department of Health and Human Services.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS): 2001-2011. National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment Services. BHSIS Series S-65, HHS Publication No. (SMA) 13-4772. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2013.

Scharse, R. (1996). “Cessation patterns among neophyte heroin users”. International Journal of Addictions, 1, 23–32.

Published by Dr. Benajah CC Joseph

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: Spinning through time and space on a tiny blue sphere, somewhere in an infinite universe. Well into my 70th revolution around the burning star which sustains us. Growing ever-closer to imminent demise, but searching…still searching…ever searching for an infinitesimal shred of understanding. Just a worker bee, blown off course by a hurricane of conflicting information. Separated and alienated from my Hive long ago. Somewhere deep within the Hive, and hidden from their underlings, the Banking Queen and her Wall Street/Government Drones disseminate electronic misinformation, manipulate the masses, and scheme to control or conquer neighboring colonies. ‘Tis the Hive of Empire. The exceptional Hive. The all-powerful one. Hive of the feared, loathed, and despised. The Hive of Empire wields unthinkable destructive power, rattling its saber constantly, lest anyone forget it. Swarms of uniformed, armed killer bees infiltrate neighboring colonies across every inch of the tiny blue sphere. Info-bees commandeer foreign and domestic media. Assassin-bees deliver death stings to uncooperative rulers. Actor/king bees strut, threaten, and remind any doubters who’s running the show. Worker bees keep noses to the grindstone, hoping only for a small share of milk and honey, bread and circuses. 341 years and counting, the Hive of Empire has grown like a sticky-sweet metastasized melanoma upon our tiny blue sphere. All the while, those in charge, and a succession of ancestors have been busy concocting tall tales for subservient swarms of workers. From cradle to grave, the song and dance, dog and pony show goes on. Worker bee larva suck the fantasy teats of Santa Claus, Easter Bunnies, and Tooth Fairies. Pupa, spoon-fed tall tales of gods, devils, and angels…heroic accounts of Pilgrims, Founding Fathers, wars of righteousness, the taming of savages, civilizing of Africans, Manifest Destiny! Can I get a “Hallelujah”? Adult bees mature, eagerly embracing any yarn they’re told. Behaving as required. Blindly, deafly, dumbly, obediently. “Believe!” is the mantra. To do otherwise: blasphemy, betrayal, unthinkable. A worker bee’s allegiance must be pledged to the Hive. Mindlessly and in good faith we toil, oblivious to our own slavery. Unaware that we’re nothing but resources to be harvested at the whim of the Banking Queen and her Wall Street/Government Drones. We stand in unison, teary-eyed-proud when The Star Spangled Banner is sung; ignoring the glorification of rockets and bombs, deaf to the third stanza, which cheers the slaughter of runaway slaves during The War of 1812. Dutifully we cast our sham-election votes. Left duopoly/right duopoly; death or death, destruction or destruction, war or war, impervious in our sad, sorry, electro-lobotomized ignorance. Heedless of the abrupt cliff at the end of the road. Faces buried in our new iPhone 8s; happily texting, tweeting, mimicking the latest mindless chatter, necks bent over on 90 degree angles, spellcheck, google maps, Facebook, iTunes. Unconcerned with other worker bees around us, for they are equally insulated from their surroundings. Electro-lobotomized, exemplary and exceptional worker bees. Since my long, lonely separation from the Hive, I’ve acquired some infinitesimal degree of understanding of the seamless, pernicious perfection with which it operates. To find the root of all evil within the Hive, just follow the money to the Banking Queen. Shameless slut that she is, she fornicates with Drones from the Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Military, Intelligence, Security, Police, Hollywood, Fake News, Television, Aerospace, Oil, Gas, Coal, Mining, Agrochemical, Big Pharma, Beef/Pork/Poultry/Dairy/Egg, Medical, Insurance, Prison, Real Estate, Construction, Education, and Illicit Drug Industries…just to name a few. Fucking like rabbits, they form an impenetrable coalition which jealously guards against any changes in the status quo. The Queen maintains her opulent throne, Drones bask in obscene wealth, worker bee slaves are used and abused until their utility diminishes; then cast aside. The seamless, pernicious system safeguards the continuation of business as usual. Impossible, infinite growth within a finite blue sphere. Warfare to maintain continual chaos, population reduction, and control of resources abroad, while the profits trickle down to Drones of every stripe. C.I.A./Big Pharma-illicit/legal drugs further zombify electro-lobotomized, superfluous masses, sharing wealth and profits with Police/Prison industries. All branches of Government collude with Agrochemical, Big Pharma, Animal Food Industry, Medical, and, of course, Fake News in a multi-trillion dollar nutritional scam, resulting in a nation of endlessly sick, morbidly obese worker bees, fed a high-protein, high-fat, animal-intensive diet. This multi-faceted racket has the added benefit of helping eliminate unproductive old people. Milk makes energy, beef is what’s for dinner, and if you believe that, I’ve got some newly created swamp land in Puerto Rico that might interest you. An infinitesimal degree of understanding has led me to a shitload of conclusions. Although the whole truth often remains hidden, once you grok the system, the lies jump out and bite you in the ass. Three Kennedys, King, X, Evers, Wellstone, and Lennon were most certainly NOT killed by lone gunmen or freak accidents. The official stories of World War II, and all U.S. wars before and since, are pure fiction. If the Hive of Empire is involved, all the bloodshed is magically turned into profit; U.S. Military Alchemy. All those heroic trips to the Moon and back were just Hollywood at its best. If there’s an impending coup d’etat in a socialist-leaning country, it was NOT started within the boundaries of that country. If the president of a socialist-leaning country is assassinated, the Assassin-bees of the C.I.A. should probably be included in the lineup. Two Trade Center attacks, The Oklahoma City Bombing, Boston Marathon Bombing; C.I.A./Hollywood at its best. China wasn’t the villain in Tibet, rather it saved a whole little colony of worker-bees from lives of slavery, bondage, and mutilation. Hollywood’s darling Dali Lama is a giggling, babbling C.I.A. stooge. Nightmare diseases are invented regularly for the benefit of Big Pharma, and provide vewy scawy stories on your favorite Fake News channels. Poor El Chapo was just a small player who took the fall in the world drug trade, which is owned and operated by the freaks at the C.I.A. And on and on. You get the gist. Disclaimer: It is entirely possible that I’m wrong about any information in the above paragraph…but highly unlikely. My crystal ball does malfunction occasionally. I really hate to be involved in the assassination of The American Dream, but like George Carlin said; “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.” The Hive of Empire is built upon a framework of lies, and the truth shall set you free. Free to fly, and dream of a better hive. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already a Hive escapee. Our assignment (should we choose to accept it) is to awaken a few hundred million slumbering, electro-lobotomized flying bugs. Like Che Guevara said: “You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.” Hasta la victoria siempre! http://clubof.info/

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racingtoaredlight · 7 years

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Opening Bell: September 15, 2017

Yesterday, North Korea once again launched a long-range missile from an airfield near the capital of Pyongyang over the Sea of Japan and the Japanese Home Island of Hokkaido, crashing 1,200 miles off the coast of Japan into the Pacific Ocean. This represents a further increase in tensions in the region and is probably a direct response to the passage of new sanctions by the UN Security Council earlier this week. The rate of both missile and nuclear warhead development has quickened considerably over the last 24 months and analysts now believe that the weapon tested three weeks ago, which caused tremors reaching 6.1 on the Richter scale, may have been more powerful than previously estimated; it may have been the North’s first hydrogen bomb.

Yesterday, the U.S. military confirmed a Daily Beast report that a U.S. citizen allegedly fighting with ISIS in Syria surrendered to a U.S.-backed Kurdish force earlier this week. The Kurds then turned over the American fighter to the U.S. military, which is holding him in an undisclosed location. While many Americans, especially military veterans, have traveled to the Middle East to offer their services western-aligned militias, especially Kurdish groups, this would be one of the first American citizens confirmed to have sided with ISIS and then left the group. This will create a tricky legal situation for the Trump administration; do they seek to charge him with a crime in American civilian courts? Do they treat him like a POW and detain him in a military facility? There are many difficult questions of due process here which a White House experienced in legalistic nuance would struggle with. The Trump White House has, to this point, showed very little toleration for properly addressing nuanced legal issues.

Throughout the 2016 election, Donald Trump touted his abilities as a dealmaker as one reason why he would be a successful president. While he seemed reticent to get too involved in the attempt by Congress to repeal and replace the Affordance Care Act (ACA) earlier this year—something he promised would be his administration’s first legislative goal—in the last two weeks Trump has in fact begun cutting deals with congressional leaders. What is surprising though is that these deals have been made with Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif); an agreement last week to tie a 3 month debt ceiling increase into Hurricane Harvey aid funding, and this week a framework deal on a permanent congressional replacement for DACA. Democrats remain cautiously optimistic, this is after all a president who has changed his stance on key positions at the drop of a hat, while the first cracks in Trump’s heretofore impenetrable base of supporters are beginning to appear. While President Trump working with his erstwhile political rivals is an interesting turn of events, there is no indication at the moment whether any deal worked out by Trump in coordinating with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would garner enough Republican votes to pass either chamber of Congress.

Meanwhile, the investigation of special prosecutor Robert Mueller III grounds on with news yesterday that Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former National Security Advisor and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, is now a part of the investigation’s focus. If you are keeping track at home, the Mueller investigation now has both Flynns, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current White House aide and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and potentially the Trump Organization itself, all within its scope of determining whether Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. election and whether the Trump campaign or anyone in the Trump family colluded with Russia in order to further that interference. And speaking of Russia, the diplomatic tit-for-tat between Moscow and Washington continues. But rather than close additional offices or kick out more diplomats, Russia instead reduced the number of reserved parking spaces for American diplomats at the consulates in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.

Amid the dual hurricanes which impacted the U.S. Gulf Coast in two different locations over the last two weeks, little attention has been given to other crises around the country. A recent outbreak of Hepatitis A in San Diego County in southern California has claimed the lives of 16 people and led to nearly 300 hospital admissions. In order to combat the spread of the epidemic, city crews have taken to washing city streets and sidewalks with chlorine and bleach in order to sanitize them. The city has also set up numerous handwashing stations around downtown and parks; the primary means by which the virus is spread is through fecal matter which is transmitted from person to person by individuals who do not wash their hands after using the restroom. Predictably, the city’s homeless have been disproportionately affected by this outbreak and as a result the city has pledged to keep bathrooms in city parks open for 24 hours. This measure, the handwashing stations, and the sanitizing of streets and sidewalks will continue, the city said, until the epidemic is curbed.

In August, Boeing and the U.S. Air Force reached a deal to purchase two existing, but unsold, Boeing 747-8I, or Intercontinental as its sometimes known, airframes in order to modify them for service as the next Air Force One. This week, the Air Force awarded Boeing a $600 million contract to design the interior and avionics and other special features that the Air Force deems necessary for a presidential aircraft, but which would not be found on the standard model 747-8I. Perhaps ironically, the two 747-8Is that the Air Force purchased were available because the airline they were originally manufactured for, Russia carrier TransAero, went out of business before they could take delivery.

The Center for Politics analyzes a new poll which puts on display the racial attitudes of many Americans. Rather than try to abstract the article myself, I’ll let the opening paragraph do the talking: “A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in conjunction with the University of Virginia Center for Politics finds that while there is relatively little national endorsement of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, there are troubling levels of support for certain racially-charged ideas and attitudes frequently expressed by extremist groups. The survey also found backing for keeping Confederate monuments in place, the removal of which has become a hot-button issue in communities across the country.”

Brazil and the Amazon Basin are thought to be home to a larger proportion of uncontacted indigenous tribes than any other country in the world. An uncontacted tribe is one which is thought to have had little or no exposure to the outside world. Previously, practice of the Brazilian government was to regulate the level of exposure these tribes received, slowly exposing them to the modern world. Now the policy is to instead seek to preserve the isolation of these tribes at all costs and prevent any contact unless the tribe initiates it first. But with Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency experiencing massive budget cuts by the government of President Michele Temer, the agency’s ability to monitor Brazil’s vast wilderness and rain forests has dwindled, along with its ability to keep mining and lumber companies at bay. This week, evidence surfaced that gold miners working in the country’s far west, allegedly attacked and killed a group of up to ten members of an uncontacted tribe. A complaint has been forwarded to the police. If the incident occurred, it will be the second such incident this year.

Leon Trotsky was, along with Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Ivan Kirov, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution which overthrew the Russian interim government, which itself had replaced the monarchy, in 1917. After Lenin’s death, Stalin seized power and began to eliminate anyone he perceived as a rival. Trotsky, whose proletarian beliefs differed slightly from those of Stalin, was a target and he fled into exile, eventually ending up in Mexico City. On August 20, 1940, a Spanish communist named Ramón Mercader called on Trotsky at his home and, once inside, attacked Trotsky with an ice axe. Trotsky was severely wounded and died 24 hours later in a hospital. That axe, which was recently purchased by a private collector, will now go on display at Washington D.C. International Spy Museum.

Last June, in a stunning turn of events, a referendum offered to British voters on whether to stay in the European Union or leave, Brexit, produced a narrow, yet decisive victory for the Brexit campaign. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the process of Britain’s exit which can only officially conclude with a formal economic, social, and political agreement. Or can it? The Atlantic looks at what might happen if the Brexit negotiations, which have been less than fruitful, fail entirely.

Many, if not most, of the most senior State Department posts have remained vacant since January, with few of them even with an active nominee. This lack of senior leadership has attributed to, among other things, Secretary Rex Tillerson’s ambitious plans to reshape the Department and modernize its organizational structure. For months, Tillerson has given no indication of what his reorganization plan would look like, but this week by way of email to the entire Department, he finally released a broad outline, focusing mainly on increasing efficiencies and emphasizing cost savings. Foreign Policy reviewed the outline and talked to some current State Department employees. Spoiler alert: few were impressed.

Military Times has a succinct and yet informative explainer on what a Russian invasion of the Baltic States would look like, how the U.S. and NATO would respond, and how they would fare against what would likely be a superior Russian ground force. The lack of a forward deployed significant ground force in Europe similar in size and capability to what was stationed in Germany throughout the Cold War is the underlying reason for this situation, as overseas U.S. military base closures have far outpaced domestic base closures. Military policy blog War on the Rocks examines this and the necessity of increasing, not decreasing, the number of U.S. military forces deployed overseas.

Another military affairs blog, War is Boring, has an interesting story about the evolution of a secretive U.S. Air Force unit which has test flown captured foreign and enemy warplanes since the early days of the Cold War.

Finally, early this morning NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which has orbited the planet Saturn for 13 years, was sent hurtling into the atmosphere of the Solar System’s second largest planet, where it met a Viking death. Cassini was one of NASA’s most successful spacecraft ever, revealing far more about Saturn and its moons than was ever previously known, and perhaps setting the groundwork for future missions specifically to one of the ringed planet’s moons. It was in fact ultimately decided to end the Cassini mission by crashing it into Saturn’s atmosphere rather than allow it to stay in a permanent orbit precisely because of some of the discoveries it made. At least one of Saturn’s moons has shown evidence of the ingredients necessary for organic life. Cassini was powered by a plutonium fuel core. In order to eliminate the possibility of Cassini ever crashing into one of Saturn’s moons and contaminating the surface with its fuel source, it was decided to give it a fiery end instead. As it began its death plunge, Cassini’s cameras took one final set of pictures and transmitted them back to Earth only hours before the mission ended, which you can see here.

Welcome to the weekend.

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased. — Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot At the rounded tune of $1.0 million each. Times 59 missiles shot from the belly of American beasts of war — that is, as of Saturday April 8. That’s the wonderful thing about parasitic, predatory, military-IT-prison-legal-punishment-media complex America. Stocks go up as missiles kill Syrian civilians. The replacement value of those racist missiles (Calling them Tomahawks? Do white Americans think a 600 mph, computer-guided, white supremacy manned projectile with flesh, brain, innards busting-burning-imploding explosives is akin to a hand-to-hand, look-in-the-eyes-of-your-enemy weapon of real warriors?)… think of a new Tomahawk 2.0, costing us $1.5 million a piece! Think about this country’s 20 percent – the ones making it, in their Uber rich and Uber upper middle class bullshit ways. Working as engineers, software designers, paper-pushers, personnel middle men/women for Raytheon, or for one of the other thousands upon thousands of industries and high tech places that put screw and hard drive and turbine and pneumatics and shrouding and decals to these perversions of the modern USA-EU-Star-of-David-Aussie warring coalition of the dead! The 20 percent, oh, that bullshit meme of “We Are the 99,” gone into the wind of a Republican-Democrat sulfur-infused bellowing that has come to symbolize USA since before 1776. These are the directors of non-profits, the tenured faculty, the industrialists, the managerial-dean-admin society. The planners and doctors, the investor (sic) class, the money managers (thieves), the insurance sellers (rip-off artists), the mid-level hierarchies of fortune 1000 companies. All big and little Eichmanns, for sure, and I can say I have met and spoken with so many in so many fields, who are bred from the libertarian, neo-liberal, faux humanitarian, fake intellectual class of white Americans who have always looked down on the OTHER(s). Yet, those missiles launched by the perverted-thinking/acting/living president with the superstructure and management teams of the military and generals, they symbolize the death of this culture way beyond a Truman bombing Japan, or leveling Korea, or the chorus of others attempting bombing back to the Stone Age in Vietnam, or the parade of Yale-Harvard misanthropes like Bushes-Clinton-Obama who helped launch dozens of penetrating “wars” in Latin America, Middle East, Eastern Europe. Police actions, Reagan and his sick mind and war games, Trump and his frontal cortex atrophying before our eyes. The military are the mercenaries, guns for hire, vigilantes, from private up to Colonel, with their supreme commanders and retired triple-dipping generals colluding with the arms dealers, all those graduates of tech programs, colluding with the war inventors, all those chemicals and kill switches and job-stick hero-makers, the American scum rising to the top of the proverbial Capitalist barrel. Yet your everyday American gets teary eyed thinking about those mercenaries in Navy whites off-shore launching death to people missiles. American might and right and never a naysayer allowed to breathe in any position of power! So these scions of industry, these propagandists on TV, sketched in movies, scribing in print, gesticulating on airwaves, punishing in the HR departments, in the schools, in the courtrooms, & in the boardrooms, after decades of unfettered access to the hearts and minds of the masses (not all of us, mind you), we have come to a point where people daily just stick chin to sternum and go about their days as number pushers, scribes of structural violence, or call them “intellectual workers,” never lifting a finger or raising a voice in their overly PC-ed worlds of American business, blue-pink-white-camo-black collared, it doesn’t make a difference. The masses have sucked the high fructose corn syrup of the controllers, the great Doctor Jekyll-Mengele-Moreau-Frankenstein juice of our age: consumerism as gateway drug to insomnia, obesity, unhappiness, prescription abuse, disassociative behavior, ADD, on-the-spectrum birth, allergies, racism, hatred of the other, mis-education, functional illiteracy, exceptionalism, boredom, ennui, madness, insanity, delusion, walking dead-ness! I tried to fire up something, yesterday (April 7), just in our weekly meeting of so-called social workers. You know, ice breakers for thirty people supposedly in the game to not only assist the homeless, the drug-addled, the psychologically different, but to change the culture of hate toward the poor, criminally defined, homeless, displaced. Oh, so, one social worker, me, plays the ice breaker differently: “What’s your favorite movie, your dream vacation, your favorite band, your favorite hobby, etc.?” they ask us. “My hobby, my movie, my band, my vacation is about politics, and today, I am angry this country – us – have once again bombed another country with the power of yet another mis-elected, perverted LOTFW (sic): leader of the free world (sic).” No solidarity, no discussion, no support, not even rebuttal or nuancing: just sticking chins to sternums and moving on. This is the culture of the walking wounded, dead people, one paycheck away from hawking it all, one misstated thing in the workplace away from the two-hour-and-you-are-gone firing. My fellow social workers at this place I perform miracles, for the most part, go to college, get MA’s not for the love of inquiry, not for the robust nature of a social work graduate program, not for the heady stuff of revolutionary practice, not for the communicative skills needed to think outside the box or articulate through a wet paper bag. They go to school for a raise above the $18 an hour with paid time off. And they can’t mourn for the death we heap upon nations, can’t mourn for the bloated, perverted illegal, disgusting budgets of the militarists, and can’t rebel against the perversion of yet another rotten leader with golf blistered hands pushing the button for more ship-to-surface (human flesh and bone) launched madness. The USA has billions of dollars invested in, AKA, ripped off of the state-municipal-county coffers for those perversions called Tomahawks. And now the chorus of nobodies on TV and in the Press (sic) chant “war-war-war makes the shitty little casino-hotel magnate (bankruptcy queen, AKA, welfare king) look and sound and smell presidential.” Ahh, the smell of napalm, cordite, nitrogen soaked TNT, black powder, white phosphorus in the morning makes a TV pundit and White House stalker orgasmic. Here, from yet another perversion of American think-talk-discourse, Popular Mechanics, on the Tomahawk: While the basic design has been around for decades—they were used as far back as the 1991 Gulf War—the Tomahawk has seen numerous upgrades over the years. This new tweak could improve the Tomahawk’s striking power through the power of what you might call extreme mixology. It’s all about fuel-air explosions. Ordinary high explosives such as TNT do not require any oxygen. The big molecule simply breaks apart, releasing energy. By contrast, a fuel-air explosion is a form of combustion in which the fuel combines with oxygen in the air and burns more rapidly. As any gearhead will tell you, the fuel-air mixture is all-important for efficient combustion. If one reads on in the article — that is, one who is both anti-establishment/revolutionary and critical of this regime and the empire of illusion vis-à-vis the corporate war lens – it’s an easy rhetorical analysis of how war and bombs and that shit-hole of vaunting military and explosive might (all channeled in youth through violent movies and video games) gets embedded in everything the mass media produces, even Popular Mechanics (or especially PM). Nary a word about civilians paying the price (their implosions) of USA-EU-Star-of-David perversions of war and war games. My own team would rather find out the favorite movie in an icebreaker than ask, as social workers, how we are taking yet another mass manufactured consent of illegal warring, whereupon every stitch in the safety net is unraveling not just by-because-for Trump, but because of the chin-to-the-sternum PC lobotomized ignorance the so-called educated class has self-served for decades! The emotional and spiritual lobotomies occurred decades ago. Each muted mouth in the face of slavery, in rallying around Indian War campaigns, in the obscenity of that theft of lands here and abroad have created the state of the United States of Nothingness. That lingering perpetual stupidity of a collective consciousness in this cheating nation of Capitalists has reached its low water mark with the perversions of this man-sexual assaulter prez spewed from the belly of the beast we all know is unchecked casino capitalism and the narcissism of an eroded culture. There’s no mistaking these people I call fellow Americans—they have all been created through the gun-sights of the insane: generals, captains of industry, money leveragers, the big and small-time Media, cultural perversions and insignificance. Do we prols worry about anything other than which side the butter on the bread gets spread, about mortgages, about how to self-actualize with this or that perversion of hobby-past-time-distraction? ls this where we are now, an endless pipeline of heads in the sand “liberals,” great social cause followers who speak no evil, but who hear-see-feel all the evil that is the root of the cause – the white race’s perpetual supremacy, the white race’s busy-body brains wanting more land raped, more cultures smashed, more ideas outside the narrow business-techno mind meld quashed? Is this country and the other white countries — monarchs ablaze on flags, Star of David handkerchiefs used to shine the holy cross of Christianity – destined for collective dementia because of the nanosecond of pain inflicted with both physical and structural assaults? I try and understand the chin to the sternum complacency and fear and perpetual non-involvement of people on the margins, including one might expect to know better: social workers, those with liberal arts educations, people who once were poor or are still struggling with marginality. I have to give it to Gandhi’s grandson, whereupon his basic premise is peace begins with our children – teaching them the light of what it means to be human outside the world of drug-addled consumerism and Predatory Capitalism: Once there was a great king and he wanted with all of his heart to know the meaning of peace. He called people from his kingdom from all walks of life, but no one could satisfy him with their explanation. One day, a man from another kingdom came to the king and told him that if he wanted to know what peace was, he would have to ask a very old sage who was no longer able to travel long distances, so the king would need to leave his kingdom and visit the sage in his own home. The king agreed and off he went on his journey. When he met the old sage, the king asked him to please, finally, give him the meaning of peace. The sage put something into the king’s hand. It was a grain of wheat. He took the grain back to his kingdom and put it in a box. He then called upon the man who told him to visit this sage in the first place. He gave me a grain of wheat. Now I need you to tell me what this has to do with the meaning of peace? The visiting king replied, Peace is like this grain of wheat. If you plant wheat, one day you will have a great field of it. If you keep it in a box, for yourself, it benefits no one. If you keep your peace locked up in yourself, it does not fulfill its purpose, it does no good, for you or for others. But when you nurture it, it grows and spreads, nourishing all who come by it. The folly of our age is ignorance – planned, coopted, codified. This self-glorified ignorance is manifested at the so-called top, from Trump to Tillerson, from the pundits to the think tanks, from the managers to the CEOs, and from the controllers to the prols who have no time for smarts but are fully throttled for just doing, scraping by and razing earth and systems of humaneness, bent on building, pushing brooms and pushing papers. This is a country with no time for thought, for discourse, for energized education, outside the parameters of work or doing something that makes the engines of capitalism and earth destruction hum and synchronize. So I am schooled everyday, aged 60, once more steeled to think of how corrupt and corrosive this society is, more ready to engage the acts of stopping physical violence and structural and systems assault by using the Molotov, the very thing Doctor King spoke of 50 years ago: how we are the most murderous nation on earth, and maybe King saw the deeper structural homicidal pathways of Capitalism as more deeply death-incurring than the blasting of lung cavities of the children of Vietnam with civilian-manufactured munitions and university-invented chemical weapons and corporate-sold biological arms. Here, his anti-America-the-military-punishment-psychopath speech: My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years–especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, “So what about Vietnam?” They ask if our nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. Ahh, in the future, ever-approaching future, when I have time in between my hard-assed social work job, and the job of looking to move on from this agency to another, from the Seasonal Affective Disorder of living in Portland, Oregon, which is experiencing more rain and overcast days in 100 years, I plan a decent interview of John Steppling – playwright, ex-pat, intellectual of the uncommon kind – and posting it here at DV, but for now, I end this diatribe with his words just posted in his piece yesterday, The average white American, that educated thirty percent who cling, ever more tenuously, to what passes for middle class life, is seemingly motivated most by hatred. Propaganda works because it grants permission to hate. Now, Trump provides the perfect figure to hate right here at home. His appointments are horrible, no question. But as I’ve written before, Obama’s were horrible, too. Only just a bit less horrible. Tim Geithner? Rahm Emanuel? Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden? Scott O’Malia or William Lynn? I mean Hillary Clinton’s under secretary Victoria Nuland is married to arch neo con Robert Kagen. How can one hate Bush and the neo cons but heap praise on Hillary Clinton? But as much as Trump is hated, the figure of the Muslim terrorist is even more hated. And even more than Muslims, Vladimir Putin is hated. But where does this sense of entitlement to meddle in the affairs of other countries come from? It is remarkable how little questioned is the practice of involving the U.S. state in the matters of other countries. Russia elected Putin. Syria elected Assad. And even if, EVEN IF, the elections were fraudulent (they weren’t, but this is a thought experiment) what concern is that of the United States? (Not to mention U.S. elections were not exactly models of probity of late). The U.S. has 800 plus military bases around the world. There is no corner of the globe where you will not find the U.S. military. Do Americans think other countries WANT the U.S. military on their soil? I suppose some do, the fascistic current regime in Poland probably does. And even here in Norway, a nation of inestimable achievements and daily sanity, the general feeling is that having U.S. and NATO around serves as protection. But protection from what? This is really the question, or rather two questions. Who can possibly be thinking of invading Poland or Norway or Japan? The U.S. has bases in Italy, South Korea, Djibouti, Spain, Bahrain, Kuwait, Greece, it has 38 bases in Germany, and bases in the Bahamas, and in Brazil and Honduras and Singapore and Belgium. The list just goes on and on and on. Why does the U.S. have a base in Bulgaria? The answer is, global hegemony. Total and absolute control of the world. That is the goal. And yet this topic is never ever raised in electoral debates or in mainstream media. Never ever. Why did the U.S. go into Haiti to remove Aristide? Why was there a coup in Honduras? Why was Gadaffi murdered again? Does anyone care? http://clubof.info/

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