Christmas came early for Donald Trump. He signed a historic tax cut, kept the Government funded and operating and, to the delight of many in his base, used UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a mouthpiece to tell the rest of the world to go pound sand. He is feeling groovy. But Donald Trump is still his own worst enemy. And his Presidency will be fatally harmed if he continues with his erratic foreign policy and his empty talk on dealing with the opioid plague.
Let's start with his wildly fluctuating foreign policy. There is no consistency nor is their a theme. When he announced that he was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, many assumed he was on the Israeli leash and was behaving as any obedient dog would. Perhaps.
How then do you explain yesterday's (Thursday) decision to arm Ukraine as a show of force to Russia:
The Trump administration has approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. . . . Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. These weapons address a specific vulnerability of Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian-backed separatist movement in two eastern provinces.
The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Scholar Richard Sakwa provides the horrifying details on the pro-Nazi ideological foundation of the key Ukrainian political groups we are backing:
“The Orange revolution, like the later Euromaidan events, was democratic in intent but gave an impetus ‘to the revival of the radical versions of [the] Ukrainian national movement that first appeared on the historical scene in the course of World War II and a national discourse focused on fighting against the enemy’.41 ” . . . .
“In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, instead of the anticipated 60 street-name changes, 350 were planned. Everywhere ‘Lenin Streets’ became ‘Bandera Avenues’ as everything Russian was purged. One set of mass murderers was changed for another. Just as the Soviet regime had changed toponyms to inscribe its power into the physical environment, so now the Euromaidan revolution seeks to remould daily life. In Germany today the names of Nazis and their collaborators are anathema, whereas in Ukraine they are glorified.”
Excerpt From: Richard Sakwa. “Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands.” from the Afterward
At the very moment we are signaling our support for Israel, the country founded largely because of the horror over the Shoah, we are also giving weapons to political groups whose parents and grand parents helped carry out the Shoah. Oh yeah, in the process of doing this we are providing a tangible threat to Russia. Imagine what our reaction would be if Russia decided to step up its weapons supplies to Cuba.
Then we have Trump's tough talk on the opioid slaughter taking place across America. Let me be clear. He is not responsible for the start of this plague. The Obama Administration carries a heavy burden on that front. CBS 60 Minutes has done a magnificent job in exposing the role that the Obama Justice Department refused to play in going after the major corporate opiate drug pusher–i.e., the McKesson Corporation:
In October, we joined forces with the Washington Post and reported a disturbing story of Washington at its worst – about an act of Congress that crippled the DEA's ability to fight the worst drug crisis in American history – the opioid addiction crisis. Now, a new front of that joint investigation. It is also disturbing. It's the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company: the McKesson Corporation, the country's largest drug distributor. It's also the story of a company too big to prosecute.
In 2014, after two years of painstaking inquiry by nine DEA field divisions and 12 U.S. Attorneys, investigators built a powerful case against McKesson for the company's role in the opioid crisis.
[According to DEA Agent Schiller] This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How do we not go after the number one organization? In the height of the epidemic, when people are dying everywhere, doesn't somebody have to be held accountable? McKesson needs to be held accountable.
Holding McKesson accountable meant going after the 5th largest corporation in the country. Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson has 76,000 employees and earns almost $200 billion a year in revenues, about the same as Exxon Mobil. Since the 1990s, McKesson has made billions from the distribution of addictive opioids.
So what has Donald Trump done? That is the wrong question. What has he failed to do? We are approaching the one year anniversary of his Presidency and Trump has failed to nominate a Director for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Director for the National Institute of Justice and an Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs . In other words, none of the people who would be on the policy frontline putting the President's tough words into action have been nominated. Not one. And those agencies and departments are drifting like a rudderless ship on stormy seas.
Another problem for Trump is his mixed signals on getting entangled in foreign wars. During the campaign he made a point of ridiculing those candidates who wanted to go to war in Syria. Now that he is in office, Trump, along with several members of his cabinet, are threatening Iran on almost a daily basis. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity just put out a memo on this very subject (which, I'm happy to note, reflects some of the themes I've written about previously):
Iran has come out ahead in Iraq and, with the 2015 nuclear agreement in place, Iran’s commercial and other ties have improved with key NATO allies and the other major world players—Russia and China in particular.
Official pronouncements on critical national security matters need to be based on facts. Hyperbole in describing Iran’s terrorist activities can be counterproductive. For this reason, we call attention to Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent statement that it is hard to find a “terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.” The truth is quite different. The majority of terrorist groups in the region are neither creatures nor puppets of Iran. ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra are three of the more prominent that come to mind.
You have presented yourself as someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of establishment pressure and not to accept the status quo. You spoke out during the campaign against the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a historic mistake of epic proportions. You also correctly captured the mood of many Americans fatigued from constant war in far away lands. Yet the torrent of warnings from Washington about the dangers supposedly posed by Iran and the need to confront them are being widely perceived as steps toward reversing your pledge not to get embroiled in new wars.
We encourage you to reflect on the warning we raised with President George W. Bush almost 15 years ago, at a similar historic juncture:
“after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
Finally, there is the recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. I defer to Colonel Lang on this. He believes that this single decision has planted an odious seed that will sprout into a global anti-U.S. sentiment that will reduce our global influence and tangibly damage our leadership on the world stage. While I suppose there always is a chance for a different kind of outcome, I learned long ago not to bet against the old warrior on matters like this.
Taking all of this together I think we are looking at a 2018 where U.S. foreign policy will continue to careen around the globe devoid of a strategic vision.
You cannot be serious about the Mckesson corporation being held accountable for opioid epidemic, it self a further elaboration of the 1960s anarchic drug culture of the Rich White Kids.
The drug users are accountable foremost.
Hi Babak,
Wow. It’s difficult to decide on exactly how to respond to this assertion. Modern opioids are astoundingly addictive, and that’s a simple fact of biology. Fentanyl is 50-100 times more powerful than morphine in this regard. Morphine.
If the users bear the primary accountability, then why is it that criminal penalties for the producers and distributors of, say, cocaine are subject to much more serious levels of accountability under the law?
Since you mention the 1960s, would you similarly say that women who took thalidomide bear the primary responsibility to what happened to their children? After all, they didn’t *need* it to ensure a successful pregnancy; it was merely a way to make pregnancy more comfortable.
Many who are addicted to opioids became that way because they accepted a doctor’s advice and prescription in good faith.
Regards,
mongo
” The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union”
They are also the descendants of the Ukrainians who were starved to death by the Bolsheviks plundering of their crops first then starved again by Stalin.
That Jews figured large in the Bolsheviks is a fact and noted:..then and later.
A collection of reports on Bolshevism in Russia
by Great Britain. Foreign Office
https://www.archive.org/stream/collectionofrepo00greaiala/collectionofrepo00greaiala_djvu.txt
”..anti-Semitism is growing, probably because the food supply committees are entirely in the hands of Jews and voices can be heard sometimes calling for a ” pogrom.”
So I am giving Ukraine a pass on their so called threat to the Chosen.
Yup, every one and everything under the sun bears some responsibility except the poor, abused, manipulated, down-trodden users.
You make my point. The NAZIS came up with lots of nifty reasons to justify exterminating Jews. Starvation by Stalin, therefore kill the Jews. Yeah, that makes sense (sarcasm fully intended).
“At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, … it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?”
“Plenty of prisons…”
“And the Union workhouses.” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“Both very busy, sir…”
“Those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
There’s some unfortunately specious conclusions in this piece. Here are a few points.
Regarding Ukraine, the key figures behind the 2014 coup d’etat are the neocons. They wanted to overthrow a government friendly to Russia as a way of bloodying Russia’s nose. The Nazi associations of the new regime are not a concern to neocons, who are of course Zionists. Zionist invariably regard themselves as superior beings; in this regard, they are the flip side of the Nazi coin. Enabling these reverberations of Nazi history as a means to strike at Russia is, for them, fully justified. They imagine they can deal with this golem at a later date, if necessary.
Contradicting Trump’s support for the UkroNazis with his Jerusalem declaration is simply not relevant. Trump has made it clear that he will do as the ideological descendants of Jabotinsky command, never mind the contradictions. During the campaign, Trump famously declared to the Republican Jewish Coalition that he didn’t need their money. In reality, he’s fronting: he’s not as rich as he declares, and he does need campaign cash. Specifically, the cash provided by Sheldon Adelson. Sheldon, along with the more fascist representatives of gun Zionism are rather clearly pulling his strings. Kushner, as a major asset of Netanyahu, is part of that control structure. Contradictions? No, Trump is a master of compartmentalization.
Also regarding Jerusalem, Trump is doing what Jared Kushner (and likely Ivanka as well) demand. Kushner is a myopic little twit, with marginal intelligence, who lucked into a position of great influence. Netanyahu is cackling with glee over having such a wonderful asset. Of course, if you infer that this shitty Zionist sitting on the shoulder of the American President is exercising undue influence, and speak out about this occupation of the Oval Office, you’ll be hearing from Mossad front groups like the ADL in short order.
Regarding Oxycontin, Trump simply doesn’t give a shit. Now before we get into that further, it’s useful to note that Oxycontin was released in 1996. So any apportionment of blame must include Bill Clinton, (a Zionist captive) George W. Bush, (likewise) Obama, (ditto) and now Trump. None of them cared. They all have the Leona Helmsley outlook: only the little people OD on drugs. So what? It doesn’t impact their “beautiful minds” (to paraphrase the vicious cluelessness of that nasty old bitch Barbara Bush). Trump will make a few noises about Oxycontin, but it’s so far outside his life experience that he simply can’t comprehend it. As an extreme narcissist, he has no empathy and thus can’t be bothered to do more than pretend to care, from time to time.
Interestingly, one thing that seems to help break the opioid stranglehold, cannabis, is possibly about to be in the federal DOJ crosshairs again.
Dear Mongo,
When a man hangs a 9-year old boy from a tree under influence of drugs, he bears, you must admit, some responsibility.
For the rest of us, we have to be able to defend ourselves.
There’s not necessarily a conflict between Trump supporting radical Ukrainian nationalists and supporting Netanyahu’s Israel. Ukrainian nationalism might have targeted Jews in WW2, but WW2 isn’t the paradigm for relations between Ukraine and Israel today. Regardless of which side they were on in the war, radical Jewish nationalism today shares a common, ethnic view of nationalism with radical Ukrainian nationalists (and with the radical nationalists in power in Hungary, with whom Netanyahu has good relations despite their use of antisemitic imagery and veneration of their pro-Nazi forbears).
Regardless of where they stood in WW2, radical Ukrainian, Hungarian and Jewish nationalists share common ground now (not really surprising, as Zionism is essentially a central European blood and soil nationalism transplanted to Palestine). So it’s not inconsistent if Trump gives support to both.
Such people as Sakwa describes and their confreres certainly exist within Ukraine and have a long and sordid history. IMO, you do well to remind people of it. And they certainly are as vile as anyone can possibly be. But they do not represent the entirety of the Ukraine anymore than the Klan and neo-Nazi filth at Charlottesville represent the United States of America. So far they’ve talked about only small arms – – not supplied by the US Government, but permission to sell. I’m not worked up about it, not yet.
Trump is stupider than the day is long – – that worries me. And he is a sociopathic conman in control of the FBI, US Intel, and the most powerful military ever assembled, leaving aside total mobilization like the two world wars. Though in fact I guess it is more powerful than those – – I don’t know how to estimate such things. Those things really worry me, to use an expression. I have much more serious personal worries if I wanted to worry, but I don’t like worrying anymore, so I tend not to. But if I was inclined to worry about something beyond my narrow purview — a creature of his ilk with such power would worry me sick.
You’re more knowledgable about me about intel, espionage and so on by a long shot. So consider this and I ask, does this worry you? Namely Trump claims to have gotten off the phone with his new best friend Vlad the other day to tell all and bask in the glory of how gosh darn thankful and grateful his new best friend Vlad was to receive the priceless super secret intelligence tip-off about the dirty no-good evil IS cell in St. Petersburg Russian, Vlad’s home town, where lawdy lawd sakes to goodness chile, Vlad and his FSB boys busted em afores they could say “Jack be Nimble” — possibly saving thousands of lives. And only because of the tipoff coming from none other than President Donald J Trump, president of the United States of America. And mind ya, Vlad said make sure to thank CIA director Pompeo now for me, wouldn’t ya pretty pretty please with sugar on top?
Now smartest man who ever lived and President of the United States of America Donald J Trump KNEW it was the honest to goodness undeniable lowdown truth, and the truest truth a truth could ever truly be !! How, ya say ? Because Tee VEE showed tapes of FSB agents arresting bad guys in St. Petersburg Russia, and with all the nasty arm caches and worse. And also CIA director Pompeo told him so? Well I’m not so sure about that last part, meaning I didn’t hear anything about it. But just in case he did, in the off chance, keep in mind that CIA directors never ever ever make mistakes, as is well known. Why they can’t figure out for two years or so that social networks can be weaponized after they obviously were several times recently before the US election and since, can they? Seems they can’t according to Dana Priest in her NewYorker article of two weeks or so ago: “Russia’s Election Meddling Was Another Intelligence Failure”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/russias-election-meddling-is-another-american-intelligence-failure
And also retired several times acting director and deputy director of the CIA MIchael Morell (podcast & full transcript) at:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/11/the-full-transcript-michael-morell-216061
But failure is failure. Mistake is mistake.
So let me just ask you, or Colonel Lang, or anyone else here:
If an intelligence professional of the caliber of President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation — a man with decades of experience, and once director of the FSB himself, if he called you on the phone and told you that it was because of your top notch tip that he and all the security forces of the Russian Federation were able to foil a terrorist plot, AND, you saw on Tee Vee too, would you possibly, even for the slightest fraction of a second in a million years not believe him ???
Well I know I … well, that doesn’t count, because I’m nobody. Would you PB ? Colonel Lang — you’d believe it, right, if someone called to tell you on the phone to say so, and you saw it on a news report , right ??
Well, let be venture a wild guess and say that perhaps Colonel Lang just possibly might not be so sure about something like that.
But hold on now, hold your horses, because the President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump — he believes it. So we are safe as safe can be, and can sleep the sleep of kings if I am not greatly mistaken. Because if he believes it, the President of the United States of America believes it, it must be true, correct — how could it not be ??
PT
Trump as POTUS could have one potential huge benefit. That is the possibility of exposure of the “Deep State” cabal. The hatred for Trump among the NeverTrumpers in the MSM, political establishment and the highest levels of law enforcement & the IC, may have caused them to play their hand.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-22/if-libs-were-smart-they-would-push-mueller-firing-himself-now
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-22/house-republicans-secretly-gathering-evidence-launch-case-against-doj-and-fbi-report
If the Congressional investigation gathers steam and with the potential help of some insiders uncovers a plot to interfere in a presidential election we could get some very beneficial cleansing in DC.
Now, the FBI’s general counsel has been “re-assigned”. Exactly the problem where no one is either prosecuted or fired. They instead get kept on the payroll and “re-assigned”. What a great system for the top bureaucrats. Baker, Strzok. Who next?
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/22/trump-dossier-fbi-james-baker-david-corn-mother-jones-316157
Hi Babak,
Perhaps the real victims here are the drug manufacturers and distributors — if the “poor, abused, manipulated, down-trodden users” did not generate the demand, then they would not have to work so diligently to create the supply to meet it.
McKesson Corporation shipped literally hundreds and thousands of pills to small towns. This is enough to dope every man, woman and child in these places to the gills on a continual basis. They were legally, ethically and morally bound to flag this as suspicious behavior yet somehow that didn’t happen until their activities saw the light of day.
A quick review of the clinical literature establishes an unfortunate fact. Addiction cannot be cured; it can only be managed. The primary means to limit addiction is to control its source. So, circling back to your original comment, I for one certainly can be serious about holding McKesson and their ilk accountable.
No, they aren’t. Ukraine did not become a separate country until 1954. You’re discussing Russia. Kiev was set up by Stalin to house and protect rich Jewish bankers and businessmen; that’s where Stalin sent them from Moscow and St Petersburg.
Publius Tacitus is accurate with ” The people we are arming in the Ukraine . . . Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.” Those Nazi sympathizers were located in the western side of Ukraine; they weren’t Russia lovers, they backed Hitler. Jews and others (different political/religious views) escaping Russia on foot, in the dead of the night, et cetera, through that area were slaughtered. Nobody stopped to ask, “Hey, you a Jew?” They just slaughtered whoever was traveling on foot trying to escape to whatever was west of Ukraine.
Used to know this whole story in detail.
Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler Family, is primarily responsible for manufacturing and marketing OxyContin. IMO,The Sackler Family perps should be held responsible for the opioid epidemic; their assets confiscated and those responsible, prosecuted and incarcerated for operating a drug cartel which knowingly manufactures and distributes a dangerous narcotic drug. The Sackler Family uses their billions to buy political and legal cover from the highest levels of corrupt agencies charged with protecting Americans from predation by criminal drug gangs.
The facts are detailed in “The Family That Built An Empire Of Pain”.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
It is absolutely pointless to argue with Babak about one of his hobby horses, drugs, Seljuk islam and Diocletian line.
If a nonviolent drug user can go to prison for 27 years, then the real drug suppliers like McKesson should be facing prison and the breakup of their cartel.
Trump administration isn’t always idiotic:
Diplomatic Competence Brings Success at the United Nations…
Where is individual responsibility in this? Did Mckesson also put a gun to the head of these small-towners to force them to take opioids until they became addicts?
They were already habitual users of this or that substance long before opioids.
NancyK and PA:
So, drug users are akin to automota and have had no volition of their own.
Jpb:
I suppose gun manufactureres should be prosecuted for murder?
Pacifica,
“This is the only solution. There is no other” No, there are plenty of others but then that would include ending the cultural war on males and the theology of there being only victims and oppressors that the left has adopted as its path to return to power.
Mongo,
What laws bound them to report this pattern of sales and to whom were they supposed to report it?
jpb,
Which law should be sued to confiscate the assests? Do you mean the new, as in days old, presidential executive order:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-blocking-property-persons-involved-serious-human-rights-abuse-corruption/
I don’t see any US executives listed in Annex 1. Maybe they can be added at the whim of the executive branch, kind of like the prior administration did when obtaining FISA warrents.
I agree with Pacifica here. The effects of opioids I know first hand. Had a hip and a knee replaced in the same year. They prescribe opioids so you can get through the rapid rehab they use now after joint replacement.
I was working and the pain killers making my brain fuzzy, so I just stopped taking them. I was down with flu-like symptoms for a week, and thought it was flu. Told my orthopedic that I had to quit taking the pills. He asked if I had been sick, all the while smiling. I said yes, and he then told me he was planning to taper me off them because cold turkey would provoke withdrawal, and that was what had made me sick.
I imagine there are lots of reasons for addiction, but the drug war hasn’t stopped any of these. It has incarcerated many for weed, which is ridiculous. It focuses on the symptom and not the reason for the drug use – hence it will never succeed. In our strange oligarchy, the result is things like McKesson – where corporations make beaucoup money and pass the largesse along to their political buddies, making things degenerate further.
Doctors share the blame, as they are lobbied by the pharma sales guys with trips and such. They are also taught that drugs are preferred over physical therapy or any other type of therapy. So there is lots of blame.
It’s funny how drugs weren’t that much of a problem, nor was alcohol – until the government got into the picture.
I think we need to get government out of it and let people sort out their own issues for drugs, alcohol, tobacco and anything else they decide to do to their persons. I don’t need government to tell me what to drink or smoke or otherwise imbibe.
Just to reinforce that, the US consumes about 0% of the world’s narcotics. We know that while abuse is widespread, it is concentrated more heavily in some areas. In those areas more drugs are being sold than could possible be used legally. McKesson has been a major culprit here. They made huge profits off of selling these drugs, and did not report what was obvious abuse. Their punishment? A $150 million fine for a company with $200 billion a year in revenues.
Unfortunately, Babak voices what appears to be the sentiment of many in the current administration. It is all the fault of the drug users, so we will continue the War on Drugs, which has largely been a failure. God for bid we do something obvious like make it harder for the drug companies to make huge profits off of the stuff. Treatment has actually had pretty good success, but we won’t see much money going into that. Oh well, at least this approach will keep my ICUs full.
Steve
The sniper rifles to Ukraine is classic Trump, read the article and not the headline and it is much ado about nothing.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/trump-pursuing-defense-spending-hike-pentagon-audit-the-same-23717
On which note I thought this article was worth flagging. Will there be an audit and what will come of it?
“Zionist invariably regard themselves as superior beings; in this regard, they are the flip side of the Nazi coin.”
Not once in official Nazi Party documents, or in the audio visual recordings of Hitler’s speeches, have historians found a solitary reference to concepts of German racial supremacy vis-a-vis other races, other than the Jews. In the case of Jews, it was believed not so much that they were inferior, as they were corrupting and incompatible with European culture. Indeed, Jews were considered to be highly dangerous.
Neither did the Nazis ever talk about having a destiny to rule the world. The concept does not appear in a single Nazi party document, or a single speech of Hitler’s.
This ‘Nazi supermen’ trope was created by Jewish propaganda officers in the USSR. It was simply a repetition of Jewish beliefs about Jewish supremacy, falsely attributed to the German people. It was the age-old Jewish-supremacist tactic of accusing your enemy of your own worst sins.
As to the deaths of Russian Jews: Genrikh Yagoda, head of the NKVD, was just one of the Jews in the Bolshevik government (which was 80% Jewish) that helped perpetrate the Holodomor against 7 million Ukrainians, and helped to murder 30 million Soviet citizens in total during Jewish Bolshevik rule. (99.9%+ of the victims being gentiles.)
In other words, the Wehrmacht did not murder the Ukrainian Jews – ordinary Ukrainians killed their Jewish neighbors, as payback for the loss of millions of gentile Ukrainians, including their family members, friends, neighbors, and work colleagues. No gentile Ukrainian community, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, or whatever else, escaped the death of loved ones at the hands of the mostly-Jewish secret police – apart from Ukraine’s Jews. Only the Jews of Ukraine grew fat during Soviet rule.
In future, ‘Publius Tacitus’ might care to educate himself about history, before repeating outright fiction with such high-minded pomposity. There is nothing worse than receiving a lecture from a man ignorant of the facts, especially when those facts concern the deaths of 30 million USSR citizens exterminated for the crime of being gentiles.
No sir….gun manufactures do not sell their product under false pretense. Cigarette manufacturers have been forced to compensate society for false pretense selling their addictive wares. Why not the Sackler Family? Sackler Family assets should be liquidated to compensate society and individual victims of their deception and greed in the courts going forward.
I think the cigarette company compensation model is one to consider in this case, as individual or corporate criminal intent will be a high hurdle for criminal prosecution. Civil liability is another matter.
No, I don’t think Executive Order should be used to circumvent the legal process of the judicial branch of government.
I swear, those people in small towns were already hooked on coffee. That is the reason for the opioid crisis.
“It’s funny how drugs weren’t that much of a problem, nor was alcohol – until the government got into the picture.”
First, the usual disclaimers. Yes, the addicts bear some responsibility. Yes, the government played some role. That done, this is mostly just about the good, old fashioned profit motive. Absent any government involvement we still end up at the same place. Big Pharma pushed the idea, with poorly done, and in some cases faked, research claiming that their new narcotics were not addictive. Unfortunately, people were not skeptical enough about those claims. Some of those people meant well, but for some not being skeptical meant making a lot of money. (In general when something like this happens, just follow the money trail.) The big pharma companies involved in this made a bundle.
https://qz.com/1074509/a-drug-company-schemed-to-push-opioids-designed-to-treat-cancer-on-cancer-free-patients/
Steve
I was a nurse for 37 years and I know that people in pain were assured by their doctors that Oxycontin was not addictive and this was a lie. I am not implying doctors are solely responsible, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured it lied and encouraged doctors to prescribe it.
Very happy to see the Sakwa book referenced. It is one of the most important books of the last few years. Vital stuff given the potential for catastrophic outcomes. Everyone should read it.
Trump gives the Borg a good name.
Gov regulation of drugs has long been owned by Big Pharma (w/ help from criminal justice & LE sectors) through their participation in our political industry – especially in their influence upon elected officials who in turn control the budgets of those regulatory agencies. Humans, their crying needs, foibles, tastes & the rest are the rationale for a compelling business model – serving as a sizable (if problematic) transfer function. It’s messy, but it works.
Babak, Mongo…
Twice in my adult life I have been on pain medications for 2-3 months. Once it was Percocet (oxycodone) for badly bruised and possibly cracked ribs after a horseback riding accident, and once it was Vicodin (hydrocodone) followed by tramadol for plantar fasciitis.
In both cases, when the pain was gone and the health problem was healed I stopped taking the painkillers (all opioids) without any trouble at all. In fact I was relieved and delighted to be off of them.
Other people that I have talked to have had a similar experience. It is my understanding from various research I’ve read that 75-80% of people react like I did to coming of pain killers. It was no problem. Just like most of us can stop drinking when we’re ready to.
My acupuncturist was on pain meds for over a year (maybe even 2 years) after a troublesome hip surgery and also dissolving disks in her back (the cortisone had stopped being effective). In her case she did have some trouble weaning of the opioids. Partially because she was still in some pain. Doc put her on subutex to help with that and then gradually she is weaning off that. And then she started using CBD oil on her back and hips and that has also helped her get off of the pain medication.
Sometimes pain meds are the only option for severe pain. It is important that they stay available to those who need it. But it is clear that more research in pain management is needed so they are not relied upon so much.
The Portugese experiment with decriminalization has proven to have had the best statistical outcomes in that drug usage in Portugal is declining. The opposite trend of what’s happened in the US with the tens of billions spent on the “War on Drugs”.
Opioid deaths in the US are running at 60,000 annually, double automobile fatalities. That’s a serious crisis. But like with any crisis in the US there will be more ineffective government intervention as some new czar position and office is created that would consume most of the funding appropriated. Innovative thinking like Portugal will be disregarded.
The USSR disappeared 25 years ago. The main threat to Ukrainians today comes from the Ukrainian government. Maidan was another huge Washington blunder.
This is a complex question, not easily reduced to a single cause. I agree with Babak that the individual addict is responsible. However, the question begs examination of the context of history, culture, politics and economics to establish there is enough blame to go around for many actors and ideas.
This topic is in the Zeitqueist as an interesting article examining ‘Opioids and the Crisis of the White Working Class”, appeared today on the Unz Review. It examines Babak’s contention that the spoiled, white rich kids are to blame for sexual liberation and the drug culture that plagues America today.
http://www.unz.com/article/opioids-and-the-crisis-of-the-white-working-class/
“I argue there are two things at work here: one is the decline in our culture generally brought about by the 1960s’ counter-cultural revolution affecting health in childhood, marriage, child rearing, and religion. But added to that is a very specific situation involving opioid drugs that in turn is linked to academic researchers willing to falsify data for financial gain, a corrupt pharmaceutical industry, especially Purdue Pharma owned by the Sackler family, and lax government regulation of drugs because of manipulation by the pharmaceutical industry.”
Sadly, Steve Bannon was right: the Trump administration we fought for is over. Our domestic policy is now being run by Paul Ryan, while our foreign policy is being run by Jared Kushner.
The kid gloves for a top law enforcement bureaucrat in attempting a coup against a legitimately elected POTUS. How can citizens not get cynical about the rule of law in the truly exceptional USA?
FourthAndLong, I don’t know if you’re a troll or not. All I can say is that this post is very unconvincing.
On this I will agree a little. Thankfully my German Great Grandfather and his entire family got out of the Ukraine before WWII. They suffered from the Bolsheviks, and the word “Bolshevik” became the equivalent of something like the Boogeyman to my father’s generation. But I have never heard them say mean things about the Jews.
I did watch an AHC documentary on this episode toward the end of WWII. It seemed to make it appear that if one didn’t denounce Jews, a person would be included with the Jews in the slaughter. It’s a very difficult situation in which to maintain ones’s sense of honor.
On a slightly different note, during WWII, many of the German farmers in Russia, along the Volga and in the steppes above the Black Sea and in Ukraine were caught between the Nazis, whose language they spoike, and the Bolsheviks who were taking their sons and murdering many in their villages.
War is definitely Hell on Earth.
Save your outrage. What specious “conclusions?” You fail to point out a single specious conclusion.
Also, the correct grammar is “THERE’RE” vis THERE’S.
DJ,
I am quite educated on this. You are betraying both your ignorance and prejudice. It was the Einsatzgruppen, not the Wehrmacht, who organized and, in many cases, actually shot the Ukrainian Jews.
“Einsatzgruppen[a] (German: [ˈʔaɪnzatsˌɡʁʊpn̩], “task forces”[1] or “deployment groups”)[2] were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–45). The Einsatzgruppen were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, and had an integral role in the implementation of the so-called Final solution to the Jewish question (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany. Almost all of the people they killed were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars, Jews, and Gypsies as well as actual or alleged partisans throughout Eastern Europe.”
I allowed your stupid comment to go up so that others might gain an appreciation of your limited grasp of history.
PT & BM
Addiction is real. After food and shelter, exploiting it is the easiest and oldest money around. What has changed is that the fate of the little people is no longer of any concern. Pharmaceutical CEOs are too big to go to jail for murder. Their only care is enriching their shareholders and themselves. It is called corruption. The spread and extent is just not mentioned in corporate media. But, this is why Americans are dying earlier.
Purdue Pharma were fined $600 million for understating the addictive properties of Oxycontin to the FDA.
Thank you for your comments. Drugs are a scourge all over the world and the permanently crippled addicts a drain on everone. May be the bleeding hearts in such rich countries as USA can get those cripples on government dole, but elsewhere, in India or in the Philippines, the money for that does not exist.
Extra-territorial Germans in Eastern Europe enlisted in the Wehrmacht.
I have proposed a much more modest and limited experiment, Freedonia, a reservation for drug users and drug users alone.
You might like to educate yourself a little more by reading “Black Earth” a history of the holocaust. The peaceful Ukrainians. The Ukrainians happily complied for two reasons 1) To ingratiate themselves to their new rulers 2) to help themselves to jewish property.
Take that family to court.
And all or the substantial numbers of those 60,000 souls that have perished due to opioids were former patient that had been administered those drugs?
They were murdering any Russian or Ukraian male villager who could even barely read.
Dear FourthAndLong,
I get it. You hate Trump. Your hatred interferes with your ability to think logically and thoughtfully on his Presidency. Citing Mike Morrell as a source of supposed credibility is laughable. Morrell proved himself to be a shallow buffoon as acting Director of the CIA.
We apparently did pass intel to the Russians and they acted on it. Too bad our own FBI failed to act on info the Russians provided about the Tsarneev brothers. We might have prevented the bombing of the Boston marathon.
How about personal choice?
Or is i: “In the Pursuit of My Happiness, I am entitled to violate all the Laws of the United States, make myself a cripple and myself and my dependents on forced-charity of strangers, and gosh darn it, it is my life to ruin and the hell with any collateral damage.”
I am not saying that opioid abusers hold no responsibility for their addiction. All that I am saying is the playing field is not level, many have been prescribed drugs that would quickly cause addiction, when lesser addictive drugs could have been used. Also not all pain can be erased, some discomfort must be expected.
Addicts are not happy people, it is a hellish life.
There have been 250,000 deaths attributed to overdose by OxyContin and the perps pay a relatively small fine and do some community service. This is a case example of justice in America!
http://www.unz.com/article/opioids-and-the-crisis-of-the-white-working-class/
“The feds finally sued Purdue in 2007, with Purdue pleading guilty to felony charges, admitting that it had lied to doctors about OxyContin’s abuse potential. Under the agreement, the company paid $600 million in fines and its three top executives at the time pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges—after thousands of deaths as a result of their actions. The executives paid $34.5 million out of their own pockets and performed four hundred hours of community service. It was one of the harshest penalties ever imposed on a pharmaceutical company but how can one take it seriously when the people responsible got away with pleading guilty to misdemeanors at a time when by 2001 Purdue was selling $1 billion of OxyContin yearly. In total, Purdue Pharma has made $35 billion, and the Sackler family walked away with around $13 billion.[20]”
And their mothers are there, suffering silently while their children’s life wastes away – all the while remebering that shiny and bright promise that they had nursed.
It is not the addicts made a choice, they made a choice for others too: patents, siblings, spouses, childrean, relatives, friends, and colleagues who remember that which had been.
BM et al,
Yes, responsibility for one’s addiction rests with only that individual but it somehow is shared with us as a society. Our government and pharmaceutical companies did not help the situation over the past ten to twenty years and have some culpability.
My little story is the other side of the problem. A family member dealt with an eleven year battle with MM Cancer which required an ever increasing dosages of opioids to the point that the doctors decided addiction occurred and they went on Methodone but that could not ease the pain thus back on opioids again. As the end came Hospice took over but unknowingly their ability to provide the required opioid dosages was limited by regulations and an agonizing withdrawal commenced till recognized by a family caregiver who properly raised hell with all. Fortunately the last few days was a beautiful moment in life for the family while my Brother laid in a blissful doped up stupor.
One would think in todays world Big Pharma could come up with something a little easier on the failing human being but I imagine there is not a great amount of money in that.
I would like to know if Nikki Haley is acting on her own thoughts of if she receives a script in the morning. She looks like a Sarah Palin want to be, except she can’t see Russia.
OxyContin is only prescribed for intense cancer pain in Europe. The Sackler Crime Family operating as Purdue Pharma lobbied(legal bribery) the medical industry, government regulators, and politicians to allow OxyContin prescription for minor pain in the United States.
Result: 250,000 deaths due OxyContin overdose since it was permitted to be unleashed on the unsuspecting and trusting public.
No, the OxyContin addicts with prescription are not to blame for their unknowing medication with a highly addictive form of a narcotic drug. The perpetrators of this massive death toll are to be found in the best circles of academia, government, and corporate America. The public’s outrage is expressed in the Trump presidency, as he campaigned to ‘drain the swamp.
Babak, you are blaming the victims in this tragic story!
Thank you for your comments.
Research in schedule 1 and schedule 2 substances is very very difficult by USG funding agencies.
Babak — As the daughter of an anesthesiologist, I hold the doctors responsible. They prescribe and they give advice to UNTRAINED patients in distress. If a doctor prescribes, they damn well better know what they are prescribing. My anesthesiologist mother was totally responsible for the life of everyone on the operating table — she read constantly and updated herself at all times on anything new.
Any doctor who does not do the same deserves to have their license pulled. And any doctor who isn’t reading the news and watching the opioid crisis unfold over the last ten years and doesn’t then look to their own prescribing practices is a dangerous fool….and no physician.
It is the doctors who continue(d) to go on their merry way who are responsible for this crisis.
Laura, the physician is bound by ‘protocols of best practice’ and medical liability to recommend prescription of certain drugs to certain patients in certain circumstances.
The pharmaceutical industry, academic research, and government regulation have failed to protect pain sufferers from opioid addiction in the case of OxyContin. A deep dive into context will amply show physicians constrained by the corruption of the above named agents.
Doctors are not to blame in toto, but they have abdicated their moral responsibility to ‘do no harm’, being well compensated to comply with the tenets of their professional credentialed cartel.
As a personal antidote…..my family has a high baseline cholesterol level, as a genetic trait, with no history of heart disease. I presented this evidence along with studies indicating cholesterol level having nothing to do with heart disease to my doctor. She listened to me present and then said, “I agree with you, but I am bound by professional best practice rules to prescribe statin drugs for one with your cholesterol level.” The statin industry is based on fraudulent science. Who corrupts scientific research?
It is my observation and analysis that the medical industry has subverted the medical profession in the United States and it is now (IMO) a racket. We are surrounded by rackets masquerading as professions in America, not the least of which is the military and criminal justice professions.
What are we to do when the entire complex structure and narrative is corrupted to protect a few oligarchs who utilize usury, sexual liberation, and identity politics to divide, conquer, corrupt, and enslave common man?
“There are” in writing. “There’re” in speech only. And it’s not “correct grammar,” it’s a colloquialism. Credentials: recovering linguist, 20 years sober.
I would have to agree that contrasting Trump’s actions vis-a-vis Israel and Ukraine is not correct.
A lot of people have no problem reconciling these sorts of contradictions in their behavior because they focus on one issue in one case and another issue in the other. For Trump, he’s against Iran and for Israel so his Jerusalem stand is obvious. As for Ukraine, he probably couldn’t care less that there are neo-Nazis there. He probably doesn’t even know. If it wasn’t on Fox News, he doesn’t know it.
The real takeaway from Trump’s decision to sell Ukraine lethal arms is the fact that his faction in the GOP Party Platform explicitly got that plank removed. He is now doing a 180 on that.
The second takeaway is that Trump’s decision to sell Ukraine lethal arms also reverses his desire to “get along with Russia.” He would have to be not merely a complete moron but actually brain dead not to see that Russia would view his decision as a face slap. Apparently he doesn’t care. This clearly shows that his “get along with Russia’ random comments during his campaign were basically just that: random comments to which he owes no allegiance.
And no, it’s not just “sniper rifles”:
BREAKING: Trump will announce sale of anti-tank missiles to neo-nazi Ukraine government
http://theduran.com/breaking-trump-will-announce-the-sale-of-anti-tank-missile-to-neo-nazi-ukraine-government/
Babak Makkinejad,
I was just barely there for the fading warm afterglow of the Sixties. Granted, I live in something of a cave. Still, echoes of popular youth-culture sentiments about various drugs did reach all the way to the back of my spiritual social cave.
And the sentiments went like this: marijuana and the hallucinogens horrified the Old and the Establishment and were the Drugs of the Youth in part for just that reason. The opiates of that time ( heroin, morphine, etc.) were considered Government Dumm Drugs. (High Times, the magazine of the Marijuana Counterculture, referred to heroin, morphine, cocaine, etc. as the “white death powders”.)
If someone who was more “there” than I was finds my sketchy knowledge of attitudes towards the drugs of that time to be wrong, I imagine they will offer a correction to my comment.
And so many decades separate the college youth of Then from the middle and working class non-elites of all ages of Today who became exposed to these opiates for totally different reasons and through totally different pathways . . . that I would need to see a real and detailed case linking the Drug Culture of Then to the Opiate Epidemic of Now. Mere assertion will not satisfy me.
jpb,
“… lobbied(legal bribery)…” You mean SEIU, the UAW, the National Association of Realtors and all the rest are bribing members of congress with their lobbying? Why oh why did these bastions of political power not demand Congress do something about all those deaths. Guess opiods deaths are not happening within their membership. Now back to the topic of foregin affairs…..
A taboo was broken then, the rest are only consequences.
And we will witness analogous consequences as Marriage has been redefined among the Diocletians.
You’re right. It’s scrambled my brains. I dislike Morrell myself but added the reference because he seemed to ever so slightly redeem himself in the interview by pointing out how easily someone with Trump’s degree of narcissism is vulnerable to being played and manipulated. That was a minor point, one worth making, but not so poorly.
And I am more concerned now reading on Reuters earlier this evening about TOW anti-tank missiles being part of the arms deal. I’m not sure at this point if it’s going to amount to more than theater. Maybe the administration wants leverage to use in November 2018. Push back against the evil Rooskies — foil the Dem’s witch hunt. Much as I dislike Trump, it is a witch hunt. Even Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the USSR says so. Also says that Flynn talking to Kislyak was not at all improper, and is puzzled how the American people have gone along with thinking so.
And no, Walker, I am not a troll, though I don’t blame you for thinking so. I think a stable Russia is fundamental to world security. Neither country, Russian or the USA, has its interests served by a new arms race. And certainly not cold war 2.0 Aside from that I admire them. Publius Tacitus has valid cause for concern. And his Shoah scholarship is top notch. My only quibble is maybe with Sakwa as source. Sure, his CV is excellent. His book did not impress me though.
Trump deduced that politicians have not been able to accomplish things for many years now. They manage perceptions. As does he. A brilliant presentation of that idea is by award winning Adam Curtis in his latest movie documentary “HyperNormalisation” which can be seen in its entirety at:
HyperNormalisation 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM
Curtis was one of the few people anywhere who grasped that Trump was likely to win before he was elected. The movie is brilliant. Starts in 1975 in New York and Damascus Syria and runs them in parallel up through 2016. NY with the municipal Bankruptcy. Syria with Kissinger going up against Hafez al Assad, whose sense of being betrayed launched and unquenchable thirst for revenge. Revelations as to what Reagan admin, and later Bush and Blair, then Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama / Clinton did to Gaddafi are the most comprehensive treatment of the deceptions perpetrated on the world in creating him as evil villain I’ve ever seen. Very informative and entertaining as well.
So you are going to go after only the addicts and let the people who made billions off of illegally selling the drugs just walk? Tell me again how you believe in personal responsibility?
Steve
And your justification for the massacre of the Poles in Volyn and Galicia?
ked,
(reply to comment number 38)
This is unfortunate. Because if that is how many people feel by election 2018, then the Democratic Party will be able to win many Congressional and other seats with the same old Borg-vetted candidates as before.
Babak
Blame Abraham Lincoln for America’s drug problem. That war created a multitude of wounded addicts and spread as a panacea to the ennui in the middle class. Even without cocaine being infused these days into Coca Cola it is still addictive. As a child I was told about a kid had to drimk a sixpack of Coke a day or he’d throw a tantrum. Saw a kid ironically name Happy scream at his mother for not making him a pitcher of Kool aid. It amazed she didn’t wack him good. Animals are prone to addiction, some more than others.
PT,
It’s simmering around the web this month regarding Julian Assange’s March comments that malleable Pence and crew were/are planning an inside coup against Trump. Dunno if the rehash is to make sure it doesn’t happen axiom [the more know the less its likelihood], or something maybe really in the works.
Babak,
“Marriage has been redefined among the Diocletians.” That redefining is being done to Americans by the American left, not the Diocletians. The forbidden question is still “who, whom”.
Correct. Ziocons and neo-Nazis have united in Ukraine. This is monumental. So much for the numerous Holocaust museums and for prosecution of anyone questioning the H-business data…
“German police have raided the house of an 86-year-old lady Ursula Haverbeck, after she publicly questioned the Holocaust story:” http://yournewswire.com/elderly-german-woman-arrested-for-questioning-holocaust/
“German-born Australian Frederic Toben was arrested in transit at Heathrow airport … Toben, having participated in Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust “conference” … already served seven months in a German prison as a denier.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Fredrick_Töben
In comparison, in the Kagans-liberated Ukraine, “residents celebrated the 70th anniversary of the German invasion “as a popular festival, where parents with small children waived flags to re-enactors in SS uniforms… … extreme right-wing deputies in the Lviv district “renamed a street from the Soviet-era name Peace Street to instead carry the name of the Nachtigall [Nightingale] Battalion, a Ukrainian nationalist formation involved in the mass murder of Jews in 1941: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/28/nazi-roots-of-ukraines-conflict/
The neo-Nazi supporters of the US policies in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrf1QD6sEI
The WWII veterans attacked in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtOmdA5SCiU
The Democratic Party has lost moral compass long time ago. The ongoing Russiangate saga has exposed the illegal meddling of the FBI into the political process in the US, namely, in taking sides against the US citizenry’ wishes. And yet the DP operatives are in full and loud support of the disgraced (treasonous?) McCabe: “FBI Deputy Director McCabe “retiring” after “Trump insurance policy” debacle:” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-23/fbi-deputy-director-mccabe-retiring-after-trump-insurance-policy-debacle
True. But not the Saklers’ family; there was a special provision protecting the deadly profiteers.
“Genrikh Yagoda, head of the NKVD, was just one of the Jews in the Bolshevik government (which was 80% Jewish) that helped perpetrate the Holodomor against 7 million Ukrainians, and helped to murder 30 million Soviet citizens in total during Jewish Bolshevik rule. (99.9%+ of the victims being gentiles.)”
Add also the name of Lazar Kaganovitch, an Ukrainian Jew, who was the main organizer of the Holodomor (the murderer lived into old age in Moscow) and the name of Naftaly Frenkel, the organizer of GULAG– “Of all those who helped devise and perfect the slave labor system of the Gulag, special mention must be made of Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel:” https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/gulags-frenkels-efficiency-system/
“Kaganovich was one of a small group of Stalin’s top sadists pushing for very high rates of collectivization after 1929. He became Stalin’s butcher of Christian Russians during the late 1920s and early 1930s when the Kremlin launched its war against the kulaks (small landowners who were Christians) and implemented a ruthless policy of land collectivization. The resulting state-organized forced famine, was a planned genocide and killed 7,000,000 Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, and inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.” http://www.rense.com/general11/stal.htm
http://real-life-villains.wikia.com/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich
Hi Babak,
“Are you smoking more now but enjoying it less?”
This is a verbatim quote from an ad for Camel cigarettes, whose manufacturers are famous (infamous?) in retrospect for other public assertions like “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” The comparison to Big Tobacco is apt here — now that awareness of the harmful effects of smoking are ubiquitous, has the incidence of smoking increased or decreased?
@Comment 24,
Gun manufacturers are quite different, unless you can find one for me that presents them to the public as anything other than a weapon.
@Comment 26,
Hi Fred,
They are bound under the Controlled Substances Act. Have a look here for details:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/928481/download
Statistically speaking, I would say that the probability that they were unaware of this law is zero.
Stalin was a very prescient man, he saw the war coming and proceeded to rapidly industrialize USSR – a very popular policy at the time – paying for it by expropriating the agricultural surplus of rural USSR.
I do not believe that the famine in Ukraine was a premeditated act of genocide, nor do I think that the estimates of the numbers of the dead to be reliable.
Had Stalin – and indeed the Soviet Government – not undertaken that brutal policy, USSR would have almost certainly been defeated by the Third Reich and the Third Reich would be with today – as a legitimate and respected member of the “International Community” of “White people” and then Slavs would be agriculturalist servants of the New Improved Diocletian civilization.
In regards to Kagnovitch, he and many other Jews among Bolsheviks were executed during the Stalinist Purges; was it another case of Christians avenging themselves on Jews – I wonder.
I must confess that I never understood the Jewish hostility to USSR, USSR almost certainly saved what was left of European Jewry, she should have a place of honor on Yad va Shim – I should think.
The rot is across the entire civilization; please see below:
http://www.pewforum.org/2017/08/08/gay-marriage-around-the-world-2013/
And then there is this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/two-heterosexual-irish-men-marry-to-avoid-inheritance-tax-on-house
Your right. I do not know McCabe from Adam but how he could not see the Conflict in his wife running for office and he continuing at the FBI in a senior position is astounding. What’s more astounding is his superior or the IG not seeing it and stepping in tells us things are rotten in the upper echelons of that agency. There should be no argument on this but there is which is sad.
I’m finding it entertaining that the declared PIGS are now coming out the wash attempting to regain there old positions. Seems that Old Hen (used to have nice legs) at MSNBC has been pushing her pig who has been washed but that reincarnation will have to be rinsed before she can push the spin cycle again. Yes, there are limited morals there.
Identical or very close analogues of psychotropic molecules exist in animal and plant life. Their receptors certainly exist in human brain, and very likely in other animals with a central nervous system.
But to your point, men cannot hold their drugs – individually and collectively. This much seems to be an empirical fact. There has been historical examples of widespread usage of drugs in certain societies; Safavid Persia, Imperial China. Neither of them ended well.
I think the Islamic injunction against consumption of alcohol must be considered as a defense mechanism against a presently forgotten empirical reality in which Arabs could not hold their liquor.
The European peoples – between Urals to the Atlantic Ocean – have been using alcohol for a longer period of time and likely have developed physiological as well as social and familial mechanisms to deal with drunkenness to a certain degree.
But they have only been partly successful as such things as Alcoholics Anonymous, or the sight of so many skimpy-clad young women passed-out or vomiting in the streets of London attest.
I understand that the Doctrine of Political Liberty is being misused to justify any and all of the whims of the individual. That is why I am willing to meet the advocates of Hedonism half way, through the artifice of Freedonia.
Freedonia serves the excellent purpose of exposing the disingenousness and speciousness of the arguments of Hedonists: that they crucially need everyone else to live on the proverbial straight and narrow to essentially subsidize their hedonism.
Hi Mongo:
Another specious argument.
Some drugs, if you will, are now too entrenched to do anything about.
Aspirin, due to its manifold actions in human body, would not receive FDA approval toady as an Over-the-Counter drug; but it cannot be removed from the market either.
For Aspirin and for Nicotine, it is too late to do anything – but that does not imply that we should do nothing against Cannabis, Opioids, Meta-amphetamines etc.
But really, all of this discussion is dancing around the central issue; you guys want to be free to indulge in your appetites and whims, all the while expecting us – on the straight & narrow path – to come in and either bail you out or to clean up after your mess.
That is why no one wants to live in Freedonia – they cannot leech from the others and continue to live.
You are so right.
We need to go after all of them.
But I think one must admit that some importance ought to be attached to the matter of individual choice.
Being prescribed painkillers by your Doctor, and paid for by Health Insurance providers is very different. Patients are assured of their safety, necessity, and told that they are the only way to manage pain. They are given a schedule to take them on, and refill prescriptions. That is how people become addicted. Do you think the Drug companies don’t have that data? General Motors knew for years that they sold cars with a ignition design defect that resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries. Would you blame the people who bought and drove those cars? At what point do companies have a responsibility for the products they sell and market?
Bobo
McCabe’s wife received a $700,000 campaign contribution by Clinton surrogate McCauliffe. And McCabe supervises the Clinton mishandling of classified information investigation. We saw how the original charge of “gross negligence” suddenly became a legal non-entity of “extremely careless”. Then you have Strzok & his paramor, FBI attorney Lisa Page discussing “insurance policy” in McCabe’s office during the election.
This guy is a corrupt, partisan hack who attempted a coup on a legitimately elected POTUS. Why is he being allowed to hang on to collect his pension? He should be fired and prosecuted and made an example of.
This is exactly the problem in DC. If you get high enough you can act with impunity as long as you are a Borgist. From Clapper to Petraeus and McCabe, Strzok, Baker, Comey at the FBI and Ohr, Lynch and who else at DoJ, at best they get a slap on the wrist. But Flynn gets nailed and everyone lower on the totem pole gets crucified for the slightest infraction. How can any ordinary citizen believe in the rule of law, when the law enforcers have proven to be malevolent law breakers?
lest we forget…..
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Caffeine_and_adenosine.svg/250px-Caffeine_and_adenosine.svg.png
16-17th tea and coffee drinking fad coincided with an outbreak of creativity, didn’t it? withdrawal takes about a week. Then there is chocolatl.
I think sugar was originally considered a drug. It is certainly habit forming.
that was a response to BabMak @ post 92.
J,
( Reply to comment 82)
I remember commenting some months ago that I regarded Pence as the rattlesnake in Trump’s sleeping bag, the scorpion in the toe of Trump’s boot.
Pence isn’t “impeachment insurance”. Pence is “impeachment incentive”. Pence knows it and is counting on it, in my fact-free purely intuitive opinion.
Anna,
Your comments carry a stench of anti-semitism. The fact that some Jews in Russia were Bolsheviks does not therefore indict it as a phenomena of Judaism. And your claim that “80%” of the Bolsheviks were Jewish. Wrong. You are quoting a speech made by Putin at the dedication of the Schneerson Jewish Museum. He said that in the very first government of the Soviet Union that 80 to 85% were Jewish but he noted that their religion played no part in their bad decisions.
So, what is your point?
Babak Makkinejad,
(reply to comment 75)
Thank you for responding to my comment. And yet . . . and yet . . . your comment does not actually provide the fact-cased step-by-step description of how the Sixties youth turn to marijuana and the hallucinogens led to the current addiction crisis of a totally different group of people to a totally different group of drugs. All your comment has really offered is the same unbacked assertion as before.
Could you at least help me with an specific answer to one particular question: what taboos did the Sixties youth-use of marijuana and the hallucinogens break . . . that extensive mainstream American use of alcohol during Prohibition had not broken 30 years before?
Babak,
“…you guys want to be free to indulge in your appetites and whims, all the while expecting us -… – to come in and either bail you out or to clean up after your mess.”
That’s a very apt summary of a couple of generations of Americans.
POTUS Trump has just given U.S. a Christmas Present that has many jumping up and down for joy. POTUS is continuing to drain the swamp and this draining affects Bill and Hillary’s finances, namely their big payola they have been getting from Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich:
Backgrounder:
https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/
Now back to the present, the new White House Executive Order, in its Annex lists an individual by the name of Dan Gertler an Israeli whose criminal enterprises, who acquired a fortune through shady (aka corrupt) deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in the Annex of the E.O.. Gerler was also exposed in the Paradise papers as Glencore secretly donated millions to Gertler to act as a middleman for DRC deals. Glencore former leader of the firm Marc Rich fled the U.S. in 1983 after being indicted for a host of charges including sanctions-busting, fraud, tax evasion, arms dealing. Rich’s family were major donors to Bill Clinton, Rich later pardoned by Clinton in the final hours of his presidency.
Another Clinton Foundation type listed in the E.O. Annex, Gulnara Karimova organized Clinton Foundation fundraiser in Monaco trying to acquaint herself will Bill and gain favor with Hillary.
Continuing on, the E.O. Annex lists Sergey Kusiuk, a Ukraine police commander who engineered the Obama-Clinton coup against the Ukraine. Kusiuk hired Georgian merc snipers that fired on police and protestors Nov. 30 2013.
When POTUS promised U.S. he was going to drain the swamp, he really meant it.
LOL Love it when a plan comes together.
Huh?
Aspirin as a drug which should be “removed from the market”!
Are you sure that you have not (inadvertantly?) imbibed on some pretty hard stuff?
“For Trump, he’s against Iran and for Israel so his Jerusalem stand is obvious. As for Ukraine, he probably couldn’t care less that there are neo-Nazis there.”
— It seems that saying on the same breath “support for Israel” and “support for neo-Nazis” does not make any dissonance for the US deciders. Considering that any questioning of any claim re Jewish Holocaust during WWII could result in a prison term (at least, in Europe, though the US has been drifting in the same direction), the ziocons’ involvement with neo-Nazis should be a bombshell. The ziocons’ triumph in Ukraine includes the presence of neo-Nazis in Ukrainian government, the proliferation of neo-Nazi parades in various Ukrainian cities, and the glorification of leading Nazi collaborators. Add to that the numerous instances of desecration of Jewish cemeteries. All these seem to be OK for the ziocons “stink tanks.” In the light of this tolerance for neo-Nazism in Ukraine, it will be only logical to stop punishing people for questioning Holocaust “data” (and to stop harassing the BDS activists).
Lazar Kaganovitch survived Stalin; he died at the age of 97, in Moscow. — A good example of Russians’ tolerance, btw.
The collectivization was the ideological shtick and crime against humanity. One of the side effects of collectivization was the extermination of the most able and laborious peasants and producers; they were branded “kulacks” and they died under the most sadist circumstances. Moreover, the highly suspicious and murderous Stalin managed to kill out the best part of the officer corps of the Red Army just before the WWII. It was the immense reservoir of Russian manpower and moral courage, which saved the Soviet Union during the WWII. The ordinary westerners still poorly understand the enormous tragedy of Bolshevik Revolution.
My point is the apologia of ziocon crimes in the context of the “exceptional and eternal victimhood.” If you had a chance to read Solzhenitsyn documentary “Two Hundred Years Together” you should know that Jews could be as murderous and ideologically driven and opportunistic as any Nazi-SS functionary or any Pol Pot thug. But I doubt that you read the documentary since it was sequestered by all (ALL) publishing houses in the US/UK. (Mind that the author, Solzhenitsyn, was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for his critique of Soviet State).
Nowhere my post mentoned Judaism.
It is highly disturbing to observe the numerous Holocaust Museums, and the continuous milking of Germany for reparations due to Jewish sufferings, while the US wages wars for Israel and while many Jewish activists (Gessen, McFaul, the NYT, WaPo, Atlantic Council, Guardian… the name is a legion) have been accusing Russians in all deadly sins, while not noticing the involvement of Jews in the making of the Soviet Union, including the bloodiest pages in its history such as collectivization and GULAG.
Thank you for correcting me about the fate of Kagnovich.
For the rest, I stand by what I wrote, absent Stalin, USSR would have been defeated and WWII likely would have ended with a cease fire.
Stephen Kotkin (professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University) has a new book (Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941) which covers the Holodomor.
His impression is that Stalin’s socialist ideology which caused so much death and suffering.
He finds no evil deliberate intent to kill Ukrainians but instead the brutal implementation of an ideological idea: the collectivization policies.
Stalin was against Collectivization, he changed his position because of the thread of Germany.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-26/trump-slams-crooked-hillary-pile-garbage-funded-bogus-dossier
PT and others that know how the DoJ works, why is it that Trump cannot or chooses to not, appoint a special counsel to investigate the FBI, DoJ, CIA, NSA collusion to attempt a coup against a legitimately elected POTUS? Is there something preventing him from appointing a presidential commission to look into partisanship, obstruction of justice, lying under oath, self-dealing and corruption at these agencies? Is it possible to fire the lot and take out the entire top 3 layers at these agencies?
Fact remains Trump is the reason lethal aid hasn’t been provided already. Here is L Todd Wood interviewed on it.
https://twitter.com/LToddWood/status/945694568103727104
Concerning Ukrainians in WW2:
I wish to state the following:
1: “Holodomor” killed around 2 million in total, Russian peaseant areas in Kazakhstan were actually hit harder, in terms of relative loss of population, then Ukraine. I see it as a campaign designed out to wipe out rich peasants, irrespective of their ethnicity. Saying it was a genocide of Ukrainians means one denies the quite sizeable amounts of Russian, Byelorussian, Volga-German and Kazakh victims.
2: Vast majority of Ukrainians fought with, not against, the Red Army in WW2. UPA was pretty much Galicia-Volynia only. Collaborators of course existed everywhere, including in Russia (f.e. Vlasovites, Lepiel “republic”), famed sniper ace Lyudmilla Pavlichenko is more representative for Ukraine then Stepan “dumb traitor” Bandera.
3: I think that, in many cases of Nazi collaborators, these people simply collaborated first, and then became Nationalists later in order to gain some type of “legitimate reason” for their collaboration.
4: One should also add that the more Ukrainian Kiev and Odessa military districts performed better in the dark early stages of Operation Barbarossa then the more “Great Russian” Central, Leningrad and Baltic military districts.
Concerning current situation is roughly as follows:
“Pro Western Oligarchs” and outright Nazis are the 2 major powers. The current Oligarch clique rode the Nazi tiger into the Rada, and cannot exactly get off it without getting at least bitten. They also regard the Nazis as a good bet against Russia. After all, if Russia would remove the current Oligarchs, they would have to deal with the Nazis.
The Nazis know this, and are currently embarked on a major campaign of increasing the economic heft. They do this in a variety of ways, be it by gaining financial inroads into sublegal activities (f.e. amber smuggling, which is quite a thing in Galicia), be it by converting dissapointed Oligarchs like Kolomoisky to their cause, be it by infiltrating and gaining key positions in the security apparates (f.e. Kievs police chief was second in command of Azov). This is on top of their usual “beat up realtricant workers” stick, and there general “be a violence provider for Oligarchs” stick.
“Pro western liberals” are basically just makeup on other peoples Ski Masks. They do not have their own military forces, nor do they command any sizeable degree of economic power.
The Oligarchs hope to win somewhat like this: Somehow get rid of the Nazis by making them commit suicide by Russian army, without the Russians also blowing them up.
The Nazis hope to institute a totalitarian barracks state by making everything else fail and presenting them as the true radical alternative.
I think Russia is waiting for an incoming Backstab of the Nazis by the Oligarchs, with the real Maidan shooting perpetrators (it is pretty obvious that it wasnt Berkut) being the “Casus Backstabbi”. A golden bridge will be built to help the heroic backstabbers back into Mother Russias embrace.
The thing is, both the Russians and the Oligarchs see the Nazis as a loose hand grenade and plan to make that hand grenade detonate in someone elses faces. I am somewhat afraid that both may be heavily underestimating the Nazi strength. The situation for common people in Ukraine is so dire that “radical final solutions” could become seen as acceptable.
Ukrainian conventional army is a wild card. Some type of Bonapartenko is possible, although post Soviet forces dont do much couping.
My “point” was not published here for some reason. — In short, Jews are no different from other people. The concepts of “eternal victimhood” and “superior morality” of Jewish people are not supported by the hard facts. This is not about religion.
Trump lost his older brother to alcohol addiction. His reaction was lifelong abstention. His advice to the addicted is don’t start. Which is not much help to those who become dependent in the course of medical treatment.
A. I. Schmelzer –
You left out the Russian collaborators from Lokot in Bryansk. They formed the 10 to 12,000 strong Russian National Liberation Army (RONA). They butchered the Jews of their area without any help or encouragement from the SS. They murdered Red Army POWs. When Soviet Partisans attacked German rear areas, RONA conducted bloody reprisals against civilians when they could not track down the partisans.
Later they were made part of the Waffen SS. They participated in putting down the Warsaw uprising where 150,000 – 200,000 Polish civilians were killed. And they conducted anti-partisan operations in Czechoslovakia.
Eventually they were incorporated with Vlasov’s Army. But they were never former POWs like the majority of the Vlasovtsy.