nationalinterest | A recent incident in Hutto, Texas, a sleepy, outlying suburb of
Austin, illustrates just how dangerously promiscuous the utilization of
SWAT teams has become. On June 26, local police conducted a raid to
implement a search warrant on a house in a low-crime, middle-class
neighborhood. The alleged crime? Police suspected that some residents of
the target house were involved in gambling. Investigators were backed
up by a SWAT unit with nearly a dozen officers in full combat regalia
pouring out of an armored vehicle.
Needless to say, the neighbors were both stunned and alarmed to see
such an operation take place in their quiet community. One mother stated:
“I went to my daughter’s room and looked outside their window to see if
I could get a better view of what was going on, and there was a man in
fatigues with a sniper rifle laying in my neighbor’s driveway.”
What was even more striking is that the police spokesman admitted to a reporter that the authorities “had no reason to believe”
that the residence undergoing the search was involved in any violent
activity. In other words, police were using paramilitary tactics and
forces to execute a search warrant involving a nonviolent (indeed,
victimless, crime) in a low-crime neighborhood. Such arrogant bullying
should alarm anyone who cherishes domestic civil liberties.
Unfortunately, such incidents have become all-too-common as local
authorities seek new missions to justify the existence of SWAT teams and
to keep the personnel alert and well trained. The expansion of SWAT
units and missions is closely correlated to the existence of federal
programs making surplus military hardware available at little or no cost to local police forces.
Such deadly toys have become a prime justification for law enforcement budget increases and the receipt of federal grants in communities around the country.
theatlantic | If a conservative is a liberal who
has been mugged, you might expect black folks, who are
disproportionately victims of crime, to support the politics of law and
order. And they frequently have done just that, according to Forman, a
former public defender in Washington, D.C.; a co-founder of a D.C.
charter school for at-risk youth; and now a professor at Yale Law
School. Using the District of Columbia (a k a “Chocolate City”) as his
laboratory, Forman documents how, as crime rose from the late 1960s to
the ’90s, the city’s African American residents responded by supporting
an array of tough-on-crime measures. A 1975 measure decriminalizing
marijuana died in the majority-black city council, which went on to
implement one of the nation’s most stringent gun-control laws. Black
residents endorsed a ballot initiative that called for imposing harsh
sentences on drug dealers and violent offenders. Replicated on a
national level over the same period, these policies led to mass
incarceration and aggressive policing strategies like stop-and-frisk,
developments that are now looked upon as affronts to racial justice.
Much
of what Forman reports would not surprise anyone who has spent time at a
black church or a black barbershop—or in the company of my mother. In
the ’60s, she marched with Malcolm X, and during the ’80s, after the
public school where she taught was vandalized, she said, “Those niggers
should be put under the jail.” My mom’s ideas about criminal-justice
policy are informed by getting held up at gunpoint in front of our house
on Chicago’s South Side, seeing family members suffer from addiction,
and watching the cops treat my stepfather like a criminal after he got
into a fender bender with a white man.
Needing the
criminal-justice system to help keep you safe, to be fair in its
investigations, and to be merciful with people who’ve run afoul of the
law—this urgent, unwieldy agenda explains much of African American
politics, from the anti-lynching campaigns of the early 20th century to
the Black Lives Matter movement today. As Forman reminds his readers,
black people have long been vigilant, often to no avail, about two kinds
of equality enshrined in our nation’s ideals: equal protection of the
law, and equal justice under the law.
The absence of equal
protection has been, historically, the most vexing problem in the lives
of African Americans. The NAACP was founded in 1909 partly in response
to the federal and state governments’ turning a blind eye to white
violence against blacks. More than half a century later, as open-air
drug markets flourished in inner-city neighborhoods, black activists
perceived a related form of racist neglect by the state. The police,
they believed, would have shut down those markets had they existed in
white communities. In fact, as Forman notes, many activists thought that
those in power actually condoned the availability of drugs in the hood,
as a means to keep the black man down. (In those days, it was black
men—rather than all black people—who were seen as principally injured by
racism, a fallacy that made its way into government policy under the
guise of the controversial Moynihan Report in 1965.) The black radical
Stokely Carmichael, speaking at a historically black college in 1970,
said, “Fighting against drugs is revolutionary because drugs are a trick
of the oppressor.”
Back then, many white progressives
were pro-pot, and disinclined to see drug prohibition as part of a
revolutionary utopia. African American suspicion of white liberals is a
theme throughout Locking Up Our Own. One reason the 1975 effort
to decriminalize marijuana in Washington, D.C., failed is that the
bill’s two primary supporters were white men. Forman quotes the
spoken-word artist Gil Scott-Heron’s portrayal of a typical white member
of Students for a Democratic Society: “He is fighting for legalized
smoke … / All I want is a good home and a wife and children / And some
food to feed them every night.”
Scott-Heron’s
very traditional wish list reveals another important explanation for
black support of law and order. Not for the first time, many
middle-class African Americans subscribed to the “politics of
respectability”: The race advances, the view goes, when black people
demonstrate that they are capable of living up to white standards of
morality and conduct. Among the black elite, advocacy for lenient
criminal-justice policies was deemed an admission that black interests
were allied with the interests of criminals. That sort of solidarity
would hardly help the cause. For many bougie African Americans—certainly
those in cities like Washington and Atlanta, where light-skinned blacks
dominated the middle class—colorism was also at work: The fact that
their dark-skinned hoodlum cousins were getting locked up was not a
problem. Indeed, one of the primary arguments for allowing African
Americans to join Atlanta’s police department in the 1930s and ’40s was
that they would be better able than white officers to distinguish
between elite blacks and the riffraff.
vice | When the Baltimore riots erupted
in April 2015 after Freddie Gray's death in police custody, James
"Brick" Feeney and Willie "Wax" Harris*, two tech-savvy teenagers with
ties to Maryland's Black Guerrilla Family (BGF), saw opportunity. Using
the chaos as cover, they managed to steal at least a million doses of
prescription drugs and heroin from city pharmacies and rival
dealers. But even if their caper was essentially an old-school,
smash-and-grab-style theft, the teens had plans to sell the drugs in a
more sophisticated manner: via the Dark Web, where pills went for
upward of $100 each.
Leaning on location-based technology and
encrypted messaging software, Brick envisioned their operation as
an "Uber of drug dealing."
As
the looted drugs were shipped up and down the East Coast, a spike in
opiate overdoses in African American communities raised eyebrows, and
the DEA and FBI eventually took notice. In his forthcoming book Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire, veteran
crime reporter Kevin Deutsch profiles the the teens' massively
profitable scheme, which he contends had (distant) ties to El Chapo's
Sinaloa cartel.
Deutsch enjoyed incredible access to the two
teens and some 300 other dealers, addicts, gang bangers, police, and
drug-treatment specialists for the book. A reporter who prefers to work
with his "feet on the ground," Deutsch saw the vicious effects of
America's opioid epidemic in an urban setting. VICE talked to the
journalist about how he wrapped his head around the technology in play,
how opiates were never just a middle-class white problem, and where
Brick and Wax are at now.
stockboardasset | In the 1990s it was COPS. Now it’s Worldstar Hiphop, Facebook Live,
and Liveleak broadcasting a constant stream of no-budget
sadism-as-entertainment to satiate the curious and the bloodthirsty in
real time, direct from the deepest corners of the most depraved,
impoverished districts. And while we, the spectators, marvel in awe and
disgust at the fights and robberies and suicides and murders that we
watch live onscreen, we forget that we, too, are denizens of a similarly
curated and managed ghetto environment: the digital one.
Whereas the actual, physical ghettos are the product of 1960s utopian
ideas about government spending being the answer to social ills gone
awry, the digital ghettos are also an inverted utopia, albeit one
crafted by the rogue programmers of the 1970s and 1980s. These
programmers imagined a world where personal computers and the emerging
internet would literally connect the world; where ideology would wither
away as the postmodern World Wide Web would force all of us to confront a
myriad of foreign ideas and foreign people, all from the comfort of
your home office.
These technologies have not connected us, or at least not in the ways
that these computing pioneers imagined. We, too, have been
hyperfragmented and atomized into our own digital ideological echo
chambers. The 21st century collapse of the nuclear family that we
discussed earlier was perhaps intended to redefine one’s sense of self
in relation to society as a whole rather than in relation to one’s
immediate or extended family (you know, the whole “It takes a village”
nonsense that people liked to talk about a couple of decades ago). But
what we’re seeing now is a sort of fragmentation of the self,
facilitated by these digital technologies, where there is a disconnect
between one’s online self and one’s physical self-a sort of “social
schizophrenia” that threatens to destroy the very societies that these
technologies were supposed to solidify.
Now back to the districts: what the Capitol fears most is an uprising
of the district that bleeds into the Capitol. We call this The Fourth Turning: Summer of Rage and the Total Eclipse of the Deep State. Provincial
wars are fine, as long as they are kept far away from the ruling elite.
Periodically, though, rival factions governing the Capitol enlist
mercenaries from the districts to cause trouble at the doorstep. We see
this regularly with the astroturf Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall
Street, and other seemingly ‘grassroots’ franchise protest movements
erupt in American cities every few years-these dispossessed citizens of
the district, unemployed or underemployed with little to no job
prospects, saddled with debt, and very little to lose or gain are
shipped around from city to city, given some protest signs, and proceed
to yell, fight, burn buildings, and disrupt traffic.
A genuine uprising would be terrifying to the ruling elite, because
it would be a refusal to participate at all in a society that exploits
you solely by your participation in it. Non-participation is much
quieter than the manufactured type, and doesn’t lend itself as well to
dramatic photo ops. It’s impact, however, would be much more
significant.
theguardian | After a consortium led by Jay-Z bought Tidal (previously known as
WiMP) in January 2015, it had a star-studded launch where many of the biggest pop acts on the planet
pledged to give it exclusive material first. That amounted, initially,
to a Madonna video that soon appeared on YouTube. After that came
Rihanna’s Anti, in January 2016, which ended up being released early by
mistake, then 1m copies were given away to appease fans while Tidal
blamed Universal Music Group for the error. UMG countered by saying it
was actually Tidal’s fault. The album eventually ended up on other
streaming services.
The release of Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo did no better. Despite
West’s assurances that it would never be on Apple, a matter of a few
weeks after its Tidal debut it was available on … Apple. And Spotify.
And everywhere else. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one exclusive
may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two or more looks like
carelessness.
That said, Beyoncé’s Lemonade remains a streaming exclusive on Tidal
over a year after its release. But the knock-on effect was to send fans
to pirate sites as well as CD retailers and iTunes to spend their money
there rather than taking the carrot and joining Tidal. The fact that
Lemonade, according to IFPI numbers, sold 2.5m copies globally last year
to become the biggest album in the world would suggest that it was
downloads and CDs that accounted for the bulk of that. The “album
equivalent streams” of Lemonade on Tidal will have barely touched the
sides here.
Universal, smarting from the Frank Ocean debacle last August – in
which Apple Music got an exclusive for the contract-fulfilling album
Endless and then, the next day, Ocean put out Blonde himself – reportedly imposed an embargo on exclusives.
Warner Music Group and most indie labels were always against them. That
leaves Sony, which has hinted exclusives will be considered on a
case-by-case basis, the unspoken subtext being they have fallen in line
with all the other labels.
There will be the occasional outlier, such as the totally autonomous
Chance the Rapper’s two-week exclusive with Apple Music for his album
Coloring Book in May 2016, for which he claims he was paid $500,000; but
everyone else is increasingly of the belief that exclusives dangerously
impede the reach of an album and, as such, only annoy fans at a time
where loyalty can no longer be presumed and has to be earned again with
every new release.
Jay-Z
has an allegiance to his own service and one of its biggest investors,
hence this Tidal–Sprint deal; but it feels like a message beamed in from
a different place and a different time. In an age of digital ubiquity,
exclusives are an anachronistic bet on a roulette wheel where the only
pockets are marked as either “invisibility” or “irrelevance”.
charleshughsmith |We
also know that the proximate cause of this epidemic is Big Pharma,
which promised non-addictive painkillers that lasted for 12 hours but delivered addictive painkillers that did not last 12 hours.
There are plenty of other participants who share responsibility for the public health and law-enforcement disaster: physicians
who all too readily passed out prescriptions for powerful synthetic
opioids like aspirin; the government agencies that approved the
synthetic heroin as "safe" (heh) and paid for their distribution via
Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, etc., and the patients who all
too willingly accepted the false promises of synthetic opioids.
But what's missing from the public conversation is the underlying cause of the epidemic: a structural scarcity of paid work and positive social roles for vast swaths of America's workforce.
We all know what paid work means: jobs. Positive social roles include
jobs--supporting oneself and one's family provides purpose, meaning,
identity and a source of pride, all atrributes of positive social
roles--but the concept extends beyond work to any role in which the participant feels needed and that offers dignity: this includes volunteer, guardian, mentor, coach, etc., many of which are unpaid.
At
its core, to be treated with dignity means being considered worthy of
respect. Certain situations bring out a clear, conscious sense of our
own dignity: when we receive praise or promotions at work, when we see
our children succeed, when we see a volunteer effort pay off and change
our neighborhood for the better. We feel a sense of dignity when our own
lives produce value for ourselves and others. Put simply, to feel
dignified, one must be needed by others.
Giving
people welfare, cheap prescriptions for opioids and Universal Basic
Income (UBI) does not make them feel needed--it makes them feel
superfluous and worthless.
CounterPunch | In Ohio a heroin (and other opioids) epidemic, and attendant
overdoses, has stretched the city budget because Paramedics respond and
administer Narcan (Naxalone) to revive the patient. And Narcan is
expensive. City Councilman Dan Pickard offered the solution of cutting
off paramedic responses after two visits. In other words, let the OD
victim die. Besides Pickard’s fundamental stupidity, the glaring
question that goes unasked is why has the price of Naxalone tripled in
the last year? Well, because there is a heroin epidemic, and an
Oxycontin epidemic. That is capitalism.
One of the by products of the spike in Narcan usage (its even sold
over the counter in some cities, without prescription) is a kind of
Overdose-porn; cell phone videos of addicts passing out and in
respiratory arrest being given Narcan and having those symptoms
reversed. I see a reality TV show in the future. Of course Narcan also
triggers severe withdrawl symptoms in anyone with an opioid addiction. I
remember friends being given Narcan and immediately running out to find
some junk to stop the pain. There is such an obvious disregard for
addicts in this society that it almost feels pointless to repeat the
same statistics yet again. The War on Drugs is much like The War on
Terror. It is a business opportunity for western Capital.
Interestingly, 76% of Americans think addicts should be a medical
problem and not a criminal one. However, compassion is NOT a business
opportunity, ergo compassion is not part of the lexicon of the ruling
class.
dailybeast | M______ Charles M_____ turned 26 in jail on March 2, a week after his
arrest for misdemeanor heroin possession. But his entire life may as
well boil down to an inglorious 30 seconds of tightly edited video,
played on local news channels, that shows him nearly dying.
On
Feb. 18 a closed-circuit surveillance camera captured him shooting
heroin, then falling out of his seat on a crowded city bus in Philly
suburb, Upper Darby. The video cuts to a police officer hovering over
the unconscious man and applying a dose of the powerful overdose
antidote naloxone.
Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) has been the subject of
increasing media attention since the Food and Drug Administration
approved a nasal spray version of the drug in last November to reverse
the effects of opioid overdose, namely severe respiratory depression
that can be fatal if left untreated. Narcan works by reversing those
symptoms. A number of police departments now outfit their officers with
it, and changes to state laws have made the drug legal for sale over the
counter in some pharmacies. In 2014, Pennsylvania passed a law that
made naloxone available through a standing prescription to laypeople,
including drug addicts themselves and their families.
The video
footage of M_____’s overdose concludes with him back on his feet and
being escorted off the bus by police paramedics—a seemingly happy ending
to a nearly fatal tragedy.
But M_____’s story is anything but happy. And it’s far from over.
After
saving his life, the police arrested him for the tiny amount of heroin
(four baggies) they found on him. While M_____ suffered the first pangs
of opioid withdrawal in a jail cell (imagine severe flu combined with
anxiety and depression) the police humiliated him by tweeting a link to
the video provided by the transit authority.
washingtontimes | Citing the deadly opioid crisis, Baltimore
officials made it easier on Thursday to acquire an overdose-reversing
drug over the counter, saying the antidote should be as prevalent as
possible to prevent more deaths.
City Health Commissioner Leana Wen
waived training requirements for acquiring and using naloxone, a
fast-acting medication that’s become a vital and ubiquitous tool in
fighting the nation’s heroin and prescription painkiller crisis.
Dr. Wen
said the training only took a few minutes — naloxone can be
administered as a nasal spray or injected into the muscle, like an
EpiPen. But the associated paperwork was cumbersome, so she implemented a
recent state law allowing her to scrap the training altogether.
“Any
resident can go into any of our pharmacies in Baltimore City and
immediately get the medication for saving someone’s life,” she said.
City
residents on Medicaid can acquire two doses of naloxone for $1 — it’s
free if they don’t have the money — while those on private insurance
typically face co-pays of $10 to $40.
Baltimore
estimates that 20,000 residents use heroin and thousands more abuse
prescription opioids. There were 481 fatal overdoses in the city during
the first nine months of 2016, according to preliminary data, and deaths
related to fentanyl have risen twentyfold in recent years, the health
department said.
scientificamerican | First came Martin Shkreli, the brash young pharmaceutical
entrepreneur who raised the price for an AIDS treatment by 5,000
percent. Then, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who oversaw the price
hike for its signature Epi-Pen to more than $600 for a twin-pack, though
its active ingredient costs pennies by comparison.
Now a small Virginia company called Kaleo is joining their ranks. It
makes an injector device that is suddenly in demand because of the
nation’s epidemic use of opioids, a class of drugs that includes heavy
painkillers and heroin.
Called Evzio, it is used to deliver naloxone, a life-saving antidote to overdoses of opioids. More than 33,000 people are
believed to have died from such overdoses in 2015. And as demand for
Kaleo’s product has grown, the privately held firm has raised its
twin-pack price to $4,500, from $690 in 2014.
Founded by twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards, 36, the company first
sought to develop an Epi-Pen competitor, thanks to their own food
allergies.
Now, they’ve taken that model and marketed it for a major public
health crisis. It’s another auto-injector that delivers an inexpensive
medicine.
One difference, though, is that Evzio talks users through the process
as they inject naloxone. The company says the talking device is worth
the price because it can guide anyone to jab an overdose victim
correctly, leave the needle in for the right amount of time and
potentially save his or her life.
According to Food and Drug Administration estimates,
the Kaleo product, which won federal approval in 2014, accounted for
nearly 20 percent of the naloxone dispensed through retail outlets
between 2015 and 2016, and for nearly half of all naloxone products
prescribed to patients between ages 40 and 64—the group that comprises
the bulk of naloxone users.
mishtalk | Total capitulation by Governor Bruce Rauner is in the works. The taxoholics wore him down.
In the emergency session, Rauner has agreed to hike the personal
income tax rate to 4.95% from the current 3.75%. The corporate income
tax rate will rise to 7% from the current 5.25% rate.
For what? Nothing. Reforms are nonexistent.
Another Deadline Come and Gone
Illinois failed to approve a budget today and thus heads into its third fiscal year without one.
A vote has been scheduled for Sunday.
I do not expect your opinion will matter, but in the slim chance I am wrong, Please Email Your Representative voicing displeasure of the tax hike.
The preceding link will find your rep based on your address.
Rule of Nothing
A zombified Rauer has capitulated in every way but the final signing.
Tax hikes have been agreed to with no reforms in return.
Rule of Nothing
In any given political situation, the best outcome one can reasonably expect generally happens when politicians do nothing.
Implied corollary#1: When politicians attempt to fix any problem, they are highly likely to make matters worse.
Corollary #2: Politicians almost never do nothing. It’s why we have a
messed up healthcare system, education system, public pension system,
etc..
zerohedge | S&P warned one month ago will likely result in a humiliating and
unprecedented downgrade of the 5th most populous US state to junk
status.
Then came the begging.
According to Bloomberg, on Friday Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Democrat who controls much of the legislative agenda, pleaded with rating companies to "temporarily withhold judgment” as
lawmakers negotiate. “Much work remains to be done,” the Democrat said
on the floor of the House Friday, before the chamber adjourned for the
day. “We’ll get the job done.”
Meanwhile, the state remains without a spending plan, its tax
receipts and outlays mostly on "autopilot", leaving it with a record $15
billion of unpaid bills as it spent over $6 billion more than it
brought in over the past year, and with $800 million in interest on the
unpaid bills alone. The impasse has devastated social-service providers,
shuttering services for the homeless, disabled and poor. The lack of
state aid has wrecked havoc on universities, putting their accreditation
at risk.
However, in a "shocking" development, just hours remaining before the
midnight deadline to pass the Illinois budget, and Illinois' imminent
loss of its investment grade rating, federal judge Joan Lefkow
in Chicago ordered Illinois to come up with hundreds of millions of
dollars it owes in Medicaid payments that state officials say the
government doesn’t have, the Chicago Tribunereported.
Judge Lefkow ordered the state to make $586 million in monthly payments (from the current $160 million) as
well as another $2 billion toward a $3 billion backlog of payments - a
$167 million increase in monthly outlays - the state owes to managed
care organizations that process payments to providers.
While it is no secret that as part of its collapse into the financial
abyss, Illinois has accumulated $15 billion in unpaid bills, the
state's Medicaid recipients had had enough, and went to court asking a
judge to order the state to speed up its payments. On Friday, the court
ruled in their favor. The problem, of course, is that Illinois can no
more afford to pay the outstanding Medicaid bills, than it can to pay any of its $14,711,351,943.90 in overdue bills as of June 30.
The backlog of unpaid claims the state owes to managed-care companies
directly, as well as to the doctors, hospitals, clinics and other
organizations “is crippling these providers and thereby dramatically reducing the Medicaid recipients’ access to health care,” Lefkow said in her ruling
* * *
Friday’s court ruling, which meant that the near-insolvent state must
pay an additional $593 million per month, may have been the straw that
finally broke the Illinois camel's back.
“Friday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court takes the state’s finances from horrific to catastrophic,” Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement after the ruling.
As a result of the court decision, “payments to the state’s pension
funds; state payroll including legislator pay; General State Aid to
schools and payments to local governments -- in some combination -- will
likely have to be cut.”
WaPo | There is an ongoing terrorist attack
happening in Ohio. It has nothing to do with the Islamic State or
political anarchists. The weapons in this case come in the form of
heroin and other opioids, and the terrorists are the pushers who spread
the deadly poison.
From the Columbus Dispatch
this spring: “At least 4,149 Ohioans died from unintentional drug
overdoses in 2016, a 36 percent leap from just the previous year, when
Ohio had by far the most overdose deaths in the nation. . . . Many
coroners said that 2017’s overdose fatalities are outpacing 2016’s.”
Consider that number — 4,149 overdose deaths in Ohio in one year, more than the number who died on 9/11.
The
worst of the state’s opioid problems are here in southern Ohio. The
Highland County coroner provided our newspaper, the Times-Gazette, with a recap of cases
from 2016 showing at least 16 overdose deaths in this small rural
county. He also pointed to 50 deaths during the year from other causes
where drug use or a history of drug use were present.
Even non-fatal overdoses are taxing local resources. During the first three weeks of May, emergency responders answered calls to at least 18 overdoses
around the county, almost three times as many as during the same period
a year ago. The public information officer for the local fire and
emergency medical services department called it “the new normal.”
This
is all happening around little Hillsboro, a town often compared with
television’s idyllic Mayberry. With the FBI reporting that most heroin enters
the United States from Mexico, and local officials saying that it then
makes its way here through metropolitan drug rings, it’s no wonder that
few people in Hillsboro think President Trump’s border security plans
are extreme.
Like other forms of terrorism, the opioid attack
will have a generational impact, in this case in a foster-care crisis
being left in its wake.
thenews | Terrorism, drugs-for-arms and money laundering are intrinsically
linked and pose a considerable threat to global peace and security. They
destabilise the political and financial stability of many
nation-states. They were accelerated in the wake of 9/11. Militants and
extremists have a nexus with criminal networks involved in dealing drugs
and arms.
Evidence available with intelligence agencies confirms that from
Al-Qaeda to Daesh the real challenge involves the free flow of legal and
illegal funds. Until today, the international community has failed to
sever their financial lifeline.
It is an open secret how the drug trade in post-Taliban Afghanistan
was institutionalised through the puppet regime in Kabul and the
patronising attitude of war lords in many provinces of the country. Once
opium started being processed at a mass scale into morphine and heroin
in Afghanistan, it brought tonnes of money for commanders on the ground.
Since 2004, the controlled democracy in Afghanistan has been playing
into the hands of more sophisticated narco-enriched commanders. It is no
longer a secret that the Taliban – with whom the US and its allies have
always been in negotiation since 2004 – knew how to buy or muscle a
vote which would protect their opium interests in every election.
Even Afghanistan’s neighbours have been making profits from the
windfall: criminal groups from Central Asia, says the UN, have made
profits worth $15.2 billion from the trafficking of opiates in 2015.
Tajikistan is, by far, the worst affected by the drug plague owing to a
combination of history, poverty and geography.
In the late 1990s, the drug trade was believed to be a source of
finance for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) – a terrorist group
which had bases in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. After the war in
Afghanistan, the IMU lost most of its influence. But the drugs trade
continued with organised criminals taking the place of political or
religious activists. In a survey conducted by the Open Society
Institute, eight out of 10 of those polled said – hardly surprisingly –
that “the main reason to turn to drug trafficking was to make big
money”.
medgadget | Opioids are the most widely prescribed medications to treat moderate
to severe chronic pain. These analgesics are used to manage pain in
cancer patients and also to treat severe constant pain in patients
suffering from terminal illnesses. These are generally administered via
subcutaneous, oral and intramuscular routes; other routes of
administration include nasal insufflations, patient controlled
analgesia, transdermal and oral mucosa routes via lozenges. Opioids can
be classified into three major classes namely, strong agonists
(fentanyl, oxymorphone, and morphine), mild to moderate agonists
(codeine and hydroxycodone), and opioids with mixed receptor reactions
(buprenophrine and pentazocine). Although they form one of the most
widely used analgesic classes, they cause certain adverse effects such
as constipation, nausea, vomiting, sedation, respiratory depression and
others. However, the major concern with this drug class is the high
level of drug abuse observed worldwide, leading to illegal trade of
these drugs worth hundreds of billions of dollars. According to a study
published in the Journal of American Medical Association in April 2011,
the rate of deaths occurring due to the overdose of prescription opioids
has increased substantially in the last decade in the U.S. alone. This
study also indicated that high doses of opioid drugs prescribed for pain
management possessed increased risk of overdose mortality in the
patients.
The leading molecules in this segment that constituted about 65% of
the total opioids market include OxyContin (oxycodone), Nucynta
(tapentadol), Rybix and Ultram (tramadol), Exalgo (hydromorphone),
Ultiva (remifentanil) and fentanyl.The remaining 35% market revenue was
contributed by other generic opioids as well as combination formulations
of NSAIDs with opioids.The actual market scenario for this drug class,
however, could be different due to the strong product pipeline, with two
major entries MoxDuo IR (morphine/oxycodone) and Remoxy (oxycodone) set
to hit the market in 2016. The market entry of these two drugs is
expected to boost growth of the overall opioids market during the
forecast period. The number of patients suffering from chronic pain is
on a constant rise globally. Thus, increasing incidence of chronic pain
conditions will continue to encourage the use of pain management drugs,
thereby driving the opioids market. Doctors usually prescribe medicines
in the initial stages of pain, followed by other treatment options.
Prescription drugs are easy to use and economical and are expected to
support the growth of the opioids market globally.
unz |All over America, I’ve seen posters warning against drugaddictions. In Cheyenne, it’s “METHAMPHETAMINE / Don’t live this tragic story.” A few blocks away, I stepped over used needles on the sidewalk. In Buffalo, it’s an image of a beer bottle and a pill bottle, with “HEROIN
addiction starts here…” Appended to it was a homemade sign, “SHOOT YOUR
LOCAL HEROIN DEALER.” Also in Buffalo, it’s a photo of a seemingly dead
man on the floor, with “Learn how to recognize OPIOID OVERDOSE and SAVE A LIFE.”
In Cleveland, it’s a tagged toe in a morgue, with “DEATH BY HEROIN
OVERDOSE IN CUYAHOGA COUNTY HAS QUADRUPLED,” and this was in 2014,
before the prevalence of fentanyl.
In
2016, Philly had 277 murders and 907 fatal drug overdoses. For 2017,
murders are up 21% and drug deaths, 33%. What’s your town’s drug toll?
A
33-year-old friend admits to popping street-bought Xanax every now and
then to help her sleep. I suspect she’s on various pills, if not heroin,
for she’s always broke and borrowing money. She has a spotty memory,
sporadic hygiene and pinpoint pupils.
At
Friendly, I sat next to my buddy Jeff, who’s in his late 40’s and HIV
positive. Each day, Jeff pops a dozen pills, including Klonopin, a
benzodiazepine that can trigger paranoid or suicidal thoughts, as well
as degrade your memory, judgment and coordination. Mixed with other
substances, particularly alcohol, it can slow your breathing or even
kill you. Jeff is always drinking.
“Jeff, man, you’re always so outgoing, so gregarious, I can’t imagine you having anxieties!”
“That’s
because of the Klonopin, dude. Without it, I’d be a mess. Without it,
I’d be up all night pissed off, you know, about some stupid argument I
had 15 years ago, some fight with a hot dog vendor who gave me ketchup
instead of mustard!”
“That’s serious.”
“Here’s what it looks like,” Jeff showed me some innocent white pills in a yellow bottle. “You want one?”
“No, thanks.”
Jeff took one out anyway and gave it to the bartender, 42-years-old Lisa. She stashed it away for later.
fmshooter | On Monday, Huffington Post author Kayla Chadwick posted an article
titled “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About
Other People,” which was essentially an emotional plea without any
constructive argument on why Americans should pay higher taxes as well
as sign up for Obamacare:
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP.
But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an
education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those
things, I have nothing left to say to you.
Well, since Chadwick has no problem telling Americans to pay more for
their healthcare, she should have no problem signing up for an
Obamacare plan herself. It sure appears as if Chadwick is on an
employer-sponsored health insurance plan, as I imagine she would be
singing quite a different tune if she had to “pay her own way” (with or
without subsidies) via the Obamacare exchange.
First, Chadwick can go to the Obamacare exchange to sign up, but of
course, only if it is either A) the “open enrollment” period, or B) she
incurs a “qualifying life event” that would make her eligible to
purchase insurance. If she’s merely switching carriers… no cigar, you
have to wait till the open enrollment period!
theatlantic | Last year, America’s total medical
costs hit a new record of $3.4 trillion, according to the federal
government. That’s about 18 percent of the country’s total GDP, meaning
that one out of every six dollars we spent in 2016 went to health care.
The national doctor bill dwarfs anything else we spend money on,
including food, clothing, housing, or even our mighty military.
If
that $3.4 trillion were spread equally throughout the population, the
bill would come to some $10,350 for every man, woman and child in the
country. But fortunately –for most of us, anyway—the cost of health care
is not equally distributed. Rather, a small number of Americans run up
most of the expense. The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a
fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic
illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. The cost is so
concentrated, in fact, that an estimated five percent of the population
accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs.
For
the purposes of this project, we’re calling these people The Platinum
Patients—they’ve also been described as “super-utilizers” or “frequent
fliers.”
This concentration of total cost on a
small segment of the total population is reflected in another common
aspect of medical spending: the concentration of treatment, and cost, in
the end of a life span. For most people, the vast majority of all the
health care they’ll ever get comes near the hour of death. Hundreds of
billions of dollars each year are spent treating Americans who are in
the last weeks, or days, of life.
The old Marx Brothers’ joke—“I
wouldn’t dare go to the hospital—people die there all the time”—is
essentially true. Many people die in the hospital—in many cases, just
after they’ve incurred a hugely expensive round of surgery, treatment,
and medication. About one-third of Americans undergo operations in the
last month of life.
If these issues were subject to hard, cold
economic theory, a health-care system would probably distribute spending
differently. The large sums it costs to keep a sedated cancer patient
with dementia alive in a hospital bed from age 94 to 95 could presumably
be directed instead to provide, say, a kidney transplant for a
40-something victim of renal failure, or a young woman who is too
depressed to care for her baby. That money could be used for pre-natal
care for uninsured mothers, setting the stage for both mother and child
to have a healthier and happier life. Or, those funds could be used to
provide health insurance at reasonable cost to the 29 million Americans
who have no health coverage today.
One
famous, or perhaps notorious, advocate of limiting late-in-life medical
spending is former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who was given the
nickname “Governor Gloom” in the 1980’s for his argument that the
elderly have a “duty” to avoid costly care when the end is near. There’s
only so much money available for medical care, Lamm noted, so it ought
to be used in the most efficient way. In the face of bitter criticism,
Lamm stuck to his guns. Just this spring he told the Denver Post: “When I
look at the literature, and there are such things as $93,000 prostate
operations at some stage of prostate cancer that might give two extra
months of life, it is outrageous.”
The problem with these
straightforward economic calculations is that they involve real human
beings who have friends and relatives. That 94-year-old cancer patient,
after all, may have loving children or grandchildren at the bedside;
hardly anybody is willing to let Grandpa die just to save money for the
overall health-care system.
WaPo | Under a plan by a city council member in Ohio, people who dial 911
seeking help for someone who's overdosing on opioids would start hearing
something new from dispatchers: “No.”
In response to the opioid epidemic that swept the nation — including the small city of Middletown,
population 50,000 — council member Dan Picard floated an idea that's
been called more of “a cry of frustration” than a legitimate solution.
At
a council meeting last week, Picard proposed a three-strikes-style
policy for people who repeatedly overdose: Too many overdoses and
authorities wouldn't send an ambulance to resuscitate them.
Picard
told The Washington Post that he sympathizes with anyone who has lost
someone to drug abuse, but said that responding to an ever-increasing
number of overdose calls threatens to bleed his city dry.
“It’s
not a proposal to solve the drug problem,” Picard said this week. “My
proposal is in regard to the financial survivability of our city. If
we’re spending $2 million this year and $4 million next year and $6
million after that, we’re in trouble. We’re going to have to start
laying off. We're going to have to raise taxes.”
gurdjieff | Because literature for Gurdjieff, as for the Sufis, is inextricable from philosophy, it is appropriate in considering Beelzebub’s Tales
to address some fundamental philosophical questions, the answers to
which help put Gurdjieff’s writings into perspective. Among the issues
to be addressed, one of primary importance is to define what constitutes
literature for Gurdjieff, or what, according to his aesthetics,
distinguishes literature from non-literature; art from non-art.
Unraveling this distinction involves comprehending some of
Gurdjieff’s fundamental ideas about human beings and their place in the
world. We have already proposed that Gurdjieff’s primary philosophical
stance is that of Sufism, and his philosophy of art supports this
contention.1 At the core of his
aesthetics is the position that no form of artistic expression possesses
value in itself; no art is appreciable for its intrinsic value alone.
Because of his premises concerning the meaning and purpose of human
existence, all “art” for Gurdjieff, and consequently all literature as
an art-form, must be functional or didactic. The value of an art work
resides in its potentiality to transform or metamorphose the art
appreciator. Insofar as a work of literature, a piece of music, a
painting, or any other potential art form aids humans in the process of
their spiritual evolution, that object or activity earns the designation
“art” for Gurdjieff and possesses what he refers to as “soul.”
Gurdjieff’s use of terminology to espouse his aesthetics and other
branches of his philosophy frequently involves his supplying old terms
with new meanings. Consequently, we are forced when approaching his
writings to temporarily abandon old associations of key words used in
his discussions. Such is the case with the terms “soul,” “objective”
and “subjective,” “conscious” and “unconscious.” “Subjective art,” for
example, in Gurdjieff’s terminology, refers to most of what is commonly
interpreted as art.
Most twentieth-century art in its various forms, according to his
standards, would fall into this category.
But subjective art is not authentic art for him; it is the result of
mechanical, unconscious human activity, and most of humanity is
unconscious according to Gurdjieff. For the same reason, he refers to
subjective art as “soulless” in that it results from little or no
consciousness on the part of the would-be artist. In his introduction
to Meetings with Remarkable Men, he asserts that contemporary civilization is unique in history in its massive production of soulless, pseudo art.
On the other hand, “objective art” is authentic art in that it
results from deliberate, pre-meditated efforts on the part of a
conscious artist. In the act of creation, the true artist avoids or
eliminates any input which is subjective or arbitrary, and the
impression of such art on those who experience it is always definite.
To the degree that objective art is the result of consciousness, it
inherently possesses “soul.” As one example of soulful art, Gurdjieff
cites the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci; as another he refers to the
Taj Mahal. Both constitute objective works of art.
theoccidentalobserver |It
is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never
mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry.
If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has
taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of
Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish
alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that
alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold
Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national
groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28]
It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank
trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down
to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have
worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own
revolutionary spirit.[29]
Cruse
was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that
time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American
Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in
accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or
individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a
national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop
their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30]
This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro
problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals
then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the
1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing
of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the
capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American
Communist Party.”[31]
In
the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden
behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the
corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but
her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high
command.[32]
The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White
power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill.
The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson
criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]
Jews
are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly,
Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he
believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White
America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black
folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars
has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names.
But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved
in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.
In
a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics
and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures
in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate
executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and
chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom
president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as
distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under
artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the
same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate
media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact
this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35]
Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins
she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves
the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the
hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads
the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown
University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?
After
all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of
investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular
tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated
itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars
typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by
rappers and fans.[37]
Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of
rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along
with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind
during the course of the 20thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.
Bearing
that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply
involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip
club has long been an integral part of both the music video and
business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a
complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes
scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive
depictions of women imaginable.”[40]
Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography”
yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left
unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.
FinalCall | Some of our greatest icons, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday,
“Little” Richard (and the list goes on) lived rich, yet died broke while
Jewish managers, accountants, attorneys, business advisors and others
fed their families for years off of their largess. Few entertainers in
the history of Black America have been able to say that their assets and
true net worth were as prominent as their talent and popularity. Sadly,
hip-hop is no different. And while hip-hop has produced a handful of
millionaires, they are like a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean when
compared to the many rappers who, like most Black people, are living
“show-to-show” and “check-to-check.”
Over the years I've had many personal acquaintances who were in the
hip-hop music industry with hit records, global popularity and a healthy
fan base. It always puzzled me the way they struggled financially;
worse than some school teachers or sanitation workers. I watched many of
them try and maintain the image of the rich and powerful, yet couldn't
pay their taxes, child support and in some cases their rent. Popular
hip-hop magazine, XXL, recently published an article titled “Hard Times”
about fiscal problems rappers face that the hip-hop community doesn't
like to talk about. Truth is, most rappers are broke; owing more money
to their record labels than they have in their bank accounts. As a
matter of fact, most contracts for rappers are just as horrible as those
for entertainers in other genres where artists sell millions and
receive pennies while the record companies make out like fat rats. Who
are the owners of these major record companies? Forgive me if I sound
monotonous, but they just happen to be Jewish.
There have been many examples of independent success in hip-hop's
music industry such as Master P (No Limit Records), James Prince
(Rap-a-Lot Records), Luther Campbell (2 Live Records) and others.
However, because none of these outfits had the power to control their
own distribution they were eventually left at the mercy of those who
did. Who are the owners and controllers of the distribution channels
that deliver rap music to the world? You guessed it. They just happen to
be Jewish. Cash Money/Young Money Records, a popular imprint from New
Orleans who houses artists Lil' Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and others
reportedly has one of the last lucrative independent deals in existence,
but still do not control their own distribution. So even those
Black-owned rap labels who appear to be the front-runners are in a
dangerous position.
This opinion editorial is not an effort to weaken the powerful image
of our great hip-hop artists. I love hip-hop. I am part of the hip-hop
generation. This is why I felt the need to write this article. Hip-hop
is leading the youth of the world, but if our artists are under the
inordinate control of those who control their careers then where will
the youth of the world be led? I'm only trying to, as they say in the
streets, “keep it 100.” It's time for rappers to become just as tough
and assertive in the boardroom as they are in the recording booth.
IOL | Johannesburg
- The South African government and President Jacob Zuma have been
caught in the middle of an international wrangle over as much as R2
trillion in US dollars as well as hundreds of tons of gold and at least
six million carats of diamonds in assets belonging to the people of
Libya.
What could be the world’s largest cash pile is stored in palettes at
seven heavily guarded warehouses and bunkers in secret locations between
Joburg and Pretoria.
The Libyan billions have led to a Hawks investigation into possible
violation of exchange controls as well as international interests from
the UN and the US.
It has also led to heightened interest in the local and international
intelligence community as well as the criminal underworld.
Those interested in the Libyan loot include several high-ranking ANC
politicians, several business leaders, a former high court judge and a
number of private companies.
The R2-trillion held in warehouses is separate from several other
billions, believed to be in excess of R260 billion, held legally in four
banks in South Africa.
Other legal assets include hotels in Joburg and Cape Town.
The Sunday Independent has seen official South African government
documents which confirm that at least $179bn in US dollars is kept,
illegally, in storage facilities across Gauteng.
Soon after Muammar Gaddafi’s death in October 2011, the new Libyan
government embarked on a large-scale mission to recover legal assets in
South Africa, the rest of Africa, the US and Europe.
In South Africa, the focus of the Libyans has been on assets brought into the country legally as well as illegally.
thedailybeast | In August 2014, Erik Iskander Goaied formed a company to locate what
he claims is $150 billion or more in U.S. currency, gold, diamonds, and
other assets. This is the loot that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had
squirreled away outside of Libya
before he was deposed in 2011. Goaied claims to have a contract with
the Libyan government that lets him keep 10 percent of what he finds,
which means that if he locates even a fraction of the money he insists
is sitting in bank accounts, as well as warehouses, around the world, he
will instantly become a billionaire.
Lots of people have been
looking for this money. The Libyan government has tried for years to
repatriate assets Gaddafi either deposited or laundered outside the
country. Investigators say they think they’ve found much of it already
in banks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and
those funds have been frozen.
Goaied, for his part, insists he
found $12.5 billion of Gaddafi’s cash sitting on pallets in a
Johannesburg airplane hangar a few years ago. And that, Goaied says, is
just a taste of what he can find and bring home to a country that’s been
wracked by civil war and decades of Gaddafi’s corruption. His finder’s
fee will be a comparative pittance.
Libya sorely needs the cash.
The country is arguably a failed state, with rival factions in the
capital, Tripoli, and the eastern city of Tobruk vying for control.
Whoever ends up running Libya will need billions to rebuild the country.
If Goaied were legitimate, he could be Libya’s next hero.
globalresearch |
Gaddafi
was not only the leader of Libya, he had ambitions to free Africa from
the nefarious fangs of the west. Despite being called a dictator and
despot by the west – they do that to anyone who doesn’t submit to
Washington’s rules – he was very much liked by Libyans, by his people.
He had a more than 80% approvalrate by the Libyan people. Libya’s oil
fortune has allowed him to create a social system in his country where
everybody would benefit from their land’s riches – free health care,
free education, including scholarships abroad, modern infrastructure,
top-notch technology in medicine, and more.
Russia TV24: Why the gold dinar would be unacceptable for the western leaders? Or not?
PK: Yes, the gold Dinar was totally
unacceptable for western leaders. It might have devastated the US dollar
hegemony, as well as Europe’s control over the African economy – which
is nothing less than neo-colonization of Africa – in many ways worse
than what happened for the past 400 or 800 years of murderous military
colonization and oppression -which is by the way still ongoing, just
more discretely.
Look
at the Ivory Coast 2010 presidential elections. Theirarguably
‘unelected’ President, Alassane Ouattara (picture on the right), was in a
tie with the people’s candidate, Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo said he won the
election and asked for a recount which was denied. Ouattara, a former
IMF staff, was pushed in, basically by ‘recommendation’ of the IMF. He
is the darling of the neoliberal international financial institutions –
and is leading a neocon government – an economy at the service of
western corporations. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they got.
Modern colonization is well alive and thriving. I call this a financial
coup, instigated by foreign financial institutions.
Mr. Laurent Gbagbo
was accused of rape, murder and other atrocities and immediately
transferred to the International Criminal Court (sic-sic) – what
justice? – in The Hague, where he was waiting five years for a trial
which started on 28 January 2016 and is ongoing. On 15 May 2017, it was
extended at the Prosecutor’s request to collect further evidence. This
by all likelihood is just a farce to dupe the public into believing that
he is getting a fair trial. Already in hearings in 2014, Gbagbo was
found guilty of all charges, including murder, rape and other crimes
against humanity. Like Slobodan Milošević, he is an
inconvenient prisoner, or worse would he be as a free man. So, he will
most likely be locked away – and one day commit ‘suicide’ or die from a
‘heart attack’. The classic. That’s how the west does away with
potential witnesses of their atrocious crimes. End of story. Nobody
barks, because the ‘free world’has been made believe by the western
presstitute media that these people are inhuman tyrants. That’s
precisely what the western media’s headlines proclaimed about Muammar
Gaddafi: Death of a Tyrant.
On the other hand, in 2015, Ouattara was “reelected by a landslide”.
That’s what western media say. Colonization under African ‘leadership’.
He is protected by the French army.
—
Back to Libya: Take the specific case of France and West and Central
Africa. The French Central Bank, the Banque de France, backs the West
and Central African Monetary Union’s currency, the CFA franc. The West
African Central Bank, for example, is covered, i.e. controlled, by about
70% of the Banque de France. Banque de France has an almost total
control over the economy of its former West African colonies. No wonder,
Sarkozy, a murderer and war criminal – sorry, it must be said, backed
Hillary’s – also a murderer and war criminal, push for NATO to destroy
the country and kill thousands of Libyans, including Libya’s leader,
Muammar Gaddafi. Hillary’s infamous words: ‘We came we saw he died’. And that she said shamelessly, jokingly, laughing. Would the term human being still apply to such a monster?
Russia TV24: What countries are mostly
interested in the Libyan recovery and why? What are the chances for the
economy of Libya to be repaired?
PK:Well, if anybody should be interested
in Libya’s recovery it would be first the Libyans who are still living
in Libya, because they are now living in a Libya of chaos and high
crime, of mafia-economics, of tyranny by gang leadership. They certainly
have an interest to return to normalcy. North African neighboring
countries should also be interested in restoring order and rebuilding
Libya’s infrastructure and economy, stopping the spill-over of high
crime and terrorism. They have lost an important trading partner.
Of course, the rest of Africa, who have suffered from continuous
colonization of the west, after Gaddafi’s demise, should also be
interested in reestablishing Libya. They know,it will never be the same
Libya that was there to help their economy, to help them prying loose
from the western boots and fangs of exploitation.
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