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Head-on Collusion

The following two headlines collided head-on in this week's news-lanes:

Trump Demands Taliban Curb Violence Before Meaningful Talks

US Airstrike Kills 15 Civilians in W. Afghanistan

And so, this week's Award for Cognitive Dissonance goes (once again) to Donald John Trump.

The Candidates' Cavalcade of Campaign Come-ons

It's not enough to hit the campaign trail if you're a contender in this year's Presidential Race. Nope, you've got to connect with the people. In our electronically connected, always-on culture, it's necessary to do more than hit the stumps, rattle the hustings, and push your merch. Candidates need to reach out with tantalizing promises of personal contact.

This frequently takes the form of invitations to take an all-expenses-paid jaunt to join the candidate at a critical campaign rally or even a presidential debate. Operators are standing by.

Elizabeth Warren has stepped out in front of the crowd by offering to make personal phone calls to as many of her followers as possible.

Warren also sends out personal thank-you notes to supporters. (Full disclosure: After I sent Warren a letter with some hand-drawn anti-Trump cartoons, she responded with an autographed reply that ended with the P.S: "Persist!") 

But I wasn't ready for the invitation I just received from Tulsi Gabbard's campaign staff. Gabbard is a political "lone fox" — an insider and outsider at the same time. A combat veteran and a military officer, Gabbard is also a strident anti-war campaigner. And, she's a Hawaiian surf-girl who likes to cut a wave. Still, I wasn't prepared for the offer that came my way last week. In exchange for a small contribution, my name would be placed in a hopper for a chance to be flown to the chilly slopes of Cranmore Mountain, New Hampshire, to join Tulsi for an afternoon of politics and free-style snowboarding! 

Who Is the World's Leading Terrorist? 

The US State Department repeatedly calls Iran "the leading state sponsor of terrorism" but after the US drone-assassination-murder of a top Iranian military leader, Iran fired back by calling Donald Trump "a terrorist in a suit." 

Who is the world's greatest terrorist state? Iran? The US? Saudi Arabia? Many critics in countries around the world would answer the question by simply pointing to US history. 

As author and World Beyond War founder David Swanson notes in his essay US Wars and Hostile Actions: "There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world." As Swanson points out: 

Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 84 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries. The United States is responsible for the deaths of 5 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and over 1 million just since 2003 in Iraq. Since 2001, the United States has been systematically . . . bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, not to mention the Philippines." 

In Afghanistan, Washington's 40-year-old conflict (which began with the CIA's financing of the Taliban to attack occupying Russian troops) has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Despite $2 trillion spent on nearly 20 years of occupation, US troops continue to die in this "endless war." 

In Somalia, covert US airstrikes have killed as many as 1,000 people and ravaged farms, homes, and livelihoods of survivors forced to become refugees. In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi war has created "the world's largest humanitarian crisis." Meanwhile, Donald Trump threatens to trigger potential nuclear conflicts with North Korea and Iran. GMAFB. 

For another overview of America's bloody history, check out "Fighting for Freedom: America's Abiding Myth" which notes that: 

Over the long course of US history, fewer than 14% of America’s days have been marked by peace. The defining characteristic of our nation’s foreign policy for 86% of our existence would appear to be a bellicose penchant for military intervention. As of 2006, there were 192 member states in the United Nations. Incredibly enough, over the past two centuries, the United State has attacked, invaded, policed, overthrown or occupied 62 of them. 

Planet War: Exposing US Military Bases Worldwide  

The War Machine, an amazing 3D visualization of Washington's globe-spanning network of military bases, has recently been launched and is currently undergoing upgrades that should make it an unparalleled tool to understanding why the United States is seen as an imperial force. The War Machine reveals, at a glance, what prompted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s admonition: "My country . . . is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." 

Hamilton's Blast from the Past Nails Trump 

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, writing a few years after he penned Federalist 68, was moved to offer the following warning after serving in the administration of our first president, George Washington. Hamilton's uncanny cautionary note is being cited with increasing frequency—and alarm—in the Era of Trump: 

The truth unquestionably is that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. .  .  . When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’ 

ICYMI: Why Donald Trump Must Be Removed 

Impreachment! Adam Schiff's Resoundingly Redundant Rebuke to Trump's Double-talk 

The Economics of Addiction 

America's mainstream economy might best be described as an exercise in Addictionomics—an economic system built on the production and promotion of physically and mentally addictive goods and services. 

Consider this short-list of our leading sources of commercial profit: alcohol, tobacco, sugar-based fast-food, salt-laden-snacks, opioid painkillers, and dopamine-exciting electronic devices. 

During a recent visit to my doctor, I noticed a sign on the wall that warned: "Alcohol is involved in up to 30% of adult hospital visits." (And that doesn't include alcohol-related traffic accidents.) 

So here's a thought: How about calling for an "addiction tax" on alcohol and all the other mainstream consumer products that are causing so much physical and mental misery? 

Is Opioid Oligarch Kapoor Kaput? 

In May 2019, John Kapoor, the billionaire founder of Insys Therapeutics, was found guilty—along with other top Insys execs—of conspiring to use bribes and kickbacks to encourage doctors to prescribed large amounts of his company's highly addictive and potentially fatal fentanyl spray to patients who didn't need it. More than 8,000 people lost their lives to service Kapoor's greed. 

On January 23, Kapoor was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison. That may sound severe for a 76-year-old criminal but the prosecution had asked for a 15-year sentence. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 700,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses between1999-2017. In response, on April 5, 2018, Donald Trump suggested drug dealers should be put to death. 

As a Smithereens item noted in November 2019, while Hollywood celebrities were facing jail time for spending their own cash to scam their kids into top-ranked colleges, "there has been no justice for the head of one of America's true crime families—Raymond R. Sackler, the Opioid Oligarch behind the deadly marketing of the addictive pain-killer, Oxy-Contin." 

As far back as 2007, the government accused Sackler's Purdue Pharma of lying to doctors about the dangers of Oxy-Contin and bribing doctors to over-prescribed the drug. Sackler and a lot of doctors grew rich as the body count grew higher. 

Raymond Sackler will avoid Trump's death-penalty threat, having died of natural causes in July 2017. Meanwhile, Sackler's family continued to prosper from Purdue Pharma's overdose problem. In September 2019, the Sackler family was caught using a Swiss bank account to transfer $1 billion in unreported wire-transfers. With around $13 billion in assets, the Sacklers are ranked among the country's 20 richest families and are also major political donors.