Daily Archives: September 16, 2017

Opinion – The U.S. Opioid Epidemic | Council on Foreign Relations

September 16, 2017 By in Business Administration, Defense Policy, Education, Fiscal Policy, Healthcare, Immigration, People, Politics Leave a comment
National Security Agency seal

National Security Agency seal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s an outstanding, must-read update on the US Opioid Epidemic. It reports that opioid addiction in the United States has reached epidemic proportions, threatening not only public health but economic output and national security.

Source: The U.S. Opioid Epidemic | Council on Foreign Relations

For me, this was a balanced article but it probably didn’t go far enough in looking at the barriers.

Opioids are regular major news, ranking with weather disasters and terrorist attacks in major news outlets. This week, for example, the NYT reported ‘Google Sets Limits on Addiction Treatment Ads, City Safety‘.

The viewpoint on the ‘Opioid Epidemic’ is vastly different, depending upon the stakeholder perspective, including addicts and their families, the $35 Billion addiction treatment industry, the big ‘pharma’ companies, the drug cartels, big corporates, public healthcare, and the political classes.

If you read the Council on Foreign Relations article very carefully, you will perhaps see that the dots are not properly joined up. Clearly, this is a strategic problem affecting public health, economic output and national security, so a strategic solution is required. The initiative has to come from Trump’s administration but so far, he’s seems way behind the curve.

Drug abuse is by far the largest cause of death for America’s under fifties. It particularly hits the white poorly education, unskilled or semi-skilled who have lost job and security opportunities in modern America. Perhaps, part of Trump’s dilemma depends upon who’s got his ear this week, the nationalists or the globalists?

Thoughts?

Does the US Military “Own the Weather”? “Weaponizing the Weather” as an Instrument of Modern Warfare? | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization – Via John Gelmini

September 16, 2017 By in Defense Policy, Foreign Policy, Politics Leave a comment
English: Map of the US state of Alaska relativ...

English: Map of the US state of Alaska relative to the rest of the country using a constant projection. A vector reproduction of Map of USA AK full.png based on the public domain location map from http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/reference.html. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This fascinating article from Global Research came via John Gelmini.

It reports that environmental modification techniques have been available to the US military for more than half a century. It argues that the issue has been amply documented and should be part of the climate change debate. However, it stresses that there is no evidence of “weather modification” in relation to recent climatic disturbances (hurricanes), but at the same time there is no firm evidence that this climate instability is attributable to greenhouse gas emissions. The broad thrust of the article looks at the evidence, concluding that the wider issue of environmental modification techniques must be addressed and carefully analyzed.

Source: Does the US Military “Own the Weather”? “Weaponizing the Weather” as an Instrument of Modern Warfare? | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

Over the years, John Gelmini has frequently cited weather warfare and I’ve repeatedly asked him for evidence.

I’m still a bit skeptical. I’m a social scientist rather than a physical one and struggle with the detail of the evidence. For me the boundaries between experimentation and weaponization are not clear and I’d like to see any robust evidence of deployment. Nevertheless, having read the article, I accept the potential risk of weaponizing the weather  but am still suspicious:

However, as a post script, I thought I’d dig a bit into ‘Global Research‘. The hyperlink provides some questionable evidence from RationalWiki whose objectives are:

  1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
  2. Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
  3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
  4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

The RationalWiki link on HAARP as a potential weapon explores the mainstream evidence and the more speculative theories.

Thoughts?