Addiction, depression and the war on drugs

Another great read. The way American goes about things is so wrong.

Phil Ebersole's Blog

Hat tip to Pete’s Politics and Variety.

Johann Hari is the author of Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015) and Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions (2018)

In the first book, he argued that drug addiction is not mainly a chemical dependency; it is an escape from pain and misery.  In the second, he argued that depression is not mainly a result of a chemical imbalance, it is a reaction to pain and misery.

The answer to both addiction and depression, Hari believes, is to enable people to fulfill their basic needs, material and psychological.

Late last year he was in Brazil, promoting the Portuguese-language version of Lost Connections, and did a wide-ranging interview with Glenn Greenwald about addiction, depression and drug policy.

The most interesting part, to me, starts at about the 38…

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White, Like Thee

A MUST-READ.

Mock Paper Scissors

I really hoped that we had the Covington Catholic School story behind us, I really did and then I saw:

Sitting down with Nicholas Sandmann – the student at the center of the protest controversy at the Lincoln Memorial. Airs tomorrow on @TODAYshowpic.twitter.com/oSb8ljunQN

— Savannah Guthrie (@SavannahGuthrie) January 22, 2019

…and seconds later, I saw:

EXCLUSIVE on the new #LauraIngrahamPodcast — the Covington Catholic students threatened by the leftist internet mob will be meeting with @realDonaldTrump at the White House as early as tomorrow. @iTunes@PodcastOne

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) January 22, 2019

…and now I feel the whole, monstrous thing is back in our faces, again. Lord of the Flies was a documentary.

Look, the thing I have learned as a White, Entitled, Male is that I DO NOT get to decide what is racist, classist, or sexist. When someone in those communities tell me that something…

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For the young who want to

Marge Piercy is one of my very favorite writers.

Peedeel's Blog

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favourably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a…

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an unfamiliar world

Peedeel's Blog

My basic view of the world is that right next to the world we live in, the one we’re all familiar with, is a world we know nothing about, an unfamiliar world that exists concurrently with our own. The structure of that world, and its meaning, can’t be explained in words. But the fact is that it’s there, and sometimes we catch a glimpse of it, just by chance — like when a flash of lightning illuminates our surroundings for an instant.

Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami on Parallel Realities
Interview with Deborah Treisman
The New Yorker 27 August 2018

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What does the US want all these bases for?

WHAT. THE.

Phil Ebersole's Blog

Click to enlarge

This map appeared in Smithsonian Magazine’s current issue, and represents a conservative estimate of the extent of U.S. military power.

It shows the U.S. military has a presence in 80 countries.  But Nick Turse, a reporter whose work is published in TomDispatch, was told that the total is really “more than 160” countries.

He said it’s impossible to get an exact number of the bases, the names of the countries in which they are located or even the number of countries in which they’re located.  It wouldn’t surprise me if there is no single individual in the Pentagon who actually has a complete list.

“Because we have been conservative in our estimates, U.S. efforts to combat terrorism abroad are likely more extensive than this map shows,” the Smithsonian writers stated.  “Even so, the vast reach evident here may prompt Americans to ask whether the war on terror…

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Writing

Peedeel's Blog

Writing is in some way being able to sit down the next day and go through everything you wanted to say, finding the right words, giving shape to the images, and linking them to feelings and thoughts. It isn’t exactly like a social conversation because you aren’t giving information in the usual sense of the word or flirting or persuading anyone of anything or proving a point; it’s more that you are revealing something whole in the form of a character, a city, a moment, an image seen in a flash out of a character’s eyes. It’s being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just…

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Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Speech: The Speech Of the Anti-Trump

A must-read.

Padre Steve's World: Official Home of the Anti-Chaps

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Fifty-eight years ago today President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man far different than President Trump gave his farewell address to the nation. While most people only quote his warning about the military industrial complex, certainly well worth noting, most Americans have never read or watched the speech in its entirety.

Now Eisenhower was no saint. He did not always make the right choices, and he made mistakes. At the same time he retained a decided sense of humanity, goodness, and humility that make him a far better President than some would credit him.

Eisenhower served his country for half a century in peace and war, he combined a military career of over forty years with eight years as President during an immense time of change and crisis. He was born before the first flight of the Wright Brothers, and by the time he left office…

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