Doubt is a weapon loaded with the future

 
Doubt is a weapon loaded with the futureThe totalitarian illusions of capitalism, at the end of the twentieth century, soon became nightmares of extermination, denial, racism and misery.

By: Juan Alberto Sánchez Marín (*)

Economy, politics and media: the fearsome trilogy of power. Three hollow beatitudes and a single true evil: the order that disrupts the perimeters that it nests. The doctrine that turns spurious what it touches.

Just, perhaps, takes advantage of the ability of people and societies to dissect with scalpel the peculiar accounts of power and identify without magnifying glass the codes of each political and media narrative.

The totalitarian illusions of capitalism, at the end of the twentieth century, soon became nightmares of extermination, denial, racism and misery. The glory was hardly glorious for a few, and, on the other hand, it was an anguish for the vast and growing swathes of population of developed countries, middle classes in decline, lower classes always below. And, of course, it was an ordeal for the excluded inhabitants of peripheral countries.

At the top of the global fair, the big media of the big capitals played a central role. They promoted each and every one of those itinerant events of possessing and possessed plutocracy: the philosophical (postmodernity), the ideological (the debacle of communism), the historical (the end of an endless story), the economic (capitalism to its wide, neoliberalism throws at the ready) and the politician (the specific government of a few pillos as the ideal democracy).

INDISOCIABLE

These media continue to play a decisive role in the consequent social despair, that of the present, strengthened with the digital hatching, internet and other magnificent and chilling technologies that encourage hatred of one another, exacerbate fears and prejudices, or tempt with departures of emergency that they give to the abusive and dictatorial regimes of the extreme right, of Trump and his accomplices to Bolsonaro and his, for example.

Thomas Piketty (2013), the French fashion economist makes five years, includes the media as one of the sectors (along with education, health and culture) in which the main organizational and property structures someday do not they will have a lot to do “with the polar paradigms of purely private capital (such as the model of the joint stock company, totally in the hands of its shareholders) or of purely public capital (with an equally top down logic [from top to bottom] in whose in case the government sovereignly decides what investment to make) ”.

The organizational and capital forms that combine both "polar paradigms" to varying degrees have been an exercise in neoliberalism, and are the first step in the absolute deregulation or modeling of companies that, rather than mixed, are a mixifori. Tricks of the establishment, and of the corporate and financial autocracy as a tangible body of democracy invariably in the making.

Surely, as Piketty argues, new types of organization and governance will emerge later. Even, let's accept it, new forms of collective intervention will probably break down and there may be true accounting and financial transparency. But it is laborious that this in itself translates into economic transparency and democratic control of capital, as it indicates towards the end of Capital in the 21st century.

No, as long as state policies and the orientation of those sectors mentioned continue to be borne by those who defend cape and sword (that is, with juicy pay) the interests of capitalism that they should control. The revolving doors on the cusp. When the problem is consubstantial, even the most significant transformations are no longer accessory.

Never, as long as the big media, the extended networks and the technologies in permanent progress do not build the other necessary stories (to which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie refers), but the parallel realities that mislead the course of societies. Above all, when they believe them in blind faith and inhabit them for life.

The fact is that the elites in the West, since ancient Greece, two and a half millennia ago, maintain representative democracy at the waist, as well as their fateful derivations and harmonizations, thanks to the control of government positions and the mafia struts of blackmail , dependence, cohesion above and the splitting of peoples and citizens below.

 It is clear that economic and political developments are inseparable. It was like that in the preceding centuries, it will be until who knows when. And, for some years and with a momentum on the rise, another component appears linked: the media. The tripod of power where the elements are already indissoluble and act in unison in the configuration of the unbalanced world we occupy, and that has nothing fictitious.

INVENTORS

The oppressors have invented all the mechanisms of domination and empires. History indicates that they have done relatively well, but, also, it is conclusive to show that everyone, with their commands, armies, riches, colonizations, atrocities, finally, have a fixed term, and that a greater conviction of imperial perpetuity The decline is closer. The thousand-year-old Nazi empire lasted twelve.

Wars, weather, pests, accumulated debts, fiscal excesses, of course, are factors that contribute to the sunset, but no calamity as definitive as tranquility. Eternal Rome did not collapse with the screams or the looting of the Visigoth barbarian Alaric because he had been on the ground for a long time. The collapse accompanied the triumphant celebrations of wars that were not won, the deep social inequalities that nobody attended, and the sharp and continuing financial depressions similar to recent stock market speculations.

The oppressors forge the contraptions with which they project power, and neither are true. The shaman became an essential guide, devising them to make the tribe who tamed the forces of nature believe; the Greek Ayax used Olympic gods and legendary heroes to convince the elusive royal subjects of his reign over kings; the liberal flooded democracy with institutions and political speeches, and thus gave body to the word and could dispense with meaning. A "meaningless language," the Englishman Thomas Hobbes resoundingly stated in his Leviathan.

The powers of our time, how could they not convince us that the sneak pact between a few cretins from three or four developed countries is the valid and full international consensus? Or how are they not going to make us believe that the global financial architecture is not their lordship and that almost all (minus one percent, obviously, that they are) of the island and mainland inhabitants are not the slaves of their plantation monetary?

IRON SCRIPT

We parade along the tightrope of uncertainty, between the particular "passion for the real" of Badiou and the inexorable "desert of the real" of Žižek. We debate between the bland intimacy of the isolated room and the insubstantial sociality of virtual environments. We deny belonging to the noisy street, and in impertinence there is no reaffirmation. We are freedoms figured in the computer universes, which so many times are nothing but worlds reflecting the particular noisy street that surrounds us.

From the global collective to the local community, freedom roams premeditated; intelligence is excessively correct; the imagination as another imagery of common sense. In the convergence of uniform concerns, reality is sanded and achieves a lustrous finish, which dazzles and, simultaneously, disorients us.

The contents disguise the intense persuasion. The arguments overflow with inaccurate figures and biased data, erroneous citations, incorrect allusions, deliberate discredit. Once there were spaces with their own identity and defined genres: the news contained news; the debate was the controversy; The soap opera was the melodrama.

From the Lumière, Flaherty or Dziga Vértov to Chris Marker, Agnès Varda or Santiago Alvarez, the documentary gravitated with some fortitude around what the eye of the camera saw, at least, more than on the nonexistent. Neither formalities are required.

Entertainment attracts attachments, with its drawer fees attracts us. The first newsletters activate the social suggestion they think. Value judgments abound without toning nor are they. The likelihood of the speech is adjusted and rationed for an audience predisposed to admit it without a squeak from the nursery.

Not accepting it would imply that provocative form of courage that is critical thinking. "Even an opinion is a kind of action" (Greene, 1955), reflects the narrative character of The Immovable American, journalist otherwise. To manifest, which is to resist and refute, that is, to act, which is to face. And it hurts the fall from delirium thought of as Paradise: the comfort of the disengaged put in trouble by the stir of knowing, that is, of asking, and, in the violent profile, of doubting.

 Something that does not conform to the residual aesthetics of the show in which we live; the heroes, wicked, and only the antihero may redeem us. All as part of a staging that does not end, in which the script of the events to occur is iron.

OTHER VOICES, OTHER AREAS

That is why the emergence of other possibilities, different perspectives from new viewpoints, is due and valuable; contrast the monochrome view, counteract the vision back division. Because it is not only the false sense or the exposure without context, the altered image or the voice that someone distorted, but the same decomposed daily life, which is assumed, superficially, as authentic, and, in the essential and more dangerous, as unquestionable.

We speak of a mediocre subsistence, petty, even more serious, assumed at ease, or with resignation or indifference, by the injured societies and by the individuals who will be immolated. When that happens, and more than we think happens, the story told by the winners is not reviewed, the thesis lacks antithesis. Prominent criminals conform to the law. The speculation is conclusive; the evidence, circumstantial.

Let's forget the independence of independent media. They cannot be if they point you in a sensible way to the confrontation of hegemonic discourse. They are dependent on atypical but elementary postulates, which are called equity, justice, honesty. Never of their simulated environments.

Let us skip objectivity, that phlegmatically Anglo-Saxon urban myth that American journalism turned mathematical obsession; universities, nonsense, and the Creole media another hypocrisy. And now it's just one more of the pieces of the trap.

Let's put aside the idea that alternative means are alternative. The dominant media differ, which are also gross and irrelevant. Substantially powerful communication lies lying in the sun in neighborhoods, communities, towns, with their jargon, powers and daring. That is why she fears it so much; for this reason it is denied, fragmented: incommunicado.

The media at the service of elite supremacies, although underpinned by advanced technologies and undeniable penetration capabilities, warn of fragility, and in the main supply lies at the same time its greatest lack: the fallacy.

The big media lie because they require it. They are not the instruments of communication that they claim to be nor hold the social purpose that according to the illusory jurisprudence they should have. They demand the lie because they are the flank of influential interests. The excessiveness contains an advertisement; A serenity intensifies the propaganda.

They are committed to financial, monetary, commercial, strategic and geostrategic, political and geopolitical weavings, and have been subject to underlying logic of control and manipulation. They are another compartment of the eaten frame of the system.

FROM THE SOUTH

The intended seriousness does not face what it looks like or the story of objectivity with third deception; Nor is the impartiality of the imposter countered by fervent preaching or allegations. Before any of the tricks, the truth is useless, which, like any statement, implies its refusal.

Just, perhaps, takes advantage of the ability of people and societies to dissect with scalpel the peculiar accounts of power and identify without magnifying glass the codes of each political and media narrative. We must interpret what is coming and the background: the character, the props and ties of the event. Then, it will show the disposition (the attitudes) to transform it. Marx's warnings cannot be set aside.

Economy, politics and media: the fearsome trilogy of power. Three hollow beatitudes and a single true evil: the order that disrupts the perimeters that it nests. The doctrine that turns spurious what it touches.

Between the equanimity shaken and the coherence in patches, the words free of corporate pennants, the communication without flags of attachment become essential: a collective and popular expression, contrary and disputing, anticipated to distrust the certainty that is repeated, but willing to give The face of hope without mystification.

A strange world in which fairies do not love, but doubts, about what is heard and seen, is professed and learned. Another transparent region, not as defined as the high metaphysical valley of Anahuac for which Don Alfonso Reyes asked. But, after all, Carlos Fuentes (1958), his compatriot and proselyte, replied: «We were touched here. What can we do. In the most transparent region of the air".

Another one in the midst of the insufficient ones that resist imperial ambitions, colonial charges, American depredation, where villages with houses with mirror walls once dreamed by José Arcadio Buendía will no longer be feasible, and that we now inhabit in the supernatural resonance of the South.

'Can't Feel My Heart': Caged Migrant Children Face PTSD Report Warns

'Can't Feel My Heart': Caged Migrant Children Face PTSD Report Warns
Children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment, heightened feelings of anxiety and loss as a result of their unexpected separation from their parents.

Migrant children separated from their parents and caged as part of the United States government's “zero-tolerance policy” in the U.S.-Mexico border are victims of post-traumatic stress and other serious mental health problems, according to a report released Wednesday by the inspector general's office for the Department of Health and Human Services.

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According to program directors and mental health clinicians, children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment, heightened feelings of anxiety and loss as a result of their unexpected separation from their parents after their arrival in the U.S. in contrast to those who were not separated.

The findings are based on interviews conducted in August and September of 2018 with roughly 100 mental health clinicians and directors at dozens of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facilities. During the interviews, there were almost 9,000 children in shelters; nearly 85 percent were 13-17 in age, 13 percent were 6-12 and two percent were infants to age five.

And although experiences of "intense trauma" were common for those children in care even before their arrival to the U.S., such as being a victim of abuse or witnessing a murder, the report noted, those separated from their parents by U.S. authorities went on to experience greater emotional and mental pain.

The report explains that some children expressed acute grief that caused them to cry inconsolably, others didn't grasp the situation of why they were separated from their parents and suffered elevated levels of mental distress.


A child of Auschwitz remembers...

Their psychological anguish sometimes manifested physically. "You get a lot of 'my chest hurts,' even though everything is fine [medically]," said one medical director quoted in the report, adding that  "children describe symptoms of emotional pain such as 'every heartbeat hurts’ or I can't feel my heart’.”

Program directors and mental health clinicians reported that children who believed their parents had abandoned them were angry and confused, which caused them to inflict harm on others and themselves.

Pictures drawn by migrant children at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas. Photo: American Academy of Pediatrics.

Other children expressed feelings of fear or guilt and became concerned for their parents' and own welfare, as in one case a seven-year-old boy thought his father was killed and he would be next, the report detailed.

Child psychiatrist Gilbert Kliman, who interviewed dozens of migrant children in shelters after zero-tolerance took effect, told Frontline and AP that the kids can move on with their lives after reunifying with parents but may never get over it.

As children, they have night terrors, separation anxiety, trouble concentrating. As they become adults, they face greater risks of mental and physical challenges, from depression to cancer.

The watchdog also said the longer children were in custody, the more their mental health deteriorated, and it recommended minimizing that time. It also suggested creating better mental health care options and hiring more trained staff.

The average number of days for children in the custody of ORR hit a high of 93 in November 2018 and dropped to 43 by April 2019.

However, the Trump administration presented on Aug. 21 a new rule that allows officials to detain migrant families indefinitely while a court considers whether to grant them asylum, abolishing a previous 20-day limit in the long-standing Flores Settlement agreement.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus warned the rule if implemented, will have devastating long-term consequences for children and their families.

"Flores protect migrant children from indefinite detention and inhumane conditions," tweeted the Caucus. "Now, the Trump admin is trying to tear it up and indefinitely imprison families. This will cause irreparable harm to children."

The Facilities Are Also Culprits for Their Mental and Physical Deterioration

 In June, a legal team from the University of California's, Davis Immigration Law Clinic visited a Border Patrol center in Texas near the city of El Paso where more than 250 migrant children, including teens, infants, and toddlers, were locked up in "horrendous" conditions.

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, who co-directs the Davis Immigration Law Clinic.

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The experts were left aghast when faced with scenes of children enduring traumatic and dangerous situations, lacking basic human needs including adequate food and water as well as medical care.

“When the children walked into the conference room, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. They were sick. They were coughing. They had runny noses. They were dirty, and they immediately started to describe the level of hunger that they were experiencing,” she stated, explaining that "children told us they were being fed nothing but the same meals three times a day, and they weren’t really meals."

All of the children detained in the facility come from Central American countries, mainly from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. They came to the U.S. with a relative from whom they have been separated, and half of them have their parents in the U.S.

The report came the same week the Trump administration claimed in federal court that the government is not required to provide toothbrushes, soap or beds to children detained at the border and others reports found similar conditions at several migration jails.

For Andrea Pitzer, author and international expert on the history of concentration camps, Donald Trump’s administration has revived the concentration camp system in the U.S. and the situation is a “vast, cruel experiment on the backs of children,” Kliman warned.

The West Oppressed the Third World for So Long That It Became Third World Itself

The West Oppressed the Third World for So Long That It Became Third World Itself

Many have already noticed: The U.S. really, really doesn’t feel like the world leader, or even as a ‘first world country’. Of course, I write that sarcastically, as I detest expressions like ‘first world’, and the ‘third world’. But readers know what I mean.

Bridges, subways, inner cities, everything is crumbling, falling apart. When I used to live in New York City, more than two decades ago, returning from Japan was shocking: the US felt like a poor, deprived country, full of problems, misery, of confused and depressed people, homeless individuals; in short - desperados. Now, I feel the same when I land in the US after spending some time in China.

And it gets much worse. What the West used to accuse the Soviet Union of, is now actually clearly detectable in the United States and the United Kingdom themselves: surveillance is at every step, these days; in New York, London, Sydney, and even in the countryside. Every move a person makes, every purchase, every computer click, is registered; somewhere, somehow. And this monitoring is, mostly, not even illegal.

Speech is controlled by political correctness. Someone behind the scenes decides what is acceptable and what is not, what is desirable or not, and even what is permissible. You make one ‘mistake’ and you are out; from the teaching positions at the universities, or from the media outlets.

In such conditions, humor cannot thrive, and satire dies. It is not unlike religious fundamentalism: you get destroyed if you ‘offend’. In such circumstances, writers cannot write ground-breaking novels, because true novels offend by definition, and always push the boundaries. As a result, almost nobody reads novels, anymore.

Only toothless, ‘controlled humor’ is permitted. No punches can be administered intuitively. Everything has to be calculated in advance. No ‘outrageous’ political fiction can pass the ‘invisible censorship’ in the West (and so, novels as a form have almost died). Those who read in Russian or Chinese languages know perfectly well, that the fiction in Russia and China, is much more provocative and avant-garde.

In the West, poetry has died, too. And so has philosophy, which has been reduced to a boring, stale and indigestible academic discipline.

While Hollywood and the mass media keep producing, relentlessly, all sorts of highly insulting and stereotypical racist junk (mainly against the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Latinos and others), great writers and filmmakers who want to ridicule the Western regime and its structure, have already been silenced. You can only humiliate non-Westerners in a way that is approved (again: somewhere, somehow), but God forbid, you dare to criticize the pro-Western elites who are ruining their countries on behalf of London and Washington, in the Gulf, Southeast Asia or Africa – that would be ‘patronizing’ and ‘racist’. A great arrangement for the Empire and its servants, isn’t it?

We all know what has happened to Julian Assange, and to Edward Snowden. In the West, people are disappearing, getting arrested, censored. Millions are losing jobs: in the media, publishing houses, and in the film studios. The Cold War era appears to be relatively ‘tolerant’, compared to what is taking place now.

Social media constantly represses ‘uncomfortable’ individuals, ‘unacceptable’ media outlets, and too ‘unorthodox’ thoughts.

Travel has become a boot camp. This is where they break you. Move through the Western airports and you will encounter the vulgar, insulting ‘securistan’. Now, you are not just expected to pull down your pants if ordered, or take off your shoes, or throw away all your bottles containing liquids: you are expected to smile, to grin brightly, like an idiot. You are supposed to show how eager, how cooperative you are: to answer loudly, looking straight into the eyes of your tormentors. If you get humiliated, still, be polite. If you want to fly, show that you are enjoying this stupid and useless humiliation, administered for one and only reason: to break you, to make you pathetic and submissive. To teach you where you really belong. Or else. Or else! We all know what will happen if you refuse to ‘cooperate’.

Now, ‘they’ will use double-speak to let you know that all this is for your own good. It will not be pronounced, but you would be made to sense it: ‘you are being protected from those horrible Third World monsters, madmen, perverts.’ And of course, from Putin, from the Chinese Communists, from the butcher Maduro, from Assad, or from the Iranian Shi’a fanatics.

The regime is fighting for you, it cares for you, it is protecting you.

 Sure, if you live in the UK or the US, the chances are that you are deep in debt, depressed and with no prospects for the future. Maybe your children are hungry, maybe, in the US, you cannot afford the medical care. Most likely, you cannot afford housing in your own city. Perhaps you are forced to have two or three jobs.

But at least, you know that your ‘wise leaders’ in the White House, Congress, Pentagon and security agencies, are working day and night, protecting you from countless conspiracies, from vicious attacks from abroad, and from those evil Chinese and Russians, who are busy building progressive and egalitarian societies.

Lucky you!

Except: something does not add up here.

For years and decades, you were told how free you were. And how oppressed, unfree, those against whom you are being protected, are.

You were told how rich you are, and how miserable “the others” were.

To stop those deprived and deranged hordes, some serious measures had to be applied. A right-wing death-squad in some Central American or Southeast Asian country had to be trained in US military camps; a thoroughly absolutist and corrupt monarch had to be supported and pampered; a military fascist coup had to be arranged. Millions raped, tens of thousands of corpses. Not pretty at all, but you know… necessary. For your own good, North American or European citizens; for your own good…. Even for the good of the country that we designated for our ‘liberation’.

Few dissidents in the West have been protesting, for decades. No one has been paying much attention to them. Most of them became ‘unemployable’, and were silenced through misery and the inability to pay their basic bills.

But suddenly…

What happened, suddenly? Because something really happened…

The Empire got tired of plundering the non-Western parts of the world, exclusively.

Well-conditioned, brainwashed and scared, the Western public began to get treated with the same spite, as people in the plundered and miserable parts of the world. Well, not yet, not exactly. There are still some essential differences, but the trend is definitely there.

The Western public cannot do too much to protect itself, really. The regime knows everything about everybody: it spies on every citizen: where he or she walks, what he or she eats, drives, flies, watches, consumes, reads. There are no secrets, anymore.

You are an atheist? No need to ‘confess’. You are confessing every minute, with each and every computer click, by pressing the remote control button, or by shopping on Amazon.

Is Big Brother watching? Oh no; now there is much more detailed surveillance. Big Brother is watching, recording and analyzing.

General Pinochet of Chile used to brag that without his knowledge, no leaf could ever move. The old, fascist scumbag was bragging; exaggerating. On the other hand, Western rulers say nothing, but they clearly know what they are doing. Without their knowledge, nothing moves and nobody moves.

Arriving from China, from Russia or Cuba, the first thing that strikes me is how disciplined, obedient and scared, the Europeans and North Americans really are. They subconsciously know that they are being controlled and cannot do anything about it.

When trains get delayed or cancelled, they sheepishly murmur half-audible curses. Their medical benefits get reduced; they accept, or quietly commit suicide. Their public infrastructure crumbles; they say nothing, remembering the ‘good old days’.

Why is it that I feel hope, I laugh with the people, in Mexico City, Johannesburg or Beijing? Why is there so much warmth in the geographically cold cities of Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka? Why are the people of London, Paris, Long Angeles looking so concerned, so depressed?

Some historically poor countries are on the rise. And the people there show appreciation for every tiny improvement. Nothing is more beautiful than optimism.

The West has fought the so-called “third world” for many, long decades; oppressing it, tormenting it, looting it, violating its people. It prevented them from choosing their own governments. Now it has gone overboard: it is attempting to control and to oppress the entire world, including its own citizens.

As various countries all over the world are getting back onto their feet, resisting pressure from Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, people in the West are increasingly getting treated by their governments with the spite that used to be reserved exclusively for the “under-developed nations” (yes, another disgusting expression).

Clearly, the West has “learnt from itself”.

While countries like Russia, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Iran and others are surging forward, many previously rich colonialist and neo-colonialist empires are now beginning to resemble the “Third World”.

These days, it is very sad being a writer in New York City or in London. Just as it is frightening to be poor. Or being different. All over the world, the roles are being reversed.

America’s opioid catastrophe has lessons for us all, about greed and racial division

America’s opioid catastrophe has lessons for us all, about greed and racial division

Kenan Malik: Big pharma saw huge profits in medicalising the social stress of the white working class

We’ll build a wall to keep the damn drugs out.” So insisted Donald Trump at a rally last year to launch the White House’s initiative to stop opioid abuse. For Trump, at the heart of America’s opioid crisis lie open borders, illegal immigrants and foreign drug cartels.

Brad Beckworth, an Oklahoma state attorney, takes a different view. The drugs to which so many in the state are addicted, he told a court in July, “didn’t get here from drug cartels. They got here from one cartel: the pharmaceutical industry cartel.”

The court agreed. Last week, it ordered the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $572m in compensation for running a “false and dangerous” sales campaign that had created an unprecedented epidemic of addiction in Oklahoma.

    Foreign drug cartels have certainly exploited the opioid epidemic… But they are relatively minor players

America’s opioid crisis is stark. Both the use and abuse of prescription opioids – painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin – have, since the 1990s, rocketed. Last year, 211m opioid prescriptions were handed out in the US. At its peak in 2012, that figure stood at 255m – 82 prescriptions for every 100 residents. In 2016, a fifth of all deaths among Americans aged 24 to 35 were due to opioids. Opioid-caused deaths have been a major factor in life expectancy falling for three years in a row.

Foreign drug cartels have certainly exploited the epidemic, smuggling in heroin and Chinese-made opioids such as fentanyl. But they are relatively minor players in comparison with the US drug companies that, between 2006 and 2012, saturated America with 76bn oxycodone and hydrocodone pills alone. It resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths. In 2016, one million Americans were using heroin. Eleven times as many misused prescription opioids, more than 2 million of whom had become addicted; 80% of new heroin users started out misusing prescription painkillers. Insofar as drug cartels are playing a role in the opioid crisis, it is because pharmaceutical companies created a market for them.

The relationship between big pharma and US doctors can only be described as corrupt. Official figures show that last year 627,000 doctors received between them more than $2.1bn in what are called “general payments” – payments unrelated to research. The total paid to doctors and hospitals by drug companies was more than $9bn. Unsurprisingly, the greater the payments, the more willing doctors were to prescribe opioids.

Big pharma’s relationship with lawmakers is equally rotten. Between 2006 and 2015, drug companies and their advocate organisations spent more than $880m on lobbying. They contributed to the campaigns of more than 7,000 candidates for state-level offices. And they secretly funded “independent” patient groups to advocate on their behalf.

    The answer to poverty, social dislocation and political disillusionment became opioid pills

There is, however, more to the story of the opioid crisis than venal drug companies. It is an indictment of a health system built on profit, a political perspective that encourages the medicalisation of social problems and a racialised “war on drugs”.

The roots of the crisis lie in the 1980s and Ronald Reagan’s policy of corporate deregulation. Drug companies, led by Purdue Pharma, the corporation owned by the Mortimer and Raymond branches of the Sackler family, took advantage with aggressive marketing campaigns to convince doctors and regulators of the need for, and the safety of, a new class of opioid analgesics. Drugs previously used primarily for patients with cancer or a terminal illness became a routine prescription.

It wasn’t just marketing skills that drove this shift. This was an era of deindustrialisation, mass job losses and the breakdown of communities, particularly in white rural areas such as West Virginia, and in the rust belt of the midwest, many of the areas that later became “Trump country”. These communities were targeted by drug companies. The answer to poverty, social dislocation and political disillusionment became opioid pills. Between 1991 and 2011, painkiller prescriptions in the US tripled.

The problem was exacerbated by America’s insurance-based healthcare system. Insurance companies insist on the cheapest solution to any problem. And pills are cheap. In Japan, doctors treat acute pain with opioids in 47% of cases; in America, the figure is 97%.

Then there is the question of race. It’s no coincidence that the opioid epidemic has devastated largely white, working-class and rural communities. It was a conscious strategy by pharmaceutical companies to avoid the taint of being associated with inner cities, black communities and illicit drug use.



Deregulation took place at the same time as the launch of the “war on drugs”, a war waged against foreign drug dealers and within African American urban communities. The consequence was more intensive and repressive policing, greater social inequality, mass incarceration of black men – and a social narrative about “drug-infested ghettos”.

David Herzberg, author of Happy Pills in America, a cultural history of America’s relationship to drugs, observes that for more than a century there have been parallel discussions about drug use. Psychoactive drugs used largely by middle-class whites are classified as “therapeutic” and “medicines” and subject to light-touch regulation. Those used by non-whites and the poor are deemed “illegal” and sanctions are enforced through harsh policing. Trump’s rhetoric about foreign drug cartels and illegal immigrants is merely the latest expression of the historic tendency to view the problem of drugs through a racial lens. And while blacks have been the main victims of this, the opioid crisis shows how a racist perspective can affect poor whites, too.

It is tempting to see the opioid crisis as a peculiarly American issue. There are features of the story that are unique to America. But many aspects, from the tendency to treat social issues as medical problems to the racialisation of the “war on drugs”, have wider relevance too, not least to Britain.

Perhaps the most important lesson to learn is that turning health into a money-making machine inevitably has tragic consequences. Supporters of the free market, and of its extension into areas such as health, suggest that privatised services are more efficient. The reality is that when the primary goal is profit, not social need, corruption gets built into the system. The actions of companies such as Purdue and Johnson & Johnson are contemptible. They also follow the logic of the market.

• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
Topics

    Opioids crisis
    Opinion

Canada’s Trudeau Government Uses RCMP Officers To Stifle Dissent

Canada’s Trudeau Government Uses RCMP Officers To Stifle Dissent
Author/Activist Yves Engler describes RCMP intimidation tactics after he heckled Canada's Transport Minister Marc Garneau
 
Story Transcript: DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Montreal, Canada.

As Canada heads into its next federal election, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet increasingly face criticism from activists for their government’s climate policies, as well as their government’s complicity in human rights abuses by foreign states and other actors. Two particularly controversial aspects of Trudeau’s foreign policy are Canada’s sale of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia and its unqualified support of Israel. The Trudeau government continues to allow the sale of Canadian-made weaponized personnel carriers to the Saudis, and is doing so despite compelling evidence that those weapons have been used in the Saudi-led coalition’s devastating war on Yemen. And last year, only days after an Israeli sniper shot Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani in Gaza, and Israeli forces gunned down dozens of unarmed Palestinians in the Great March of Return, the Trudeau government entered into an enhanced trade agreement with Israel.

How has the Trudeau government reacted to activists’ efforts to draw attention to these abuses or this disregard of human rights? Well, Justin Trudeau’s government appears to have called in the Mounties. Evidence is accumulating that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, are using their powers as law enforcement officials to silence and intimidate activists who are vocally critical of the Trudeau government.

One such activist is Yves Engler, a frequent guest on The Real News. Yves is a Canadian commentator and author of several books. His most recent one is Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. He joins us today from Montreal. Thanks for coming back on The Real News, Yves.

YVES ENGLER: Thanks for having me.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Yves, before we discuss the RCMP’s interactions with you, let’s talk about the tactic of direct action. This past week you authored an article entitled, “Time for Direct Action International Solidarity.” Could you summarize for us the view that you expressed in that article?

YVES ENGLER: Yeah, basically people need to be challenging liberal politicians on Canada’s pro-corporate, pro-empire foreign policy. And the way to do so, one of the ways to do so, is to attend press conferences they are giving, attend public speeches they are doing, and make your voice heard. That’s what a number of us have been trying to do in recent months.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Now, one of the ministers during the past few months whom you and other activists have disrupted, is Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau. Minister Garneau, as you know, is a former astronaut and for that reason is to some Canadians a hero. Why have you and other activists chosen to disrupt Marc Garneau?

YVES ENGLER: Part of it is that he, with regards to Palestinian rights, he is somebody who has been a staunch anti-Palestinian political figure. With regards to the Saudi arms deal, he has in House of Commons responded to questions by the opposition saying that there’s a review of arm sales to Saudi Arabia. From a strictly logistical standpoint, he is a minister here in Montreal, so he’s accessible. We’re able to actually find his meetings. He holds lots of press conferences around here. He also happens to be of high-profile, so there tends to be a bit more media when he’s giving events.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Let’s watch, Yves, two video clips of recent interactions you had with Minister Garneau. The first clip is one of you challenging Minister Garneau on his support for Israel at a recent press conference at the Port of Montreal. In the interest of full disclosure for our audience, I shot this video and also participated in that disruption. Let’s have a look at what happened.

YVES ENGLER: He doesn’t allow – justifies Israeli violence. Your part of a government signed a free trade agreement that accepts Israeli products from the occupied West Bank. You’re part of a government that’s justifying the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, that’s justifying the racist laws that Israel’s signing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed of yourself and your government. Shame on you. Free Palestine! Viva la Palestine! [inaudible]

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Yves, the second clip is of you challenging Minister Garneau on Canada’s sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. This interaction happened on a sidewalk in Montreal after a recent speaking engagement by the minister. Again, in the interest of disclosure, I was the person who shot this video and accompanied you during your interactions with Minister Garneau.

YVES ENGLER: [crosstalk] On October 26th—

MINISTER MARC GARNEAU: I’m sorry.

YVES ENGLER: In October 26th, in the House of Commons—

MINISTER MARC GARNEAU: I won’t be answering your question.

YVES ENGLER: [crosstalk] You said that the Saudi arms review—

YVES ENGLER: So you said that the arms deal’s under review. My question is, it’s almost a year later, where’s that review at?

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Yves, two days ago, following these recent peaceful disruptions of Minister Garneau, you received some surprise visitors at your home in Montreal. Could you please explain to us what happened?

YVES ENGLER: Yeah, two RCMP agents showed up at the door. I wasn’t home. My partner, Bianca, thought it was a package, and so buzzed them up. They walked a few feet into the stairway in the place. Bianca looked down and was very surprised to see two large men in suits. They asked for me. She said I wasn’t there. They then asked who she was. The next day, they returned. The same two officers returned. I wasn’t, again, home. Bianca didn’t want to interact with them. And so she just tried to avoid them, act like she wasn’t there, but they actually stayed for multiple minutes. They rang the doorbell multiple times. To the point where people across the street, at a restaurant across the street, who can actually see into our place from across the street, started looking, so she popped her head down. They were peering in, in the window at the bottom of the stairway. And so, she finally opened the door and they complained that I didn’t call them, even though they never left a phone number.

I see this as a pretty transparent effort to intimidate me out of directly challenging liberal ministers. I think especially in the context of moving towards an election, where there are more and more public events that the politicians are going to be at, and our interventions over the past six months and especially the last multiple weeks have been, I think, frustrating or annoying for the politicians. How I see it is they sent the RCMP to my house to—They didn’t call me. They didn’t email me. They didn’t Facebook message me. They didn’t Skype me to set up a meeting or to have a conversation. They decided to show up at the door, which I think is just an effort to intimidate.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Do you have any idea how they got your home address, Yves?

YVES ENGLER: I don’t. I don’t know how they got my home address.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: I understand that subsequent to their second visit, you actually did have a phone conversation with one of the officers. Can you tell us about that exchange?

YVES ENGLER: Yeah. I just called the officer to say, “What do you want?” He said he wanted to talk about interrupting Marc Garneau. I said I was not interested in talking about interrupting Marc Garneau. He tried to then continue on with the conversation. I just told him, “I told you I’m not interested in talking about this.” I told him, “Okay, I’m going to hang up now,” and I hung up.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: These two visits to your home are not the only interactions you’ve had with the RCMP over the last few weeks, I understand. Could you tell us about some of the interactions you’ve had with RCMP personnel at events where you either did engage in disruption of a speech by a minister of the Trudeau government, or attempted to do so?

YVES ENGLER: Yeah. About 10 days ago at the Bonaventure Hotel, as I was entering the hotel where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was giving a speech on Canadian foreign policy, I was called out by an RCMP officer before even entering the hotel. The officer followed me in the elevator down to the lobby floor of the hotel, through the lobby, a long lobby, down escalators to the bottom floor where the event was taking place, and then introduced me to hotel security, which was essentially trying to get the hotel security to say that I wasn’t welcome. The RCMP does not have the right to say I’m not welcome in that hotel, but obviously as a representative of the hotel, the private security does have that right. And so, the private security, basically the RCMP uses it being a private venue to block my ability to see the Prime Minister’s speech or to ask the Prime Minister a question.

Then I had another, subsequent, the day before the RCMP showed up at my house, at a press conference that Mr. Garneau was giving, I entered the press conference that was already underway a little bit, I entered a bit late. I sat down at the press conference. Immediately, an RCMP officer sat next to me. Then at the end of the press conference when I got up to ask a question, the RCMP officer immediately tried to block me. I have on video him asking the security of the building to ask if I was welcome in that building. The security of the building tells the police officer that, no, I’m not welcome. Then the RCMP officer uses that as a justification for physically removing me from the room and threatening to arrest me. Again, I was just a – I’m an author asking a question at a press conference, but here was the RCMP using the building security and the fact that it’s a private building to undercut my free speech rights or my ability to function as an author and a journalist.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: We’ve been speaking to Canadian author and activist Yves Engler about recent efforts of Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police to prevent him from expressing his dissent for government policies at public speaking events. We’ll certainly continue to follow this story and we thank you, Yves, for coming back on The Real News.

YVES ENGLER: Thanks a lot for having me.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting from Montreal, Canada.