Wednesday PM ~ thefrontpagecover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
 Opioid Ruling Won't Solve the Addiction Crisis
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Nate Jackson   
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Pentagon Evaluating How 
To Expand Indo-Pacific Presence
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By Ben Werner
news.usni.org } ~ The Pentagon is evaluating how to expand its Indo-Pacific region presence, including freedom of navigation operations and adding new bases... Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Tuesday morning. Speaking to the student body of the U.S. Naval War College, Esper told the group of mostly lieutenant commanders and commanders that the challenges posed by Russia and China require new strategies and a commitment to the Indo-Pacific region. “We must be present in the region. Not everywhere, but in the key locations,” Esper said during his first speech as defense secretary in an academic setting. “This means looking at how we expand our basing locations, investing more time and resources in certain regions we haven’t been to in the past. It also means we have to continue to fly, to sail and to operate wherever international rules allow to preserve freedom of navigation for both military and commercial operations, whether it’s the Strait of Hormuz or the Malacca Strait.” Esper said his first major trip as secretary was a tour of the Indo-Pacific region because of its significance. The  Department of Defense Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, released in June, highlights the region’s significance and provides a synopsis of the Pentagon’s plans. “The department is reinforcing its commitment to established alliances and partnerships, while also expanding and deepening relationships with new partners who share our respect for sovereignty, fair and reciprocal trade, and the rule of law,” the strategy states...
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In U.S. Standoff With Tehran, 
‘the Iranian People Are the Real Losers’
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by Adam Kredo 
freebeacon.com } ~ As the United States and Iran continue to trade barbs in a tense international standoff, leading lawmakers are starting to pressure Iranian leaders to consent to new nuclear negotiations... that could help ease American sanctions and provide relief for the Iranian people, who have been hardest hit by the international community's economic penalties. After President Donald Trump extended an olive branch to Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif for talks regarding the country's ongoing work on nuclear weapons and support for regional terrorist organizations, Iranian leaders rejected the offer to hold good faith talks. Iran's unwillingness to consent to new negotiations is the strongest sign to date that it has no interest in escaping the Trump administration's toughest sanctions, which have isolated the regime, but also have caused economic headache for average Iranian citizens. Trump administration sanctions on Iran have blocked some $10 billion in revenue to Tehran since last November. Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is one of several leading lawmakers who views Tehran as using its own citizens as pawns in an increasingly lethal standoff with the United States and other Western nations. "The Iranian people are the real losers, as they are being used as pawns by a despotic and corrupt ruling class," Banks told the Washington Free Beacon. "They are frustrated they have no political or social freedoms, and they suffer under systematic government corruption that takes food out of the mouths of its citizens."...  https://freebeacon.com/national-security/in-u-s-standoff-with-tehran-the-iranian-people-are-the-real-losers/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=16111e595c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_27_08_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-16111e595c-45611665   
Coast Guard a Continuing 
‘Force Multiplier’ with Navy in Global Missions
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By Gidget Fuentes
news.usni.org } ~ The Coast Guard’s ability to fold into the U.S. joint armed forces to protect America’s interests globally has “never been more relevant,”... a senior Coast Guard officer in the Pacific region told a Navy audience. The Coast Guard, “always a law enforcement agency but also a military force, is well-positioned to do home military security missions and homeland defense missions and defense operations around the world, right alongside their Navy brothers and sisters,” said Rear Adm. Dave Throop, deputy commander of the Alameda, Calif.-based U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area. The 50,000-member Coast Guard “is a force multiplier for our nation,” Throop told the Surface Navy Association West Symposium Thursday at Naval Base San Diego. The Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security and has a wide range of law enforcement missions under federal law that the Department of Defense’s armed services don’t have. “To ensure maximum application of those authorities, the Coast Guard and Navy partner up to ensure that law enforcement actions can be taken, no matter what the situation,” Throop said. “We bring to the fight unique authorities, dozens of bilateral and multilateral agreements with partner nations, unique capabilities from law enforcement all the way up until and to include lethal force,” he said. “It includes short-notice maritime response, taking control of a ship in a contested environment with an opposing force.” This month, for example, the USS Tornado (PC-14), a 107-foot Cyclone-class patrol ship, is patrolling the waters of the Eastern Pacific, a major sea corridor for illicit, covert drug-smuggling operations. On board with Navy personnel is a Coast Guard detachment, a 10-member tactical law enforcement team stationed in San Diego, Throop said. “It’s that team effort that we’re able to get after some of these problems.” Across the Pacific, the Coast Guard’s focus and the commandant’s “ready-relevant-responsive” guiding principles “have never been more important than they are today,” Throop told the audience. “In the far reaches of the world, presence equals influence – and that applies to the Western Pacific, the Arctic and the Antarctic.”...
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Palestinians: Why Allow Facts
to Get in the Way?
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by Bassam Tawil
gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Rina Shnerb, the 17-year-old teenager who was killed in a Palestinian terror attack in the West Bank on August 23, was born and raised in the Israeli city of Lod... She had never lived in a settlement in the West Bank. Moreover, she never served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or any security agency, as she was too young to be recruited for service. Rina was killed in a bomb explosion when she and her family were visiting the popular Ein Buvin spring near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her father, Eitan, and brother, Dvir, were injured when an explosive device planted near the spring went off. Why are the details about Rina's hometown and her age worth mentioning? Because the Palestinian media has again engaged in a campaign of fabrications and lies to justify the terror attack and the murder of an innocent Jewish teenager. Lod is not a settlement. It is a city located in the Central District of Israel, and even has an Arab population of 30%. The Palestinian media, however, does not feel comfortable reporting the facts about the terror attack. In the eyes of Palestinian new editors and journalists, Rina was a "settler" and a "soldier." By using such terms, the Palestinians are trying to create the impression that she was not an innocent teenager, but a Jew who lived in a settlement and was even serving in the IDF. This type of misinformation is aimed at sending a message that Rina was a legitimate target because she was one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and an active member of the IDF. The Palestinian public, for its part, is often quick to endorse such lies to justify terror attacks against Jews. What is particularly disturbing is that even the media controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas chose to spread the lie that the murdered teenager was a "settler" and "soldier."...
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The Real Risks of Allowing
Terrorist Safe Havens
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By Hal Brands
bloomberg.com } ~ For nearly two decades, the fundamental premise of America's counterterrorism strategy has been to prevent extremist groups from establishing territorial safe havens spaces... in which they train and plot, free from interference. With a prospective U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the horizon, General David Petraeus  warned recently that a precipitate pullout could allow al-Qaeda or the Islamic State to rebuild "a terrorist platform." A growing number of experts have argued, however, that a preoccupation with safe havens is really an unhealthy obsession that produces unnecessary — and unending — military crusades. So, do safe havens matter or not? The truth is that denying such sanctuaries is critical to effective counterterrorism, so long as some key caveats and distinctions are kept in mind. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the fight against terrorism has been, in substantial measure, a fight against safe havens. President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. would make no distinctions between terrorists and the nations that harbored them, the thinking being that access to territorial sanctuaries allowed groups like Qaeda to organize, operate and grow. Since then, this idea has driven U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere. Even President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to end America’s Middle Eastern wars, invoked the danger of safe havens in deciding to surge additional troops into Afghanistan in 2017. “A hasty withdrawal,” he said, “would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill.” Critics of U.S. strategy, however, are skeptical. They argue that safe havens are largely irrelevant, given that much of the direct planning and preparation for 9/11 and other major attacks occurred in Western cities rather than failed states. They claim that efforts to deny terrorist safe havens are counterproductive, because those endeavors drain  American resources and incite the hatred of Muslim populations. They thus conclude that the threat of safe havens can be downplayed, if not ignored. These arguments are alluring, but wrong. We know, on the basis of more than 20 years of history, that safe havens matter enormously — although their impact sometimes manifests itself in complicated and indirect ways. Indeed, the major reason the safe havens issue remains so contested is that critics of U.S. strategy often miss the complex causal chain by which these sanctuaries enable terrorist attacks...  https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-27/the-real-risks-of-allowing-terrorist-safe-havens?srnd=opinion&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTmprd05XVTVaREk1Tm1JNSIsInQiOiJHalhZZm9NXC9rbXh4NDl5T1c5WnBSdFRmUXFPT1hqUjR2ZUg2MktwMm9pTXpEQ3ZieTRQRmNYM0RWOFZQQU9aQnVMSDB4cDZuNUZRZ1lkSFMydzBwTjZVRHo2eFFJTW9Pc1NqOXMrT0xxT05kY1hERDNVS2ptWXlvWk0rNkxSREUifQ%3D%3D  
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Opioid Ruling Won't Solve the Addiction Crisis
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Nate Jackson:  In a landmark ruling Monday, Johnson & Johnson was ordered by an Oklahoma judge to pay $572 million in damages over its role in the opioid-addiction crisis in Oklahoma alone. Judge Thad Balkman agreed with Oklahoma GOP Attorney General Mike Hunter that Johnson & Johnson’s “misleading marketing and promotion of opioids created a nuisance” in the state, finding the company liable under more flexible public-nuisance laws rather than product-liability ones. Never mind that Johnson & Johnson accounts for about 1% of Oklahoma’s opioid market. Or that government regulators approved the drugs for sale only through government-approved pharmacies.

Oklahoma has also already reached an $85 million settlement with Teva and a $270 million settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over opioids. But litigation is widespread. The Wall Street Journal notes, “More than 2,000 states and municipalities have sued opioid makers and distributors in federal litigation in Ohio. Another 250 or so have filed lawsuits in state courts where they hope local judges and juries will provide a more sympathetic audience.”

For years now, the U.S. has found itself facing a true opioid crisis. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying of overdoses each year — in numbers exceeding those killed in car crashes or by so-called “gun violence” (homicide and suicide, combined).

Who’s to blame? Two years ago, our Arnold Ahlert wrote:

The foundations of our current opioid crisis were laid back in the late 1990s. Pharmaceutical companies, doctors and government were all involved. Drug companies misleadingly promoted opioids to treat chronic pain, and government officials at different levels bought into that promotion, requiring insurance policies to cover the drugs. Government also pushed doctors to prescribe opioids via a “Pain as the Fifth Vital Sign” campaign run in the 1990s and 2000s.

Pharmaceutical companies are popular bogeymen. The compelling narrative is that faceless corporations are grossly profiting from the suffering of sick people. There is also serious cronyism afoot as “Big Pharma” tries to rig government regulation and interference in its favor and works in cahoots with insurance companies to determine what patient gets which drug and for how much.

But that’s a black-and-white view of a gray issue. American pharmaceutical companies are also doing the lion’s share of worldwide drug development. Research and development isn’t free, and the relatively few drugs that do make it to market after years of work and government hoops must cover resources put into the many drugs that don’t make it to market. Prices are controlled in other countries, so unfortunately the American consumer bears the brunt of the cost.

As for addicts, well, it’s complicated. A patient who takes more than the prescribed dosage only to find himself addicted and seeking the next high bears responsibility for himself. Doctors who prescribe 30 days of opioids when three days and some Ibuprofen will do likewise own some blame. And now we have tort lawyers and power-grabbing attorneys general swooping in to increase their money or power as a result of a crisis. Bankrupting America’s pharmaceutical companies won’t put a dent in the profits of your local meth or fentanyl dealer.

On a final note, it’s worth mentioning that $200 million from Purdue’s settlement will go to the National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University, where AG Hunter’s son is employed. Another $60 million went to trial lawyers. Again, the word cronyism comes to mind.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65078?mailing_id=4494&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4494&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

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