Op-Ed

The Twilight of the Secret Government is a new book by ex CIA Kevin Shipp and Kent Heckenlively. Here is the description as per the website at the publisher, Skyhorse publishing.
 

Watch Palast on the Thom Hartmann Show today, November 24, at 10 AM Pacific.

Forgive me, but I have to send a little thank you to Jeffrey Epstein. The latest cache of the predator’s memos have finally brought down Lawrence Summers, once President of Harvard University, once US Secretary of the Treasury and the dark eminence behind banking deregulation and mass home foreclosures. And worse.

The newly released emails revealed that Epstein agreed to be Summers’ “wing man,” advising Summers on how to use coercive power to maneuver his female protégé into the sack.

I should write, “The Honorable” Larry Summers. He keeps his “Hon.” honorific as a former Cabinet member, though I wonder how honored Larry’s wife feels having to read the icky Epstein emails in the New York Times.

Summers was also a frequent flyer on Air Epstein.

Those of us whose memories trace back to the afternoon of November 22, 1963, remember exactly where we were, to the moment, when we learned President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Sister Justicia, the Principal of Cleveland’s St. John Cantius Catholic High School called me from the study hall I was monitoring and shared the shocking news that President Kennedy had been shot. I suggested we link the school’s public address system to a network radio broadcast, so that the entire student body would know.

It had been a little more than a week since I had joined my senior classmates on a trip to Washington, D.C., where we excitedly witnessed, on November 11, 1963, President Kennedy laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier.

It was the closest I had come to the President who spoke to my soul , and I am sure to the soul of many young Americans when, in his Inaugural Speech he said:

“Let the word go forth, from this time and place, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”.

Just because patients don’t understand the opaque layers/players behind the drug procurement affordability crisis, doesn’t mean that lawmakers do, say experts--which is part of the problem.

The bigger problem, though, is that “Big Pharma” (increasingly “BioPharma”) is a silent funder of two thirds of Congress members, 57 percent of US doctors, hospitals, medical schools and medical practices and notably almost all news outlets thanks to “ask your doctor” ads. (See: “Chronic” diseases requiring large molecule biologic$.) No wonder some call drugmakers the fourth branch of government.

The government/medical/news capture is why many don’t know about prescription drug alternative funding programs that work directly with employer-sponsored health plans outside traditional channels to bring down costs.

It occurs to me that “giving birth to the future” isn’t simply a metaphor.

I say this as I continue wrestling with infinity – that is to say, working on the book project I began a decade ago: a book about creating peace. My exploration into all this goes beyond politics, global or otherwise. There are countless ways that humanity needs to change and, indeed, is changing. For instance:

“For much of the 20th century, the childbirth process in this country didn’t invite a lot of active participation from parents. Mothers in labor were given heavy doses of drugs, and fathers were banished to waiting rooms.”

Kratom. 

As the Mayo Clinic describes it: “Kratom is a supplement that is sold as an energy booster, mood lifter, pain reliever and remedy for the symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal. But the truth about kratom is not so simple. And there are safety problems linked to its use.”

The article continues: “Kratom is an herbal extract that comes from the trees of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna speciosa. The tree grows in Southeast Asia.” However, “some kratom sellers add more of the active ingredient than kratom naturally has….Depending on the amount of active ingredient in the product…taking kratom can be harmful…The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned people not to use kratom because of possible harm it can cause.”

A key aspect of the kratom issue is something called 7-OH. It makes up a tiny portion of the kratom leaf—less than 1 percent—but can be, and is being, synthesized to a strength of many, many times its potency in the plant. 

Ohio lawmakers will vote this Wednesday October 29 on
Ohio House Bill 188 which calls for investing $10 million of
our tax money into Israeli bond. That means if the bill
passes, Ohio taxpayers would have effectively loaned
Israel $10 to use how it sees fit.

Therefore, I want my Ohio State Rep. to vote against Ohio
House bill 188 that could be used to fund the current
Israeli genocide with my tax money.

I should note here that on November 21, 2024, the
International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants
for two senior Israeli officials, Benjamin Netanyahu, the
Crime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the former War
Minister of Israel, for the war crime of starvation as a
method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of
murder.

The Republicans who control state government in Ohio
have a deep political and ideological affinity for Israel.
Ohio politicians regularly get free propaganda trips to

Israel paid by the Israeli lobby to meet with Israeli officials
and offer statements of support for Israel.

Israel is the only place in the world where you can steal human organs of another person without being punished or considered a criminal. The act of stealing from enemy's dead or wounded combatants is considered a war crime under both customary international law and international treaties. The Fourth Hague Convention specifically bans the looting of the corpse of an enemy soldier or the wounded left on the battlefield. The law also applies to non-combatant populations.

It has been documented in the last 20 years in both Palestinian and Israeli media and in court proceedings that Israeli Occupation Forces are operating a human butcher shop, at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces routinely kidnap Palestinians at checkpoints, raids, hospital wards, or exhume them from cemeteries in order to harvest their organs for profit inside and outside of Israel, all without the family’s knowledge.

President Trump and two of his former officials (AT Jeff Session and senior advisor Jared Kushner) all lied under oath and get off scot-free. Meanwhile, it is public knowledge that many convicts in the US —and I'm not exaggerating—are innocent or receive unjust and harsh sentences. That makes a mockery of the US justice system. Having lived in the good old' USA for nearly half a century, I can tell you without a doubt that justice in America is not colorblind.

Let me explain why: 

* On October 19, 2022, a federal judge said that Trump lied under oath about voter fraud claims in the 2020 election. Add to that his involvement on Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol was "a terror attack” that resulted in five people dead.

Lying under oath, know as perjury, can result in serious penalties, including fines and imprisonment for up to five years.

* On August 23, 2022, the FBI raided former president Trump's Florida home and discover more than 700 pages of stolen top-secret U.S. documents that were illegally stored.

Shouts and honking horns . . . and a country being born?

Hey, hey, ho, ho . . . I don’t know. it’s been four days ago, as I write, that the second No Kings rally was held across the country – across the world. I can still hear the blaring horns; they sounded like music. Something fused and bubbled in the blare, a sense of connection and shared values, that isn’t going away. That was the uniqueness of this rally, or so I hope and feel at some deep place in my heart.

I attended the rally, with my sister and two friends, in Appleton, Wisconsin, where I now live – one of about 2,700 such rallies across the country. The several thousand people packing the streets of downtown Appleton were part of the 7 million people throughout the country who felt called upon to – shall we say? – join the future. This is my takeaway. This is why I’m writing about the rally today. Yeah, it’s over. But it’s not “done.”

No faux king way!