I have written before about how getting rid of poppy production has been a major goal of US policymakers in Afghanistan. They have targeted a large number of airstrikes in the province of Helmand, seen as the major source of poppy cultivation. This is due to the belief among US policymakers that the production of heroin is the main source of income for the Taliban and that if farmers could be persuaded to grow other crops, then the Taliban would be weakened and then eliminated. Experts have cast doubts on this theory, arguing that the Taliban is not that dependent on income from the heroin trade and that there are sound economic reasons for Afghan farmers to grow poppies that have little to do with larger political issues.
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Jordan Smith writes about how an unlikely alliance of a man and the lawyer who defended wife’s killer is working to expose prosecutorial misconduct in Orange County, California. Paul Wilson was initially very antagonistic towards the public defender for his dogged defense of Scott Dekraai, the man who murdered his wife Christy in the deadliest mass shooting in the county.
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I use the word ‘elite’ often to describe people and groups. What I mean by the word is quite straightforward: It means the people at the very top of any given category. So one can have elite musicians, athletes, actors, and so on. In the political context, it means those who are at the top of the socio-economic spectrum. As someone who follows the evolution of words, I have been interested in how the term is now being transformed into a pejorative description of knowledgeable people who have certain progressive political views. So scientists who raise the alarm about the climate are now dismissed as part of the ‘elite’.
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Today comes news about how the US has attempted to thwart moves to encourage breastfeeding of children around the world. The benefits of breastfeeding are so obvious and well established that pretty much everyone expected this to be a no-brainer that would pass easily. But they did not anticipate that the US does not behave like a civilized nation.

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

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Jim Jordan is an extreme right wing Republican (redundant, I know) congressman from Ohio who has shown himself to be a true and loyal Trumper. He has now been accused by multiple people that when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, he ignored rampant sexual abuse and harassment that included, but was not limited to, the wrestling team’s doctor who routinely molested the wrestlers, requiring them undress and fondling their genitals even if they came for something like a sprained thumb.
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