*Killing in the Name of Mammon | The Power of Silence | Discipline or Decadence

“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.” – Chaim Potok

“Silence is a source of Great Strength.” – Lao Tzu

Killing in the Name of Mammon: In yesterday’s edition of Daily Pnut, we mentioned several takes on writing a book—whether you should, or shouldn’t, and whether you can believe some of those glowing Amazon reviews. Maybe just leave that decision alone for now, and read this author’s newest offering: Beth Macy’s “Dopesick. Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America.” Here’s why. Beth Macy is a superlative investigative reporter/narrative author. This is her third book, and for anyone who’s read “Factory Man” or “Vineland” you know what we mean. Jessica Bruder teaches narrative writing at the Columbia School of Journalism. She calls Macy’s new book a “gripping feat of reporting, research and synthesis…a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.”

Macy was a reporter at the Roanoke Times in Virginia for 20 years. She began investigating the drug epidemic in 2012 as it was creeping into the suburbs around her adopted hometown. She writes: “If I could retrace the epidemic as it shape-shifted across the spine of the Appalachians, roughly paralleling I-81 as it fanned out from the coalfields and crept north up the Shenandoah Valley, I could understand how prescription pill and heroin abuse was allowed to fester, moving quietly and stealthily across this country, cloaked in stigma and shame.”

What she learns is the opioid epidemic is a man-made disaster, one permitted to exist and proliferate simply because it is incredibly lucrative. In 2000, an alarmed doctor in a tiny town in Lee County, Virginia, began writing Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin. Since the drug’s introduction in 1996, Dr. Art Van Zee had watched how it had ravaged the state’s poorest county where he’d practiced almost 25 years. People were dying, and Van Zee begged Purdue to investigate what was happening in Lee County and elsewhere. But his and others’ warnings were ignored at every stage by powerful figures participating in what would become, as Bruder labels it, “a for-profit slaughter.”

Emperor Xi Faces Criticism: A law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Xu Zhangrun, took a bold step last week in speaking out against China’s leader Xi Jinping. In the six years since Xi came to power, dissent and criticism of his policies have been met with stark censorship and punishment. Professor Xu wrote an essay that appeared on the website of Unirule Institute of Economics in which he delivered the fiercest denunciation yet from a Chinese academic of Xi’s hard-line policies, revival of Communist orthodoxies and adulatory propaganda image. The Unirule Institute is an independent think tank in Beijing that had recently been forced out of its office.

Xu wrote in his essay that “People nationwide, including the entire bureaucratic elite, feel once more lost in uncertainty about the direction of the country and about their own personal security, and the rising anxiety has spread into a degree of panic throughout society.” He urged Chinese lawmakers to reverse the vote taken in March that abolished a two-term limit Xi’s tenure as president. One researcher at the Institute said other intellectuals might be thinking the same thing, but wouldn’t dare say it. Despite censorship, recent criticisms of Xi’s strongman ways have spread on social media. A professor of international relations at Peking University, referencing the growing trade disputes with the US, said China should adopt a lower profile in dealing with international issues. “Don’t create this atmosphere that we’re about to supplant the American model,” he urged.

Turkey’s Jailed Dissident: The prominent Kurdish politician and former civil rights lawyer, 45-year-old Selahattin Demirtas, still sits in jail where he has been for 20 months. He is held on 100 charges ranging from terrorism to insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has been barred from the mainstream media. And now that Erdogan has won reelection last June, the chances of Demirtas being released are dimming. His 41-year-old wife still makes a weekly 2,000 mile trip to talk to her husband, her childhood sweetheart, through a window in the high-security prison in western Turkey. Once a month she takes the couple’s children, ages 12 and 14, to visit their father. It is the price being paid for standing up to a ruthless dictator. (NYT)

Facebook Flags Fake Accounts: Facebook announced that they have found over thirty inauthentic Facebook and Instagram accounts engaged in political activity around divisive social issues. Accounts had a wide array of followers, with some having nearly three hundred thousand followers – a scary spread of possible misinformation and political influence. Though the accounts have not been linked to Russia directly, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher stated that the creators of the accounts had masked their identities with fake VPNs and used internet phone services/third parties to purchase ads. (NYT)

Putin Revives Military Commissars: Vladimir Putin has created a new directorate inside the Russian army to promote patriotism, which many see as a blast from the past to dictators of old. The directorate will affect around one million active military service members and most see it as a means to ensure soldier loyalty. Backed by the United Russia Party, Putin looks to be responsible for “military-patriotic” work in the near-future.

Russian Night Wolves in Slovakia: The Night Wolves biker gang has set up a base in Slovakia to the dismay and concern of foreign ministry spokesperson Peter Susko. He stated that the Russian nationalist group was close to Putin and that they would be “carefully monitored.” Lead by “The Surgeon,” Alexander Zaldostanov, the United States had placed sanctions on the group after accusations of direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict arose.

A Republican Civil War Over Influence, Power, and Politics: Mega-rich conservatives Charles and David Koch apparently have no trouble standing up to President Trump, but they will have to endure the Terror of his Twitter. On Monday the Kochs said they would not back North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer in his attempt to unseat Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in a key Senate race. Trump has come out in support of Cramer. Tuesday Trump Twitter-blasted the Kochs, calling them “globalists” and a “total joke” with a “highly overrated” political network. Trump rules the Republican Party while simultaneously ignoring long-held conservative beliefs on spending, free trade and foreign policy. (Guardian)

White House Discipline or Decadence?: ‘The rumors of my exiting the White House are highly overrated’ — is something John Kelly could have been thinking, just as officials were confirming on Tuesday that Kelly plans to remain in his job as White House Chief of Staff through President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. The retired four-star Marine Corps general has had a rough first year trying to instill discipline, which the president hates, and contain chaos, which the president prefers. (WaPo)

– “Largest King Penguin Colony in the World Drops by 90%: Researchers hadn’t visited the remote island in 30 years when there were 500,000 breeding pairs. Satellite images now indicate perhaps as few as 60,000 pairs.” (NYT)

– “Grieving orca mother carries dead calf for days as killer whales fight for survival: A grieving mother orca near Vancouver Island has been carrying her dead calf for four days, after refusing to leave her baby behind when the rest of her pod left.”(Guardian)

– “Don’t call it a wholphin: first sighting of rare whale-dolphin hybrid.” With grim news such as the disappearance of so many penguins and the sight of grieving orcas, it’s good to know that “life… finds a way” as scientists have found evidence of a creature which may be “a hybrid of a melon-headed whale and a rough-toothed dolphin.” (Guardian)

– “Shark Abducted in Pram From Texas Aquarium is Returned: Surveillance footage shows the suspects bundling the 40cm shark, still dripping water, into a pram before pushing it to a pickup truck and driving off from the aquarium.” We wonder if they misread the application for “Shark Tank.” (Guardian)

– “Maybe You Were Thinking About Eating Raw Centipedes…Don’t: Dried or powdered centipedes are used in Chinese traditional medicine. But uncooked specimens may contain a parasite that infects the brain, scientists report.” (NYT)

– “Chinese Parents Protest Bad Vaccines for Hundred of Thousands.” Once the home remedies of centipedes stop working, you go for a good old vaccination right? Well, in China, the public is in an uproar due to the vaccination scandals which have run rampant through medical care systems throughout the country. (NYT)

– “For Many College Students, Hunger ‘Makes It Hard To Focus.’’’ Hungering for knowledge, raw centipedes, or food? The true college student dilemma. (NPR)

– “Pulp problems: Why shoppers may pay more for tissues, toilet paper: ‘A year ago, some players thought that maybe higher pulp prices were a temporary thing,” Essity CEO Magnus Groth told Reuters. “No one believes that anymore.’’’ (Reuters)

– Charles de Gaulle is arguably the most important Frenchman since World War II. And he had a very close relationship with perhaps the second most important Frenchman in the 20th century, Philippe Pétain. A thoughtful book review on de Gaulle, Pétain, and de Gaulle’s lasting influence. (NYRB)

“Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.” – Charles de Gaulle

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