Rising Gun Violence; US Withdrawal from Afghanistan; Opioid Crisis

US withdraws troops from Afghanistan. How history will judge the legacy of the US’s longest war.

Dan Kovalik is an author and human rights & labor lawyer. His most recent book is “No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests.” He talks to us about the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the media coverage describing it as an abandonment of the country that will turn into chaos and fall prey to other regional powers like China, how the decades-long war did not provide the level of stability, prosperity, and modernization that the U.S. often claimed as one of its goals, and how the spillover effects of the war in the region go unmentioned in government circles. 

Sheila Vakharia, Deputy Director of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance, and Regina Pixley, CEO and founder of Regina's Place, an organization that supports families impacted by violence, join us in a conversation about the ongoing opioid crisis, which is responsible for about three-fourths of overdose deaths, according to Wednesday’s data from the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Washington was among the deadliest regions, seeing a 50% surge in deaths. We also talk about the devastating impact that this has had on communities, and the Biden administration’s $10 billion plan to combat the opioid epidemic and whether it will be successful.

Sam Menefee-Libey, researcher & doctoral student in anthropology at American University, talks to us about the situation in Afghanistan, where despite a withdrawal of troops from the country, the US will continue to exert influence via soft power, contractors, and drones, and how the US as a nation will not reflect properly and engage in dialogue about what exactly the U.S. did in Afghanistan. We also talk about white supremacist group Patriot Front being run out of Philadelphia, and fire on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico due to a gas leak from an underwater pipeline.

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