Gardner
— Gov. Charlie Baker and other officials will attend a Roundtable
Discussion on the statewide opioid crisis and its affect on veterans.
The
discussion is set for Thursday, Nov. 5, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at
the Northeast Veterans Training and Rehabilitation Center, 3 Victory
Lane, next to Mount Wachusett Community College.
Leslie
Lightfoot, founder and CEO of Veteran Homestead Inc., has requested the
participation of statewide decision-makers to create treatment solutions
and actions to combat the growing epidemic of opioid addiction and
deaths among the veteran community.
Opioid-related addictions
and deaths in Massachusetts are a serious public health epidemic
prompting Gov. Baker’s Opioid Addiction Task Force, Report and Action
Plan earlier this year. The task force developed a strategy to combat
opioid addiction with 65 recommendations addressing prevention,
intervention and treatment that would cost the state $27 million next
year. The purpose of the Veteran Homestead Roundtable is to develop a
plan to include the veteran community.
“Addiction is not
different between civilians and veterans. They have the same struggles,
however, veterans have added levels of issues that include combat, the
stresses of deployment during wartime and the unique culture of military
life that account for abuse of “gateway drugs” such as prescription
drugs and alcohol that leads to heavy recreational opioid drugs. Added
to those issues are injuries, amputations, burns, post-traumatic stress
disorder and traumatic brain injury,” said Ms. Lightfoot.
Ms.
Lightfoot hopes to create a pilot program to treat veterans with
opioid-related addictions and to replicate that program across the state
and the country.
Veteran Homestead Inc., an independent,
nonprofit organization that provides housing and care to U.S. Armed
Services veterans who are elderly, disabled or diagnosed with a terminal
illness is based in Fitchburg and has six programs and facilities in
New England and Puerto Rico. All are unique programs and/or the first of
their kind. The organization has served nearly 3,600 veterans and
conducted over 52,000 hours of counseling sessions covering
psychological affects, family issues, alcohol and substance abuse,
post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
Created
by Vietnam veteran Ms. Lightfoot, Veteran Homestead, a nonprofit
organization, has created environments that help veterans immerse
themselves more fully into a better quality of life. Programs involve
entire families when appropriate and foster the veteran’s self-worth as
he or she transitions from soldier to civilian. Veteran Homestead raises
funds through its own efforts and receives some state and federal
support. The organization directs 90 percent of funding to the veterans
in its care and 10 percent to grant writing and fund raising. Veteran
Homestead facilities include:
- The Northeast Veteran Training and Rehabilitation Center – Gardner.:
The first and only facility in the United States to serve afflicted
veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and their families by
combining housing, physical therapy, counseling and college courses
PTSD, TBI, amputees and burn victims. It is a LEED Gold facility.
- The Veteran Homestead Hospice – Fitchburg.: The only privately run, veteran-specific hospice in the country.
- The Veteran Victory Farm – Fitzwilliam, N.H.: A working organic farm
and permanent housing for veterans with substance abuse issues, mild
traumatic brain injury and in need of supportive services – the first
one in the country.
- La Hacienda de Veteranos - Caguas, Puerto Rico: The only facility of
its kind in Puerto Rico, it serves homeless veterans, focusing on
restoring a sense of self-worth.
- The Hero Homestead – Leominster: Transitional housing for veterans
dealing with substance abuse and mental health issues, as well as other
challenges related to homelessness.
- The Armistice Homestead – Leominster: Assisted living in place for the elderly or medically frail.
Veterans In Need
- 1,008 people died from opioid overdoses in 2014 in Massachusetts. It is unknown how many of these victims were veterans.
- In 2015, 455 veterans were treated at the Boston, Bedford and Central Mass. VAs for continuing opioid dependence.
- 761 veterans are in county and state prisons in Massachusetts for drug related crimes.
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Celebrating a Golden Anniversary
ReplyDelete50 Years of Drug
Dealing by the CIA
PART I. THE HELLWELL DYNASTY
or HOW BURMA GOT ITS START
Various News Sources
It's generally agreed that 1996's biggest news story was Gary Webb's San Jose Mercury scoop that ghetto drug dealers claim none other than the American CIA to be their supplier!
But Spooks dealing drugs isn't a 90's thing. Our beloved agency busily flew heroin around Asia on the CIA proprietary airline AIR AMERICA during Viet Nam, and refined Hmong and Burmese poppy in Asian soft drink bottling factories, used the U.S. Mafioso MOB to distribute the drugs and banked millions in their own Bank which they later collapsed, stealing the receipts.
Just revealed: the sixties weren't the start of the CIA dealing poppy to ghettos. Colonel Paul Hellwell of the OSS brought heroin from Burma and sold it in U.S. ghettos as far back as the 40's, so Gary Webb is five decades late with his scoop! We are in a 50 year anniversary of something other than just Roswell aliens! The Hellwell Aliens also were gray men, that being the exact shade of their MORALS!
The heroin that the OSS dealt was grown in Burma, and refined in Shanghai. The OSS stumbled upon this import when they were in Asia with the Flying Tigers to stop MAO TSE TUNG from getting into power. Tigers were supposedly heroic civilian volunteers --John Wayne even played one in a movie, but this was just a lacquer job. The Tigers were OSS mercenaries paid for with OSS SECRET funds (at first, OLIGARCH money, later drug receipts). ALLEN DULLES was the brains behind the Tigers and the entire agency then. Dulles ran an inner clique at the OSS, what was to become Directorate of Covert Actions. Dulles was also very tight with the super-rich Eastern billionaire families, (read Dulles' biography and read BITTER FRUIT by S. Kinzer which indicates oligarchs paid for dirty tricks). If you read up on it, you'll discover that Dulles ran secret wars out of the White House (not unlike Ollie North) and had a repressive agenda related to every banana republic that had nationalistic or socialist tendencies, which might get in the way of transnationalist corporative agendas.
The Flying Tigers were in China helping a General named Chiang Kai-Shek (nicknamed 'CASH MY CHECK' as behind our backs, he sold our guns to the Japs). Chiang was used in an attempt to destroy Mao. Of course, it couldn't be done and in 1949 they had to beat a fast retreat to Taiwan. Mao later stopped all poppy-dealing by making death a penalty for it. But before the end, Colonel Paul Hellwell, an Ivy leaguer, rich kid, observed how Chiang sold opium to Chinese addicts to earn revenues for guns and troops. The French saw the same thing going on in Vietnam when it was their colony. Dope and spooks kind of made terrific sense to Dulles. An intelligence service can't pay for underhanded illegal covert ops. Tax payers can't, Congress WON'T. Why should it be left to poor oligarchs to fund the secret fight? You have to think like the OSS. In their heads, the fight was patriotic...it was against nasty nationalists or dirty communists seeking to get nice YANKEE traders out so they could have their OWN industries. Actually nationalists called us Yankee IMPERIALISTS and felt we were out to exploit their banana republics and acted so much like Commies that we felt it was patriotic to rub them out. Why should oligarchs pay for their murder when blacks in U.S. ghettos would empty their pockets for drugs? And boy, did those nickles add up!
Industriously, Colonel Hellwell created SEA SUPPLY, an OSS proprietary company, out of Miami and used it to carry guns across the ocean to China. The opium was grown in Burma, so Hellwell went to Burma and made friends with the royal family. After WWII, Hellwell became the Burmeese Consulate in Miami so up to his chin was he with the Burmeese. In Burma, Hellwell secured all the poppy franchises he needed and sent the basic black poppy tar to CHINA to be processed into China White then brought it back to America on Sea Supply boats, totally immune to snoopy customs inspectors. Then, he shipped guns back to China, a classic 'boats go both ways full' profitable shipping Modus Operandi. Next, he used the CIA's old pals in the American 'mob' to distribute drugs in the ghetto.
ReplyDeleteParenthetically, the OSS had befriended Lucky Luciano, at the height of WWII, when they'd sprung him from the pen 'early,' --considering he was a lifer---as the OSS needed his help winning the war. The Mafia-controlled dockworkers on the Atlantic coast were unruly, always striking for more pay, which wasn't very patriotic of them. Also, the OSS needed spies in Sicily for the planned invasion.
In Lucky Luciano they found a kind of all-purpose Swiss Army knife. Charlie Lucky became the Agency Poster boy for Civilian volunteerism. In all his career, Luciano had resisted dealing drugs, so his services had a price. (There's a Chris Reeves movie 'MONISGNEUR' about the toehold U.S. Mafia got in Italy during the war. Rent it. A huge CIA network mushroomed in Italy with Vatican bankers tied to the Mob.)
After the war, the OSS needed the mob to distribute heroin in the ghettos. Luciano, relocated to Italy, said 'use my main man in The Big Apple, my accountant, Meyer Lansky. He'll set you up.' The Agency did, and Meyer gave them his Tampa, Florida lieutenant, Santo Trafficante. When he got old, they used his son Santo Trafficante Jr. So when people say the CIA first used the Mob to assassinate JFK & FIDEL in the early 60's, they're off by a few decades, but who's counting?
Parenthetically, another scumbag friend of the OSS (after '47, when they had so many Nazis on board, they decided to ditch the double S's and called it THE CIA) was the German GESTAPO. The military actually brought dozens of top echelon Gestapo and SS spies out of Germany when these men approached them with a valuable bargaining chip: their spy networks and personal war records could be used to survey and CONTROL the Russians. These Nazis made it to Georgetown and eventually their philosophy and tactics were grafted on to the Allen Dulles --oligarch funded, drug-running SPY MACHINE which began to use racist, gestapo tactics designed to eradicate dissent just as Hitler had done.. They murdered intellectuals, constitutionalists, nationalists, socialists and Utopians with death squad tactics ---which were taught at Fort Benning to foreign officers and began to be used extensively in Latin America by local militaries. Our own soldiers did it too, as the Phoenix Program in Viet Nam, which killed thousands of teachers, civilians, village leaders suspected of sympathizing with Hanoi. Nazi genocide continues to be used up to the present day. Nazi-invented methods are still used for the murdering of intellectuals, university teachers, heroic politicians or snoopy reporters to quiet them and frighten others. Ask Danny Casolero, or Vince Foster.
ReplyDeleteAnd where do they get the money for hitmen and killers? The Poppy trail is alive and well with Burmese heroin exported to China for refining, then to Long Beach Crips and Bloods gangs. Addicts, in the ghettos, the Nazis in the CIA, their Cuban-exiles who worked in Latin America, who murdered Che, all of it sprang from the Hellwell Dynasty. Paul Hellwell was the magnificent, sick tap-root of an ancient, tall, poisonous tree. Hellwell (well named when you think of it) devised a way around the U.S. Constitution just when spooks needed millions of dollars in discretionary funds far from Congressional purview. Dope did the job. BURMA did the job. Lansky kept moving the stuff to the barrio in the late 40's and through out the 50's. No one cared as long as only blacks were addicted.