United States

The twin scourges of opioid addiction and worsening wealth inequality are literally draining the lifeblood from the American public. Case in point: The Centers for Disease Control confirmed earlier today that the average life expectancy at birth declined in 2016 for the second consecutive year - the first multiyear decline since 1963, when a flu epidemic led to a rash of deaths as hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans succumbed to the virus.

The increase has been fueled by a 21% rise in drug overdose deaths, according to the Washington Post.

Russia has reacted fiercely to the end of week breaking news that President Trump plans to approve the legal sale of US antitank missiles and possibly other advanced systems to the Ukrainian government in a move that could change the battlefield calculus of the war between Ukrainian and Russian-aligned forces in the Donbass region along the Russian border. ABC News described the "total defense package of $47 million includes the sale of 210 anti-tank missiles and 35 launchers" which will be sure to harm Trump's longtime stated goal of improving relations with Moscow.

U.S. Forces Korea, a sub-unified command of the United States Pacific Command, has issued a warning to servicemembers on the Korean Peninsula to stay vigilant for “insider threats” after North Korean propaganda surfaced on American military bases.

Earlier this week the Washington Post reported that President Trump has decided to come off the fence regarding his prior reluctance to formally approve lethal arms sales to the US-backed government in Kiev, Ukraine, and has now moved forward with Obama-era legislation to export weapons to the war-torn country.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The first time when it became clear to me that I live in a dictatorship was in 2014 when reading, prior to its publication, the landmark (and still the only) scientific empirical study to address the question as to whether or not the United States federal Government is, authentically, a democracy — or, whether, alternatively, it's instead more of a dictatorship, than a democracy.

This study documented conclusively that America's Government is the latter.