New tensions between Turkey and Greece, trusting banks and history repeats with an opioid crisis plus other news and views

In all, the number of incursions by Turkish military ships and jets into Greek territory has spiked in recent months, according to Greek officials, stoking concerns of a new military conflict in a region where Turkey is already embroiled in the war raging in Syria.
The biggest uncertainty involves Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and whether his ambitions are fueling renewed claims to these Greek isles — particularly after he embarked on Wednesday on an election campaign in which he is expected to play heavily on nationalistic sentiment.
Will we ever trust our banks again? Sydney Daily Telegraph
The inquiry has barely begun and many men and women in suits are still to be sweated but already the famous “four pillars” of our banking industry are looking more like the broken columns of a Greek temple.
And AMP, one of the other elements of Paul Keating’s original 1990 invention of the “six pillars’’, is looking a bit shabby (the other was the then National Mutual).
... The tragedy is that this inquiry was so long in coming and so bitterly resisted by the industry and its political friends, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who dismissed it as “crass populism”. ... If the behaviour of financial institutions is disgraceful, the latter-day grandstanding of some politicians who had fought against this inquiry in the media and in the Parliament since 2014 is disgusting.
An Opioid Crisis Foretold - By The Editorial Board of the New York Times
One of the more distressing truths of America’s opioid epidemic, which now kills tens of thousands of people every year, is that it isn’t the first such crisis. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States, China and other countries saw drug abuse surge as opium and morphine were used widely as recreational drugs and medicine. ... That history has either been forgotten or willfully ignored by many in the medical and political establishments. Today’s opioid crisis is already the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. Opioid overdoses killed more than 45,000 people in the 12 months that ended in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The epidemic is now responsible for nearly as many American deaths per year as AIDS was at the peak of that crisis.
... To stem the number of new opioid users, lawmakers and regulators need to stop pharmaceutical companies from marketing drugs like OxyContin and establish stronger guidelines about how and when doctors can prescribe them. ... As we’ve learned the hard way, without stronger leadership, the opioid epidemic will continue to wreak havoc across the country.

Commemoration of ‘Republic Day’ - The Sunday Independent, Ireland
THE Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has set out the Government’s intention to bring the State’s commemorative programme to a close in what he calls “an upbeat and optimistic note” by celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland coming into effect in 2024. ...
There is a popular myth that the then Taoiseach, John A Costello, while in Canada in 1948, got drunk at a dinner and announced that Ireland was to leave the British Commonwealth. A variation on that story is that he took offence at the placement of a large siege canon replica on the dinner table while dining in the Governor General’s residence and declared a Republic in a fit of pique. Undoubtedly, he was upset at his host’s reneging on an arrangement to toast the President of Ireland. In reality, however, the events leading up to the announcement are more complicated, not to mention a little haphazard, involving newspaper headlines — notably in the Sunday Independent — behind the scenes threats and megaphone diplomacy. In the end, the Republic was born, in retaliation to which, the British government, without consultation, introduced the ‘Ireland Bill’ which contained a guarantee to unionists on partition of the island.

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