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Each year Dispatches From The Edge gives awards to individuals, companies and governments that make reading the news a daily adventure. Here are the awards for 2019

Life Imitates Art Award to the US Border Control and the Trump administration that are currently holding between 11,000 and 14,000 immigrant children under the age of 18 in internment camps. According to the London Review of Books, a Border Patrol agent gave a three-year old the choice of being with her mother or her father. When the father was being taken away the child began to cry, only to be scolded by the Agent: “You said with Mom.” The child’s name: Sofi.

Dr. Strangelove Award to the US Defense Department for its unique solution to the problem of supplying troops in war zones. Between 2001 and 2010, US soldiers escorting fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq accounted for more than half the casualties suffered by American forces. The solution? Portable nuclear power plants that would generate between 1 and 10 megawatts and service up to 1,000 troops. The “micro-nukes” would be “semiautonomous,’ that is, they wouldn’t need on-site operators. Even small reactors contain significant amounts of highly radioactive and long-lived isotopes, like cesium-137. I mean, what could go wrong? -more-

As Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial began on January 16th, many of us wondered how Trump's legal team would respond to the serious accusations contained in the two articles of impeachment. It didn't take long to realize that these lawyers serve as an extension of Trump; they are responding in the manner we have come to expect from Trump whenever he is confronted with his misdeeds.

Trump is accused of (1) abuse of power and (2) obstruction of Congress. The abuse of power charge concerns Trump's conduct with regards to Ukraine: "President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his re-election, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations."

The obstruction of Congress charge concern's Trump's unprecedented "stonewalling" of the House of Representatives inquiry: "Donald J Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its sole power of impeachment."

These are serious charges -- much more serious than those charges levied against Bill Clinton, twenty years ago -- and deserve serious consideration. Therefore, it's reasonable to expect Trump's legal team to behave professionally. That's not happening. -more-

Psychiatric medication, in the opinions of many psychiatrists, is the primary, often only response to a mental illness, especially in the case of schizophrenia. For many of psychiatrists, this is a very well-defined thing. They believe that most mental illnesses are produced by brain malfunctions. It follows that you must do something medical to modify the brain, and thus address the problem.

And, to a large extent, they have a point. You can't think your mental illness out of existence. You can't cure mental illness with meditation. You can't address it with exercise. (If you run ten miles a day hoping that it fixes the problem, you will be physically very fit, and you will also be psychotic.)

In a mental health treatment venue, particularly a psychiatric ward, doctors will try the cheapest, easiest, most effective way toward solving a problem, a remedy that works quickly and has easily observable results. Medication, in most instances, is all the above. For decades, or even centuries, there were no known effective treatments that could help severely mentally ill people. Patients were locked away under cruel conditions, and little or nothing was done, could be done, to get them back to a semblance of a normal state of mind. -more-

Introduction

In November 2002, my wife and I took a 16-day tour of Iran. We visited Tehran, Shiraz, Kerman, Yazd, Esfahan, Persepolis, and Bam. (Tragically, Bam was severely damaged a year later in an earthquake, killing over 26,000 and injuring more than 30,000 others.) We walked around without fear; everyone was extremely friendly and curious about us, and about America. We have found in our many travels that it is usually U.S. foreign policy, not individual Americans, that many foreigners object to.

Background

Why did we visit Iran? Because according to a 2015 study, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, representing about 24.1% of the world’s population. Most Muslims are either of two denominations: Sunni (80–85%, roughly 1.5 billion people) or Shia (15-20%, roughly 240–340 million people).

Although Shiites are the majority in Iran, they make up a minority in the rest of the Muslim world. Shiites believe that Ali, Mohammad’s first cousin and son-in-law, succeeded Mohammad at his death in AD 632, because that’s what the Prophet decreed. The Sunnis believe that after the Prophet died, the leader must be selected in the pre-Islamic way, i.e., through consensus among the community’s elders, and do not recognize Ali as the Prophet’s successor.

Not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims. Only about 20% of practicing Muslims live in Arab countries. However, Iranians prefer not to be called Arabs. They are Persians. The Persian language is Indo-European; it is barely related to Arabic. The official language of Iran is Persian (Farsi). -more-

Head-on Collusion

The following two headlines collided head-on in this week's news-lanes:

Trump Demands Taliban Curb Violence Before Meaningful Talks

US Airstrike Kills 15 Civilians in W. Afghanistan

And so, this week's Award for Cognitive Dissonance goes (once again) to Donald John Trump.

The Candidates' Cavalcade of Campaign Come-ons

It's not enough to hit the campaign trail if you're a contender in this year's Presidential Race. Nope, you've got to connect with the people. In our electronically connected, always-on culture, it's necessary to do more than hit the stumps, rattle the hustings, and push your merch. Candidates need to reach out with tantalizing promises of personal contact.

This frequently takes the form of invitations to take an all-expenses-paid jaunt to join the candidate at a critical campaign rally or even a presidential debate. Operators are standing by.

Elizabeth Warren has stepped out in front of the crowd by offering to make personal phone calls to as many of her followers as possible.

Warren also sends out personal thank-you notes to supporters. (Full disclosure: After I sent Warren a letter with some hand-drawn anti-Trump cartoons, she responded with an autographed reply that ended with the P.S: "Persist!") -more-