UNTIL LAST WEEK I had – past tense – a long and pleasant relationship with the website Truthout.
As a former member of the American Newspaper Guild AFL/CIO, I applauded
its decision to grant its employees guild representation, and as a
former news editor and editor-in-chief, I am both impressed and moved by
the unique facts-with-feelings reportorial style of Maya Schenwar, who
is Truthout's executive director and probably its best writer
as well. I had posted on the site's comment threads for many years, and
only one of my comments had ever been suppressed – that by Truthout's
comment-server Discus, which does not allow posters to link to their
own blogs unless the blogs themselves have achieved the status of
mainstream journalism. And Discus did let me repost the material as soon
as I had removed the link.
But last week Truthout
– not Discus (as the message that suddenly appeared on my post maybe
five minutes after I had uploaded it made clear) – deleted the
following:
The
huge flaw in Obamacare is that it creates the illusion of insurance –
precisely what it was intended to do – while imposing a structure of
co-payments and deductibles that are prohibitively expensive. Daily Kos provides a good basic explanation of how it works.
If you're a member of the One Percent or the petit bourgeoisie,
those co-pays and deductibles are of no concern even if you choose the
least expensive plan. But if you're unemployed, or chronically
impoverished, or disabled, you may well be worse off than before: forced
by law to buy insurance from the for-profit insurance barons, but
prohibited by co-pays and deductibles from ever actually getting health
care. Indeed I know several younger people who are so afflicted – not
surprising since by any reasonable standard, half the U.S. population is
now impoverished.
Here,
of course, is the truly obscene windfall profit Obama handed his
insurance-barony benefactors: not just the all the new policy-holders,
but all the policy-holders who will never be able to afford to use their
insurance: pure profit for the profiteers, exactly as our
closet-Republican president obviously promised them.
Medicare
is a similar scam. If one is well off, Medicare is wonderful. The
co-pays are 20 percent, the deductible is $1,000 per year. But if one is
destitute, as I have been since 2009, Medicare is a nightmare of
deprivation unless one (A) supplements it with what used to be called
Medicare Plus (an LBJ idea made real by the Clinton Administration, then
seized by Bush, restructured and renamed Medicare Advantage, with the
advantage going to the for-profit insurors at the expense of
non-profits); and (B) is willing to endure the loss of freedom and
dignity attendant on becoming an oppressed subject of the welfare
system in return for Medicaid supplements.
(Yes,
contrary to one of the bigger of the many Affordable Care Act Big Lies,
Medicaid IS welfare, with all the restrictions and humiliations
attendant thereupon. And for those of us us who are elderly, it is not
even a grant. It is instead a loan that will be repaid by the seizure of
our meager estates – including all our personal property [books, tools,
etc.] – after we're dead.)
The
common policy-thread through all this is retention of the
Ayn-Rand/healthcare-as-a-privilege-of-wealth savagery that is the
defining characteristic of the U.S. system. Go to a civilized country,
there are no co-pays or deductibles. But – note again the example of
Medicare – we'll never see anything that humanitarian here even under a
public-option plan, which we'll never be allowed anyway: not as long as
the Citizens United decision remains in force – and the only way that
will be overturned is by revolution.
The
censored comment was my response to another poster, who asked me to
clarify my stance on the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. The
question's context was a discussion prompted by a Thom Hartmann exposé
entitled “Is Rick Scott Guilty of Murder?” In it, Hartmann revealed how
the Florida governor's refusal to allow a federally funded expansion of
Medicaid had seemingly killed a young woman by denying her the care that might have sustained her life.
My
original remarks had focused neither on Scott nor the dead woman but on
the austerity policies that are being inflicted on us by both halves of
the One Party of Two Names:
The
purpose of austerity – no matter whether blatantly imposed by
Republicans or stealthily imposed by Democrats – is genocide:
specifically the extermination of those of us who are poor, chronically
unemployed, disabled, elderly or otherwise unexploitable for maximum
capitalist profit.
Yes,
it is an outrage Charlene Dill was murdered by denial of health care.
But she was slain not just by Republican policies in Florida. She was
also killed by the endlessly more damning fact that – thanks to Obama
the Orator's shape-shift into Barack the Betrayer and Democrat treachery
in general – the United States remains the only industrialized nation
on this planet in which health care is a privilege of wealth rather than
a human right.
Nor
is that too harsh a judgment. Obama and the Democrats promised us
public-option health insurance. But they were lying. Once their
deceptions had won them the White House and control of both houses of
Congress, their (premeditated) treachery insured the savagery of health
care as a privilege of wealth is now eternally locked into place. It is –
and will be for as long as the USian Empire survives – now sustained by
Obama's permanent elimination of all public-option alternatives, which
has indentured us forever to the for-profit insurance barons. So much
for "change we can believe in" – the biggest Big Lie of USian
presidential history.
In
this context, the most bitter truth of Charlotte Dill's death is that
it is merely (another) deadly example of capitalism in action. It is a
microcosm of Bhopal, of Bangladesh, of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that
killed 123 woman and 23 men on this very day 103 years ago.
The
lesson taught us by Charlotte Dill – if we but had the courage to heed
it – is the same lesson we should have been taught by the unspeakable
sound of human bodies hitting the pavement of Washington Place below the
Asch Building in Manhattan on the afternoon of 25 March 1911. Until we
eliminate capitalism – which is infinite greed elevated to maximum
virtue (literally the deliberate rejection of every humanitarian
principle our species has ever set forth) – such atrocities will
continue unabated.
As Neil Young so memorably said to honor Allison Krause, who was yet another of capitalism's victims, "what if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?"
Later,
when my accurate summary of Obamacare's most damning truths was
deleted, I again addressed the poster who had asked me to clarify my
position:
I responded to your question politely, truthfully and in some detail, but Truthout suppressed it. (No, not Discus; the notice specifically said Truthout.)
Apparently – with the Republicans heading for a landslide victory in
November (not that it will make life in the USian Imperial Homeland that
much worse) – Truthout is now in
do-anything-to-protect-the-Democrats mode, even unto suppressing
unpleasant truths about the Affordable Care Act. Obviously I have become
persona non grata here, so this will be my last post on this
website. Indeed I'm not even sure you'll be allowed to see this. But if
you are, and you're curious about what was censored, Google my name,
then after next Monday you can read it in my blog.
Yes, Truthout
allowed that post to live – as if its censors were quite proud of how
they had helped the Democratic Party in its ongoing campaign to suppress
the ugly truths about the unprecedented rip-off sarcastically known as
Obamacare.
******
Outside Agitation Outside the Notebook:
Because today is my 74th birthday and the sun is shining – a rare
phenomenon in the coastal Pacific Northwest at this time of year – I am
not going to spend my usual 10 or 15 hours assembling this week's
column. Instead I am going to merely post the headlines of and links to
the reports on which I commented, plus of course the main comments
themselves. These, with the notable exception of the next item, all
focus on a common theme: Obama the Orator's ongoing shape-shift into
Barack the Betrayer, the results of which include the Ukrainian Crisis
and its threat of World War III, the government's self-imposed
disadvantage in Hobby-Lobby case (which greatly bolsters the probability
it will further abolish women's reproductive rights), and the regime of
unprecedented censorship and secrecy by which We the People are now
afflicted.
Indeed
it seems Obama intends to spend his second term giving us all the
finger. His fuck-you, break-all-promises policies ever-more-defiantly
serve his Ruling Class masters. His treachery is wrecking the Democratic
Party and inflaming white racism into an unprecedented barrier against
minority aspirations. He's ensuring not just Republican dominance for
years to come, but the irreversible transmogrification of the United
States into a fascist (and almost certainly neo-Nazi) empire, the de facto Fourth Reich. In other words, he's doing exactly what the One Percenters hired him to do.
***
“Kent State Truth Tribunal Addresses the United Nations Human Rights Committee” Laurel
Krause, sister of the murdered Allison Krause, reports on ongoing
efforts to expose government secrets about the Kent State Massacre,
which occurred on 4 May 1970. Via the comment thread, I give Ms. Krause
what may be new and useful data:
There is one Kent State mystery that suggests the shooting was planned in advance.
I know of this because The Jersey Journal
(Jersey City, N.J.), for which I was then the investigative reporter,
published nine editions a day in that era. The last of these rolled a
few minutes after Wall Street closed at 4 p.m. EDT.
But
all we had out of Ohio in that Monday afternoon's Market Final was a
page-one bulletin the National Guard had fired on and wounded several
students.
Across the river in Manhattan, where I lived, the final of The New York Post, the City's last remaining p.m., had no more than we at the JJ did.
The
next day, because the shootings had occurred at 12:24 p.m. EDT, I asked
why we missed the story. Our telegraph editor said the wire services –
AP, UPI – hadn't moved anything more detailed than what we ran.
More
curious than ever, I queried a UPI friend, who told me, “Ma Bell pulled
the plug on everything in Ohio at about five minutes after 12.”
(I
should explain here, for those unfamiliar with 1970s technology, that
wire-service dispatches were transmitted over lines leased from AT&T
and managed by the regional Bell systems.)
If
it is true the Ohio wire-service connections were shut down just before
the shootings – and I have no reason to doubt what my friend told me –
this would suggest a conspiracy already in place, perhaps a scheme to
terrorize the anti-war movement with an example of dead and wounded
students.
*****
“It's Time to Put America First” Thom
Hartmann decries the obscenity of lightning-fast, no-debate enactment
of $1 billion in loans and $100 million in direct aid to Ukraine by the
same Congress that killed unemployment compensation for 2 million USians
and slashed food stamps for 1.7 million more. Vexed as always by
Hartmann's refusal to acknowledge such savagery as nothing more than
capitalism in action, I focus on economic reality:
Actually,
the difference between the Ukrainian and USian Working Classes – why
Ukrainia gets money and USia gets more austerity – should be obvious to
anyone who is not a die-hard supporter of capitalism.
The Ukrainians – all but their oligarchs desperately impoverished – are therefore easily exploitable for maximum profit.
Not
only that, Ukraine's industrial potential is enormous. It is the
breadbasket of Europe – the most vast, most productive agricultural land
on the entire continent – and it now effectively belongs to USian
imperial agrobusiness. It will thus be farmed by minimum-wage laborers.
And since the new Ukrainian government includes declared fascists, its
agriculture will no doubt use slave labor too. The profits to the
oligarchs and their new USian overlords will be near-infinite.
Ukrainia also contains significant natural resources, including
major fossil fuel deposits. And because of its post-coup chaos, there
are no environmental regulations to stop or even slow the rape of the
land – which again means maximum profit for the One Percent, total
subjugation of the Ukrainian Working Class.
Contrast
this to the USian Imperial Homeland: it is but a husk of its former
self. Its natural resources have been been bled dry by the One Percent,
its industry has all been outsourced, its Working Class has been
methodically disempowered by union-busting. We the People have mostly
been reduced to hopeless poverty and are now being slowly exterminated
by deliberately genocidal cutbacks in social services. In short, the
USian homeland no longer has any of the ingredients of a functioning
economy. This means the so-called American Dream is dead; it also means
there will never, ever be an USian economic rebirth.
But
the USian Homeland still has a charade of constitutional democracy, and
– in a few places – still has some semblance of genuinely
representative local government. Thus the One Percenters' hands remain
much more tied here than in Ukrainia.
By
contrast, Ukrainia is now ruled by a cabal that includes many declared
neo-Nazis in significant positions of power. This means – exactly as
happened in Germany during the 1930s – Ukrainia will soon be ruled by an
exclusively neo-Nazi government. In its inevitable imposition of a
torture-state, it will soon be indistinguishable from Nazi Germany or
Pinochet's Chile. It will thus become a major element in the USian
Empire's 21st Century plan of global conquest – another slave-state in
the USian Empire's de facto Fourth Reich.
That
summarizes the main reasons the USian Empire instantly invests money in
Ukrainia even as it continues to inflict ever-worsening genocidal
poverty on its own people.
We
the People are being cast away, discarded as if we were worn-out
machinery. We are literally a surplus workforce, deemed useless and
abandoned because we are no longer exploitable for significant profit.
Such are the consequences of capitalism: infinite greed elevated to
maximum virtue – the deliberate rejection of every humanitarian precept
our species has ever espoused.
As
more and more of us recognize what is happening and awaken to the core
truth our deepening misery is the quintessence of capitalism – the
fulfillment of all Marxist predictions about capitalism (and therefore
the ultimate validation of the entire Marxist analysis) – we by our
numbers and our intensifying anger will become ever more dangerous to
the One Percenters.
What
then will be their response? Will it be the same as that of tyrants
throughout history? If so, they will start a major war – a war big
enough to exterminate the surplus Working Class population and ruinous
enough to enable the Ruling Class to abolish, forever, any last remnants
of constitutional democracy. And by their continued provocation of
Putin, it seems they are trying to start just such a war.
At
the very least, it seems the One Percenters have convinced themselves
the bloody lessons taught Darius, the Mongols, Bonaparte and Hitler no
longer apply. At the very worst, their obscene,
live-it-up-now-and-fuck-tomorrow arrogance – a subset of the same
capitalist greed that fosters their morally imbecilic indifference to
the impending environmental apocalypse – has rendered them equally
indifferent to the fact such a war would be the death of our species.
Russia
– with a long history of having some of the most astute and farsighted
intelligence analysts on the planet – is obviously aware of all these
factors. (Note that one should never underestimate Russian intelligence
capabilities: One example of Russian skill is the Sepoy Mutiny of 1858,
engineered by Tsarist agents, which forever stopped British Empire
aggression into the underbelly of the Russian Empire. Another example is
the devastatingly effective spy-saboteur-and-resistance network the
Nazis eternally cursed as "the Red Orchestra," which GRU established
during the late 1920s and early 1930s in anticipation of the rise of
fascism and the outbreak of World War II. [See The Red Orchestra, V.E. Tarrant, John Wiley & Sons Inc.: 1995])
With those sorts of analytical capabilities backing him up, it becomes obvious why Putin is responding as he is.
That's
why I'm terrified the Ukrainian Crisis is the beginning of World War
III – a war in which the USian Empire suicidally underestimates the
indomitable Russian will to “fight to the death.”
***
What
many people don't know is in 510 BCE, Darius disastrously invaded
Scythia, which the ancient Greeks defined as roughly equivalent to
modern Black-Sea Russia, the Crimea and the Ukraine. Nevertheless the
true Scythia was probably much larger, perhaps as large as the old
Russian Empire, since archaeology suggests a significant Scythian
presence nearly as far west as modern-day Germany and as far east as
China. DNA evidence meanwhile substantiates certain folk tales that
claim Scythian origins for the Celts. Like the Celts, the Scythians were
an equestrian people, and their horse-archers, at least 20 percent of
whom were women – were with their long-range recurve bows considered the
most formidable light cavalry of their time.
But
Darius was deterred neither by the vastness of the Steppe nor by the
Scythians' fierce reputation, and he marched his massive army – the
era's largest and best equipped – deep into Scythia. To make a long
story short, the Scythians did as the Russians have so successfully
done: they retreated and retreated and retreated – then closed the door
behind Darius and savaged the Persians until they fled in ever-increasing panic. (For those interested in the details, see Herodotus, The Histories, in any complete translation.)
Nor have the Russians – many of whom themselves bear Scythian genes – forgotten this chapter of their Motherland's history: the Budenovka,
for which Google, the pointed hat worn by the Red Cavalry during the
Russian Civil War, was consciously patterned after the pointed hats of
the Scythian horse archers, thereby implicitly linking the
revolutionaries with ancient Russia.
Presumably
we all know what happened to the Mongols -- the mounds of their skulls
the medieval Russians made as monuments at the sites of Mongol defeats –
as we know the fates of Bonaparte and Hitler.
As to “Svyashchennaya Voyna” (“Sacred War”), do not be misled by the Soviet flag motif of the YouTube video I posted above. I chose that specifically for its English translation of the lyrics. The song remains popular in Russia today, and often highlights the widely attended performances of the Russian Army Chorus and Dance Troupe, the successor to the world-famous Red Army Chorus and Dance Troupe.
*****
“Obama's Preposterous Defense of the Iraq War” Reliably caustic Charles Pierce of Esquire
describes with appropriate venom how Obama, in his efforts to demonize
Russian President Vladimir Putin, has reversed his
“wrong-war-in-the-wrong-place” stance against the unprovoked U.S.
invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now – in another classic example of his
Orator-to-Betrayer shape-shift, Obama has a become a staunch defender
of the entire operation. This – no surprise to me – means he's now
implicitly siding with the entire band of Bush League perpetrators, that
gang of war criminals he has carefully protected since the first minute
of his presidency. My response was surely predictable, but I think it's
worth reprinting nonetheless:
Obviously
the world has learned to recognize Obama the Orator as not just Barack
the Betrayer but Barack the Belligerent – and Barack the Big Liar as
well.
The
dire question is whether – now the president's true persona is known –
he will try in some way to do to the world what he is already doing to
the United States, savaging the 99 Percent with ever-more-brazenly
fascist policies.
(Note
his proposals of more cuts to Medicare and new obstructions to
disability insurance. Note too how he is tacitly backing Hobby Lobby in
its war against women's reproductive rights, or how – like the devotee
of shock-doctrine capitalism he is – he is using the shock of the
bed-bug plague to repeal tenant rights in public housing, thereby making
the housing easier to sell to profiteers.)
Yup:
vote for a Democrat, get a sneaky, maliciously dishonest hard-right
Republican – such is life under the One Party of Two Names.
What Obama is doing stateside is bad enough.
As to what he might do to Russia, be afraid; be very afraid.
*****
“The Danger of False Narrative” Robert
Perry continues his superb Ukraine-Crisis reporting and analysis by
noting how the USian propaganda machine deluged us with Big Lies to
justify the war against Iraq and is now fabricating the same sort of
Josef Goebbels narrative to gin up fear and loathing against Putin and
Russia. I seize the opportunity to describe a couple of
seemingly-revalidated suspicions:
Apropos
observed reality, the appearance of Nazi, Confederate and Ku Klux Klan
flags in conjunction with the Ukrainian coup (for which see the “Confederate battle flag” link within Mr. Parry's text), tends to confirm two suppositions many old-time Leftists accepted as ugly truths:
(1)-
The existence of a secret organization – originally part of the Nazi
German government, but since World War II either within the US
government or facilitated by it – that aids and coordinates the
imposition of fascism everywhere. (Its long-term purpose is the
subjugation of all the world's peoples into a single, global fascist
empire.)
(2)-
Clandestine but pivotal support within the US government for the Klan
and other such fascist, racist, misogynist and/or neo-Nazi
organizations. (Given how the US government crushed the Communist Party,
the various socialist parties and the Occupy Movement, the fact the
Klan and its kindred are still functional is indisputable proof they are
tacitly supported by the U.S. government and its capitalist masters.)
Why
does the US foster and support fascism? Because fascism is the mature
form of capitalism – that is, capitalism expanded into capitalist
governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class,
total subjugation for everyone else.
In this context, the Obama Administration is not just a false-flag operation; it is false-faced as well.
*****
“Women Justices Rock the Hobby Lobby Argument” Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker
applauds how the Supreme Court's three female justices obviously
support women's reproductive rights – of course they do – but then
buries his lead: “Notably, the Obama Administration chose not to contest
Hobby Lobby’s assertion that use of an I.U.D. was tantamount to
abortion.”
My
rim-rat reflexes as good as they were 44 years ago, when I was a news
editor or sat a telegraph desk, I put the most important element of
Toobin's story up where it belongs:
In other words, the president tacitly supports Hobby Lobby, and has hamstrung his solicitor general accordingly.
Then I elaborate:
Apparently
the president is not only a closet Republican but a closet Christian
theocrat as well. Note his dramatic expansion of Bush's Faith Based
Initiatives, which trumps the Constitution by using federal funding to
punish non-believers. (Google “faith based initiatives obama,” no
quotation marks.)
This
means the president is also a closet misogynist – a tacit supporter of
the effort by Christian fanatics to force women back into Biblical
subjugation. Once again we see Obama the Orator shape-shifting into his
true persona: Barack the Betrayer.
As
if that were not dismaying enough, there is also the fact the advocates
of theocracy are malevolently powerful and obscenely well funded. The
One Percenters lavish money on Abrahamic theocracy whether Christian,
Islamic or Judaic.
Why?
Because the Abrahamic dogmas of divine-right management and prosperity
as divine reward ensure the perpetuity of capitalism.
Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are thus hugely
courageous to defy such might. Let us hope the Supreme Court includes
two equally brave male justices.
Important development in a related story:
Hobby Lobby's anti-birth-control lawsuit is part of the vast and
irresistibly well-funded Christian effort to impose theocracy and
Biblical Law – the Christian equivalent of Sharia – on the United
States. Another part of the same well-coordinated campaign is the
Vatican's sneaky effort to abolish women's reproductive rights by
leveraged buyouts of formerly secular regional hospitals, after which
the ecclesiastical authorities ban birth control, abortions, assisted
suicide and even termination of life support in cases of medically
hopeless disease or injury. The result – exactly as the Christians
intend – is tantamount to the imposition of theocracy on entire hospital
service areas. Hence the relevance of “Washington
State Case Study: A Difficult Miscarriage Made Worse by Hospital's
Religious Restrictions on Care,” a newly published Huffington Post reprint of a profoundly disturbing academic report
that describes the medical horrors – torture, actually – inflicted on a
woman by the Roman Catholic hospital that is the only care provider in
the region where the victim lives. I did not comment on the report – HuffPo banished me years ago for my uncontrite socialism – but I nevertheless link it via OAN because it is a vital and revealing microcosm of the broader Hobby Lobby issues.
*****
“Barack Obama: The Least Transparent President in History”
Amy Goodman's report is perfectly summarized by its head, on which I
could not possibly improve. My response perfectly summarizes the last
six years of our political history:
As
Obama the Orator, the president preached "hope" and "change we can
believe in" and shamelessly exploited the African-American progressive
tradition to leverage himself into office.
Meanwhile the Republicans ensured his victories by terrifying us with their McCain/Palin and Romney/Ryan assault guns.
Yes, that's how the system works: the good-cop/bad-cop routine – with all of us as the prisoners.
Bill Moyers tells us it's all a charade, and the evidence ever-more-powerfully confirms it.
If
Moyers is correct – and I'm sure he is – our so-called “free elections”
are merely dramas carefully scripted by the One Percent and played out
by actors chosen from One Party of Two Names. USian politics is as false
as professional wrestling, the political sound and fury meaningless
save as yardsticks of deception and preludes to (ever-intensified)
oppression.
Such is the context of Obama the Orator's (obviously premeditated) shift into Barack the Betrayer.
His
presidency is not only the least transparent; it is also founded on the
biggest Big Lies in presidential history. He has probably discredited
the Democratic Party beyond repair. Given USian racism, he has
undoubtedly obstructed equality for people of color. He is probably fostering more “why-bother” non-voters than any politician in US history.
And
when he leaves office, his Ruling Class masters will lavish him with
obscene wealth and prestige to reward him for all the damage he's done.
LB/30 March 2014
-30-
