ahgoldberg

Article on the Berlin Wall with a Different Perspective

ahgoldberg — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:51:43 -0800

The anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin came on 9 November this year, but
the Western, and especially the US mainstream media have conveniently left out
some crucial facts and put in some fiction for others in the meantime and giving a
complete distortion of history which they have been so good at doing and talking
about how "The USA fights for freedom. . ." as Jackson Browne says in that one song.

But the problem is is not quite that damn simple, and actually the Western powers,
especially the USA had a lot to do with that Berlin Wall going up, and this is something
people should know about when they start making judgments about same.

Before 1961 and the wall going up those in East Berlin with jobs in West Berlin and
would go to their jobs during the daylight hours and return in the evening, thus they
weren't being kept in East Berlin, but the West was aggressively recruiting the best
and brightest with the East paying the price for having provided a free education for
these people. The East was losing their best skilled labor and the West was engaging
in a campaign of crude sabotage against the East. The Western aggressive campaign
of recruiting the best and brightest employees from the East had resulted in a shortage
of skilled labor and critical problems for the Eastern economy as a result, and this along
with the crude campaign by the West at sabotaging and subverting the East is what caused
the East to put up the Wall.

The USA in the 1950s put together a harsh campaign of subverting and sabotaging the German
Democratic Republic very early on including recruiting some to kill prominent figures in that state,
to put soap in the powdered milk going to school children, to derailing freight trains severely injuring
employees, and many other actions to politically and economically destabilize the state. The CIA
and others in the US national security apparatus aggressively recruited, trained, and equipped
those Germans in the East and West who would engage in this campaign against the East.

These other things included destructive actions against public buildings, power stations, bridges,
canals, docks, public transportation, and setting fire to a tile producing factory. But that wasn't at all
the end of this weird "crusade" to bring "freedom" to the "terrible Communists" in the Democratic
Republic. No, these "wonderful people" recruited by the US national security apparatus also
did such things as carry out attacks on those taking part in the World Youth Festival in East
Berlin with fire bombs and other explosives and equipment for puncturing tires, as well as
otherwise seeking to disrupt this event by fabricating invitations to some and cancellations to
others. US agents also forged and sent out a large number of food ration cards to people to
stir resentment, confusion, and shortages. But they also distributed fabricated tax notices,
government directives and documents to create havoc among the people of the GDR or
German Democratic Republic. Add to this such things as burning 12 cars of a freight train,
destroying air pressure hoses in others, the fatal poisoning of 7000 cows at a cooperative diary,
making use of acids to damage critical factory equipment, putting sand in a factory turbine causing
production at same to come to halt. inciting production slow downs of employees, and these
"freedom loving types" also used stink bombs to disrupt political meetings as part of their
"Christian crusade" against "terrible" atheistic Communists in the GDR.

In the 1950s officials from Moscow and the GDR complained at the United Nations and to Moscow's
former allies in the West even providing the names and addresses of the parties responsible
for sabotage and espioniage directed against the GDR and calling for closing of the offices
of those responsible. The West ignored the hell out of it and acted as if it were innocent.
Eventually the GDR would restrict Western access to the state.

Use of para military actions against the German Democratic Republic which Moscow
created out of its zone of military occupation and government in eastern Germany out
of response to the Western powers creating the Federal Republic is something most
in the West have no knowledge of. They don't, with maybe some exceptions, even
know that it was the West which created a state first in the part of Germany where it had
authority to carry out the military occupation and government following the Second
World War based on the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and also in likely violation
of both those agreements which called for all Germany to be deNazified, demilitarized,
war criminals prosecuted, and then after a period of time civil authority returned to Germany
and not the division which resulted and which the West caused.

In 1946 the British and US governments adopted the same currency for their zones, leaving
the French and Russian zones with two currencies where there had been four originally. The
French zone with pressure from the US and British authorities adopted the same currency in
1947 and Moscow wasn't invited to and not allowed to adopt the same currency. With the
Western powers at the end of the Second World War firmly in control of the international
financial institutions, their currency was in solid shape, but not so with the currency in
Moscow's zone. Responding to this slight toward this ally, Moscow in 1948 began a blockade
by land of its zone to tell the West to go to hell with its lock out of Moscow from this new currency
and with the impending economic squeeze it would put on Moscow's zone of occupation in
eastern Germany.

The West then claimed falsely that the Moscow was the aggressor and began its airlift of
what was then its part of Berlin, which was also divided at the time into Russian, French,
British, and US zones. When the smoke cleared and the crisis ended in 1949 the Cold War
between the West and Moscow already in progress intensified.

The West which has so strongly condemned the division of Germany and Europe, actually created
that very division in 1949 by creating the Federal Republic of Germany in its zone of occupation, thus
almost surely violating the Yalta and Potsdam agreements which it had committed to, thus giving Moscow
the right to create its own state in its zone which it did at the end of 1949. All this was despite the advice
of George Kennan, who had been the chief hard liner on Moscow at the end of and after the Second World
War, as Kennan had predicted that creating such a state would lead to the division of Germany and the
rest of Europe as well, as it did. Knowing the geography, anyone could see with the large body of land
Germany occupied in the middle of Europe that this would be the case. But it was to no avail.
Eventually the GDR would restrict Western access to the state.

What might well have been a short term occupation of Germany and Europe turned into a long term
military confrontation between East and West,, due to the West breaking its word on these agreements and other
aggressive actions such as the USA threatening to use the Atomic Bomb against Moscow
in 1946 if it didn't get its military contingent it had in Iran out, the use of the Marshall Plan
to only aid the part of Europe in the Anglo US sphere of influence, even though that in Moscow's
sphere of influence had suffered far more than had Western Europe in that war, siding with monarchists
and Nazis, the bitter enemies of Moscow and its former Western allies in that same war over
Communists but also liberals, progressives, and just plain socialists who sought to restore democracy
to Greece, in this birthplace of democracy in the civil war which broke out in 1947 with the West calling this
supporting "freedom." Had John Pilger been covering this he might easily have called it part of the USA's
"war on democracy."

Interview with ER Doctor and Health Insurance Tyranny

ahgoldberg — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:03:49 -0800

Paul Hochfeld, MD who is an emergency room doctor in Corvallis
OR and one of the Mad as Hell Doctors spoke with me earlier this year in
an interview about the need for single payer, as it provides quality health care for
all at less expense and provides for "someone" to run such a system, and
we now have no system, but a complete mess insuring a shortage
of primary care doctors. Dr Hochfeld has made a documetary on
the health care crisis in this country and what should be the solution
with single payer. I have to add with some person or persons in
charge of such a system in the federal government, we could have
accountability which is now completely and absolutely lacking.

The Mad as Hell Doctors was a group which advocates a single
payer health system and set out from Oregon a while back to cross
the country and to make a stop in Washington in the US Capital to
speak out there in the seat of the US Government on this matter,
crossing the USA speaking out as they went on the advantages of
a single payer system of health care. They crossed the country in
what they referred to as a Care A Van.

Now the Wall Street Journal, the voice of big business in this country,
no less says we have a shortage of surgeons so severe that people
are now getting surgeons who are temporaries going from one town
to another. The American College of Surgeons condemns this practice
This mouthpiece for big business says this shortage of surgeons has
been going on for 25 years and is most pronounced in rural area. This
has literally then become a matter of life or death, and especially in
these rural areas.

Most doctors, most health economist, and most of the American people
back single payer, Dr Hochfeld has said in an article which came out
December 30th last year in the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Why hasn't this country adopted single payer which would, as it
should, establish health care for all as an "inalienable right" as Thomas
Jefferson would so aptly put it?

Start with what ought to be clearly and absolutely obvious to everybody.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical industries having it so
good riding a gravy train and making piles of money, and thus aren't
the least bit interested in single payer, which is so predictable. They
just want to keep their gravy train going.

It's greed trumping need as I would hasten to add.

AARP is right in there with the health insurance and pharmaceutical
industries fighting single payer, while putting on act of being a good
guy as Dr Hochfeld says. They makes a pile of money from the profit
side of the organization and talk as if their non profit and profit side
are completely separate, but AARP is in this fight, not for anybody's health
but for the money. Thus the American Association of Republicans for
Privatization (AARP) has shown its true colors.

Furthermore, AARP's influence is pervasive as it is successful at passing
itself off as the good guys as Dr Hochfeld points out. Dr Hochfeld also said
that AARP has even threatened legislators in Oregon who vote for single
payer that AARP will make sure they're defeated. This organization, Dr
Hochfeld says, has been spending piles of money lobbying to stop single
payer for years. Dr Hochfeld tells how AARP seeks to demonize single
payer with the "socialized medicine" label.

This is the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries' line as well
along with all the talk about people losing their choices, which health
care as the health insurance now runs it, means no choice. The health insurance
industry decides who can see which health care provider, what health care that
person can get, how much, the amount to pay, the amount of coverage
by the health insurance industry, and this includes pharmacies to go to
get prescriptions, which ones are allowed, which amount of coverage,
the payment, and right on through-- no choice. With Single payer, all
the people can see any damn health care provider they want to see, when
they want to see that provider as long as that provider is available and it's
for needed health care, and nobody goes without health care. Add to
that a good estimate is that it would save a third of a trillion dollars. But
that would take money away from the bean counting, parasitic health
insurance industry and its welfare program for itself.

Meanwhile showing just how "humanitarian" the US health insurance industry
is, in the blue state of New York, the Guardian health insurance company
has dropped a whole line of coverage to drop such "dogs" as one top executive
at that company said in an email of 37 year Ian Pearl, who has muscular
distrophy even though this is the coverage Pearl relies on to keep him alive.

But not to be outdone in this competition for rank hypocrisy are those in congress
who while themselves using a form of a single payer system vote against it for
their constituents, and this includes that infamous senator from Montana and for
the health insurance industry who needs no introduction, but surely "deserves
and comment on, which he will get here.

Therefore, let's not fail to "thank" Max Baucus for his mandatory, fine those who don't
purchase health insurance they don't really choose or which they can't even afford,
and selling himself as the prostitute for hire for the health insurance industry pimps.

AARP along with the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries want
the kind of "change" they can believe in, change in their pockets which they
line with our money. They just want to have funds.

Having joined this outfit just as I retired years ago when I thought it was
an advocate for retired people, I just continued my membership, but the
things AARP says in its magazine show what it's all about, and that's good
to know to insure we know how phony it is and how this outfit puts its greed first.
Then it's "divided we fail" if the hierarchy in AARP doesn't get what it wants.
As a member of AARP, I happen to know first hand how this organization,
these "good guys" pressed for a "compromise" resulting in cuts in Medicare
coverage of prescriptions, and after that happened AARP was right there
to tap into this new involuntary market to make lots of money. This shows
how much of an axe those running AARP have to grind to make sure single
payer doesn't pass. It would substantially, if not overwhelmingly cut down on
their revenue. Thus we have AARP alligned with those who put greed over
need. AARP has been able to play this role of being an advocate by the US
mainstream media playing right along and passing this off as the gospel truth.

Thomas Jefferson, for all his faults put it so well when he said, "Greed degrades."

Meanwhile the country's mainstream media also fails to or virtually fails to cover
Dr Hochfeld and the majority of doctors favoring single payer. The same is true
of other health care providers who favor single payer. The same media if it does
cover single payer, always comes up with BS put down that could easily be
knocked down by Dr Hochfeld or many other health care providers, but lack
of coverage insures that never happens-- more on this and reasons for same
later.

As someone who has experienced this country's health care first hand, I have
personally had to wait at least an hour and a half to see a doctor in an emergency
facility in metropolitan Minneapolis/St Paul. That's long enough that I or anyone
else could easily have died. It's worse in other major metropolitan areas, and the
Nation even had an article showing that at times people would be moved from
one emergency room to another due to the shortage of doctors. Do believe some
have surely died as result of this health care mess. Others have done without care
they need due to the shortage of primary care doctors and often to not having any
health insurance coverage at all. This was years ago, and things are definitely worse
now.

This country thus has endured as Jefferson would say, "a long train of abuses"
It has health care of, by, and for the health insurance industry with the drug industry
and AARP getting a piece of the action and big time money at our expense. The
health insurance industry, though, is the primary ruler here, with other two simply
being along for the ride. But tyranny it surely is, for none of these institutions with
all their power recognizes they should "derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed." With that in mind, as Jefferson said "governments (institutions
in this case) are instituted to secure "the inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness." With Jefferson also referring at one point to health as being
"essential" for happiness, thus it should be an inalienable right, and when "governments
(again in this case institutions) "become destructive" of such rights, then the people have
"a right to alter or abolish" them, and replace them with "new governments" (in this
case a new institution, single payer) providing proper "safeguards" for the people.
This single payer would definitely do, providing health care "of, by, and for the
people" as Abraham Lincoln would say, and thus end the current health insurance
industry tyranny over the people's health care with that industry's arbitrary authority
and abuse of such power in determining who gets to see which health care provider,
get what health care, what coverage, charging as it so chooses with no accountability
nor consideration of those it rules over and consideration of "deriving its just powers
from the consent of the governed," treating these "subscibers" as lowly subjects, making
victims of them, victims of this same tyranny. It' time to stop this nonsense of letting the
health insurance industry rule while the people pay the price.

The US health insurance industry controls health care and maintains its tyranny by
divide and rule strategy of playing off heath care providers against patients. When
talking to health care providers, the industry blames the patient for abusing the "system"
which really isn't a system, by using it when they don't need it, thus causing high costs.
When dealing with patients, the industry will blame the health care providers for charging
too much. AARP takes the line that the health care providers are at fault with its members,
overwhelmingly patients, but never gets at the real cause of the problem, the health insurance
industry, as AARP is gettting piles of money off this "system," which puts the quid pro quo
back in the status quo, stressing as it does the buying of politicians to get what they want
monetarily.

With the pharmaceutical industry, the key to their piles of
money lies in the fact that with full private control, the industry
can charge what it likes, as long the federal government, once the
people's government, isn't negotiating prices for prescriptions.
This is the conclusion I'm forced to on this.

We need a system Dr Hochfeld is saying. Currently it's clear we don't
have a system, but a hodgepodge and complete mess, and this I'm
forced to conclude.

With Rash Windbag and his tea baggers many of whom surely are a claque
financed by far right/loony right super rich types putting out so many lies, it's
hard for the people of the USA to get to the truth about health care in this country
unless they or someone they know experience that the people of the USA have
first hand experience with the harsh reality of same. But as Rash and his tea
bag crowd neo constipated crowd often like to mix the Christian religion in
this, the Bible passage that says "Ye shall know the truth and it will set you free"
really right on the mark and entirely fair to use.

Now why is the media not covering those health care providers including
doctors who favor single payer.? Why would that be? Hey, how about
the huge amount of MONEY these media types get from big business
especially the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which they
might lose if they covered such topics as single payer? This one professor
of mine in a University of Oregon journalism program referred to as thematic bias--
certain topics are just off limits, and this tends to be due to advertising the media
get from certain sources. These media types know which side their bread is
buttered on. Combine this with the fact that the media generally is a big
business itself and it's easy to see why the media cover this issue the way
it does, leaving out all that might not fit its own big business bias, greed and
self righteous selfishness.

"Other Options" on Afghanistan

ahgoldberg — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:53:28 -0700

As Norman Solomon points out so aptly in an article in Common Dreams, today "other options" lead straight to some type of military misadventure and huge loss of lives, blood, and property for people in Afghanistan and nothing for the people of the USA, but when we're got the kind war mongering, arm chair warriors giving said top level advice to the US president, that's the all too predictable and lousy outcome.

In light of said fact, a short poem comes to mind.

Afghanistan-- No farewell to War Without End

The die is cast
The USA is at the pass
We'll cut 'em off
There

Yeah
Nothing to it
Just bomb 'em back to the "Stone Age"
Or get that counter insurgency
Or "counter terrorism" plan
Going

Just look how well
It's turned out
In Iraq

Can't look back
History
Who
Needs
It
With
Such
Ex perts as we got

Fight on for the "Holy Cause"
Banish the "evil anti Americans"
'We" bring "democracy and
Civilization
And "we' lie like hell
"We" being the power elites
In the USA

Have "We" ever got it wrong?
Don't answer that
What's done's done
And soon so may we be
Completely

A war but no
money in the till
But some can
Make a killing off
The Killing
Even if only from
Printed money

The empire must go on
Or the barbarians shall
Crash our "wonderful gates"
Say our super rich overpampered
Power elites

Big Money and Old Chavez Foe Push Assassination of Chavez

ahgoldberg — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:28:53 -0700

With all the attention of the international community heavily concentrating on the
gangster coup in Honduras, a 2500 Colombian death squad mercenaries which
the Colombian far right regime has been using to brutally rape, torture, contrive
in the disappearance of, and kill political pro democracy dissidents there are now in
Venezuela trying to carry out a mafia style hit on Chavez and destabilize his
country with the prize for these hired gun killers being 25 million dollars likely
in US currency for the one who kills Chavez, with the. money being put up by
a corrupt, slimy enemy of Chavez by the name of Manuel Rosales, who has
been against Chavez for the last 10 years and fled Venezuela for Peru where
he is now. In all probability the money would be in US currency.

Al Jazeera has reported all this just recently. Rosales won't pay the money directly,
probably as he's seeking a degree of plausible deniability as the US national security
complex cloak and dagger types call it, in case this dirty scheme is successful. This
follows to a degree the plan back in the original 9/11 attack on Chile of using destabilization
and assassination of Chile's president back then. This is just what John Pilger has
referred to as the US "war on democracy," which he made an outstanding documentary
about. Now these thugs from the far right Colombian tyranny of a police state are
trying to do what US cloak and dagger types did in September 1973 in Chile, but with them
doing it, this might provide the US national security complex and their US power elites with
plausible deniability, which they would surely like. They may well even be in on what's
taking place but surely would love to make it look like only those in Latin America are
involved in this.

The Colombian regime has violated not only Venezuela, but Ecuador's national sovereignty
before by carrying out attacks on Colombian "rebels" on Venezuelan and Ecuadorian soil
last year. Thus we know this fits right in with the pattern of that client regime of far right
US power elites.

Furthermore, these same US power elites are the ones who have kept the USA on "the
wrong side of history" as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out in 1967 by aligning the USA
with "the landed gentry" of Latin America and always taking sides against oppressed
rising up against corrupt oppressive governments ever since the Second World War.
We now see that what Dr King was talking about then is still the way things are today
with super rich US power elites seeking to keep their stranglehold on governments in
all the Third World and especially Latin America and stomping out democracy at every
opportunity with the help of their far right/loony right thug governments and their guns.

People in Latin America and else where need to know what the slime ball, swine are up to
to have some opportunity to preserve democracy in all Third World countries and even other
countries perhaps, given the US coup in Greece, the birthplace of democracy back in 1967.

US Elites Green Light to Honduran Coup and Then Caution Sign?

ahgoldberg — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:05:48 -0700

Did the US Government get cold feet and turn on a caution light to the coup the Honduran military carried out against its own democratic and legitimate president, Manuel Zeleya by kidnapping him and forcing him into exile in Costa Rica and installing Roberto Michilleti, an opponent of Zeleya's as the military despot to do the will of the rich and super rich in Honduras, with such a swift condemnation of same by the European Union and the Organization for American States along with the United Nations General Assembly pressing for an emergency session on the same day?
If what the quite reliable Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan president has had to say is true, then this seems all the more likely. Chavez has said he thinks the CIA was in on the coup. With it the characteristics MO (criminal method of operation) of the CIA. Now Barak Obama, the pied piper of neo con policies who campaigned against same is condemning this coup.

The coup has already resulted in the imposition of martial law on the country, electricity has gone out, all power for the internet has gone, the lights are going out all over Honduras, but the people continue to resist this right wing military coup and tyranny and are doing so all across that country. The light can come back on when the coup and its gangsters have backed off their power grab. Of course, the Honduran people are fighting against the same "landed gentry" which Martin Luther King Jr in his day said the United States was aligned with, and unfortunately the USA is still aligned with those Dr King warned against his country aligning itself with.

The kidnapping of ambassadors from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, countries friendly to Zeleya, even though now released, given the beatings by the Honduran military, shows this coup is an absolute outrage.

This is coup which surely should not only be condemned, but reversed if at all possible by the same avenue as a nominally Democratic president reversed the military coup against the democratic government in Haiti, albeit without same arm twisting of this Honduran president that that US president in 1994 applied to that Haitian president to let big US business interests have a free reign of his country. This would simply involve going to the UN Security Council to call for a resolution authorizing whatever force in necessary to restore the democratic government of Honduras and vetoes would be extremely unlikely as they proved to be then.

This coup has united the indigenous people in the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations with others to defend their right to democratic government. In this struggle the people defending their right to democracy in government are standing up to tanks. They deserve our support, and if the president will stop being so much of a cynical Daley machine politician, he could lend his tangible, and not just rhetorical support, as well.

The Honduran people deserve our support as wage their struggle against a corrupt system of oppression in the form of this coup just as Dr King said all people rising up against such systems in his day deserved our support, and the USA can provide by taking their case to the UN Security Council and backing their right to have a democratic and legitimate government restored.

Honduran Coup and Need for Action at UN

ahgoldberg — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:26:03 -0700

Did the US Government get cold feet and turn on a caution
light to the coup the Honduran military carried out against its
own democratic and legitimate president, Manuel Zeleya by
kidnapping him and forcing him into exile in Costa Rica and
installing Roberto Michilleti, an opponent of Zeleya's as the
military despot to do the will of the rich and super rich in Honduras,
with such a swift condemnation of same by the European Union and
the Organization for American States along with the United Nations
General Assembly pressing for an emergency session on the
same day?

If what the quite reliable Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan president has
had to say is true, then this seems all the more likely. Chavez has
said he thinks the USA was in on the coup. With it the characteristics
MO (criminal method of operation) of the USA. Now Barak Obama,
the pied piper of neo con policies who campaigned against same is
condemning this coup.

The coup has already resulted in the imposition of martial law on the
country, electricity has gone out, all power for the internet has gone,
the lights are going out all over Honduras, but the people continue to
resist this right wing military coup and tyranny and are doing so all across
that country. The light can come back on when the coup and its gangsters
have backed off their power grab. Of course, the Honduran people are
fighting against the same "landed gentry" which Martin Luther King Jr
in his day said the United States was aligned with, and unfortunately
the USA is still aligned with those Dr King warned against his country
aligning itself with.

The kidnapping of ambassadors from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua,
countries friendly to Zeleya, even though now released, given the beatings
by the Honduran military as well as the beating and kidnapping of Patricia
Rodas, the Honduran foreign minister whose whereabouts are currently
unknown show just how completely outrageous this coup is.

This is coup which surely should not only be condemned, but reversed
if at all possible by the same avenue as a nominally Democratic president
reversed the military coup against the democratic government in Haiti,
albeit without same arm twisting of this Honduran president that that
US president in 1994 applied to that Haitian president to let big US
business interests have a free reign of his country. This would simply
involve going to the UN Security Council to call for a resolution authorizing
whatever force in necessary to restore the democratic government of Honduras
and vetoes would be extremely unlikely as they proved to be then.

This coup has united the indigenous people in the Civil Council of Popular
and Indigenous Organizations with others to defend their right to democratic
government. In this struggle the people defending their right to democracy
in government are standing up to tanks. They deserve our support, and if
the president will stop being so much of a cynical Daley machine politician,
he could lend his tangible, and not just rhetorical support, as well.

The Honduran people deserve our support as they wage their struggle against
a corrupt system of oppression in the form of this coup just as Dr King said
all people rising up against such systems in his day deserved our support,
and the USA can provide by taking their case to the UN Security Council
and backing their right to have a democratic and legitimate government
restored.

Real Health Care Reform in the USA and not So Real Elsewhere

ahgoldberg — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:02:00 -0700

In the United States today all too many in the media
and others are equating the current US health care hodge-
podge mess with the single payer health system as an extreme,
and this isn't just simplistic and reductionist non sense, though
it is that, but an outright fallacy of the false equation. Something
such as single payer which provides high quality health care
for all at much less expense than the status quo rip off with
choice of providers and true health care democracy, with the
people through their government in charge is clearly not extreme
in any sense, but in the sense of being extremely good. But
then ethics has never been a strong suit for neo cons and
their types historically with their ethically challenged background
going back to their ideological ancestors saying monarchs in
England and the rest of Europe ruled by the grace of God. What
could be expected from such morally inferior types, and yes
that's what the hell they are.

But those who would get single payer must recognize that they
have the deck getting stacked against them, with the president
already tipping his hand toward a minimalist of the worst type
weak kneed commitment to an almost nothing public health care
option which would give a built in advantage to the privately
funded and private health industry controlled plans for health
care in the USA. This is made worse by evidence continuing
to mount and being reported in the alternate media of health
insurance and pharmaceutical industry monetary influence on
key players in the debate in the US Senate. The more this is
exposed the more it will at least help to put these individuals
on the defensive about opposing single payer as well it should.
But even more brazen is the fact that all in the US Congress including
the strongest opponents of single payer for this country's people
get that "terrible form of socialized medicine" for themselves with
not one of said strong opponents of single payer ever refusing
such health care coverage for themselves like the proverbial
hypocrites they are. This needs to get out. The truth on this is essential
to bring much needed pressure to bear to force action on these
phonies and those who are weak kneed.

Of course, this weak kneed president is simply a cynical Daley
machine politician in the first place, and not the change we "can
believe in" as his hagiographers are so hell bent on saying he is. But
be that as it may, we have the power to put pressure on him and on
other big time politicians by exposing the real truth about them and
what they're really all about including their conflicts of interests fueled
by the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries buying up of stock in
them.

We need health care "of, by, and for the people," a "radical idea,
but what the hell let's do it anyway regardless what the US mainstream
overrated media have to say as an echo chamber for the quid pro quo/
status quo and the rip off and corruption of the old and older order
made more corrupt as it has had too much power for too long with all the
privileges, pomp, circumstance and all the rest along with it. Oh, and
"roll over Katie Graham/tell Obama the news." Because we uppity
progressives already know and have been speaking truth to power
about it, and as some might say, "Ding dong the wicked witch is dead,"
the wicked witch of the US mainstream media that is or "Do not send
to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for them." Put bluntly the era of
"Elmer Fudd nation" and the sleeping dog mainstream media in a happy
convergence seem to be coming to an end. The laptops of today's
progressive/alternative media have now begun pointing a bright floodlight
at the corruption and injustice of the system in a way that Graham warned
against, thus an opportunity is upon us, and we progressives must seize it
and while we're at get single payer for all as well. Those with the power
won't give up without a fight and probably fight dirty, but this an unprecedented
time of opportunity for us progressives.

Worst case scenario, we should only allow multi payer systems of health care
such as those in France or Germany which I just got back from vacation
in which (1) only allow those in private sector to sell basic health
insurance which are non profit organizations, (2) are strictly regulated by
the central government, and (3) aren't allowed to refuse coverage to
people based on their health conditions.

Absolutely we need to avoid the Dutch error of letting for profit health
insurance companies getting their foot in the door on health care, which
has led to 250,000 people losing coverage and another 250,000 who are
behind on payments. This all got started in 2006 when the Netherlands
first allowed non profit organizations providing health care to change
over to for profit companies and for profit health insurance companies
to come into being. With British health care, beginning in 2002, profit
making health insurance companies started getting their foot in the
door of British health care initially only with elective surgery, but then
for treatment of diabetes, and then other care, until in 2008 for
profit health insurance companies are moving toward dominance
and displacing the National Health Service and leading much lower
quality of health care including destroying doctor-patient relationships
and continuity of coverage. United Health, based in Minnesota is one
of these companies, as well as one indicted "for swindling taxpayers and
patients. . ." This move in the direction of privatization of health care
has produced terrible results, with efficiency only for these companies
and anything but efficiency for patients in their health care. When
those on the right want to point their fingers at problems with British
health care, they need only look at the fact that the health insurance
industry has got its foot in the door. The facts about the British health
care trends have come out in a British magazine I subscribe to.

Stop F22 Pork Barrel, Take Ike's Advice

ahgoldberg — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:22:24 -0700

Now is the time for people in the United States to contact their congresspersons and senators to get them to bring a screeching halt to the F22 pork barrel project that will cost over a trillion dollars that the US House Armed Services in the dead of the night last Wednesday voted to sneak through and doing so follow the sage advice of Dwight D Eisenhower to "guard against the growth of the military industrial complex. . ." After all Ike cut the Pentagon budget in 1955 and 1960 in the heyday of the Cold War when the USA and its allies faced the East bloc and no harm came to our national security, and today we surely face no such military power. The Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has even said we don't need this F22 project.

People should also urge their senators, if needed, to filibuster against this silly, off the wall pork barrel project. Let's move now to stop this rotten pork barrel project of waste which we can't afford.

Free Press Fight for Media Tranformation Continues

ahgoldberg — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:37:07 -0700

Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press which last year hosted a convention here in Minnesota on transforming the media is continuing the struggle and will be have an event in Washington, the US capital, on May 14th this year for people from a variety of backgrounds to carry on the struggle to get a real transformation in the US media make sure the USA can have an informed populace. This organization is fighting for net neutrality to keep some of the big business types such as Time Warner and others from charging fees for people simply using the internet, these companies say excessively, as they really don't want a free internet anymore than the US mainstream media big wigs really want a free press. Hell that would mean real competition with the actual facts coming out rather than big business approved hot air which doesn't rattle the cages of these economic con artists and our virtual rulers. But damn the natives in the old USA are getting restive along with the immigrants here, and that scares the hell out of the hot air blowing status quo/quid pro quo crowd and clique.

Hey, Thomas Jefferson once said "A little rebellion is a good thing." In this case, it might be that a lot of rebellion is good thing to get a tranformed media which might restore a democratic form of government to this country so lacking over the last eight years. Let's damn do it! Si se puede!

The event called Free Press Summit: Changing Media will be streaming, and the home page is http://www.freepress.net/. People can check the site to get more information.

The UFW Struggle Continues as Cinco de Mayo Passes

ahgoldberg — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:28:25 -0700

Right now in the United States, the United Farm Workers are
pressing California legislators to pass legislation which
would provide that a petition by farm workers in a bargaining
unit signed by over half going into the the state agency regulating
farm workers would give that unit union representation, thus
making it easier to insure farm workers don't suffer the fate of
17 year old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who died of a heat
stroke May 16 this year due to lack of company medical assistance
in time, as doctors at the emergency room treating her said. They
maintained she could have survived if she had got to the hospital
sooner. This legislation is modeled on the federal employee free
choice act, which unfortunately the president hasn't gone near
far enough in pushing to get passed. But California might well
make a breakthrough on this legislation, if people put on enough
pressure. The state's farm workers need this legislation to insure
they have union representation which could protect them from this
and other injustices which have been a pattern for some time for
farm workers in California as well as elsewhere, but this may
be a great opportunity to do something about this outrageous
treatment of farm workers. The California Agricultural Labor Relations
Board would have to certify that over half the employees at said employer
had signed this petition, and with such certification the matter would be
subject to vote of the employees to choose which union they would like
to represent them.

Cases of farm workers not even having decent access to water, bathrooms,
and other necessities have cropped up time and again with non union
growers. Consistently farm workers at non union growers lack decent access
to these necessities often in actual temperatures in the high 90s . This isn't even
human. This was the case with the young woman who just died this May.

A half dozen farm workers apparently died from heat related deaths last year
in California due to growers' callousness and lax state enforcement of laws to
protect the farm workers from such outrages. It shouldn't take anymore deaths such as
these to get justice for the farm workers. Too many growers are putting their green back
dollar worshipping mentality ahead of any consideration of employees' health
and even lives is clearly the problem. That's these growers' market concept "values."
The "great casino capitalist system" continues its reign of oppression over the voiceless.
But the time to bet on the value of a single human life over the "values" of greed and that of
the green back dollar have come. It's time to bring an end to the "Golden Rule" of those
who own the gold make the rules. This has already as happened people have celebrated
in South Africa with the ANC winning again by a huge margin over those who favor the "Golden
Rule." It has happened in Latin America, and it will continue to happen else where including here
in the United States if people can put on enough pressure to get a rule "of, by, and for the
people" which the privileged types are so dead set against. This is now an internationalized
struggle as Martin Luther King Jr in his day said it would have to be. Dr King was so right.

The local district attorney has filed charges of involuntary manslaughter
against the three top officials of Merced Farm Labor, the farm labor
contractor company involved for this young woman's death.

Once employees by petition of over half the employees with that
employer signing it goes into the Agricultural Labor Relations Board,
an election by secret ballot by the employees must be held to allow
them to decide. If over half vote for a certain union, that union then
gets the right to represent and bargain for them. This is simply democracy
in the market place, not that neo cons want it even in politics, but in the
market place they sure as hell don't.

I won't pretend I haven't taken sides, as I have picketed and marched
for the United Farm Workers (UFW) back in the 1960s when I was in college
at Oregon State. As Paul Robeson once put it so well, "Sooner or later
we must either choose freedom or slavery," and I'm glad to have chosen
freedom including in the market place. Wall Mart, of course, wouldn't
approve. Having supported the UFW starting in the 1960s, I've taken
sides and won't apologize for that.

FAIR, Progressive Media Watch Dog Needs Progressives' Help

ahgoldberg — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:52:24 -0700

In the April issue of Extra, which is the magazine for FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), a progressive media watch dog has apparently fallen on hard times at a time, as cost cutting fails to keep pace with lost revenues and at a time when such a group is so vital to keeping the US mainstream media honest by knocking down the fiction and propaganda that often passes itself off as facts, thus distorting journalism, the first draft of history as it's called and in doing so misinforms the people in need of the facts to make democracy in government work. Thomas Jefferson put it so well when he said that "An informed populace" is essential "for democracy." With ever greater concentration of the US media in fewer hands, and thus even less diversity in coverage of events than ever before, people are getting an ever more narrow view of events at a time when a wider view of events is essential for public debate in the USA as it is elsewhere. I say this as someone who has backed FAIR almost from the start.

Just to get right to the point. George Soros and other better off progressives need to get into this one big time. This is about making sure the American people are informed at a time when they need that information so badly to cope with current crises.

As to those progressives in show business such as Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and others; a fund raising event of major proportions wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Your help is most definitely needed to save not just FAIR, but a real debate about the crucial issues facing this country.

This organization which has been going strong since 1986 when Jeff Cohen got it started and while doing so got the strong support of I F Stone, one of the greatest US journalist of all time-- right up there with George Seldes; Both of them did what they could to keep the US press honest. Seldes doing so earlier from a more establishment background with heavier access to those in authority, with Stone doing so more as anti establishment figure with little reliance on those in authority, but with both being solid progressive figures providing a voice and eyes for those too much locked out of the US mainstream media.

Nor will the internet be able to do enough by itself to offset the bias of the US mainstream media so overwhelmingly in favor of big business and the status quo with all its quid pro quo, which it is becoming more and more a part of.

A misinformed America is not an option for a democratic state, let alone a progressive one!

March is Women's History Month

ahgoldberg — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:34:08 -0700

All people in the USA this month, as it's women's history month need
to honor great women in US history. A few readily come to mind. Here
goes. Susan B Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, Coretta Scott King, Jane
Fonda, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Cindy Sheehan all have made
major contributions in this country; and this is in no way a
comprehensive list. But this isn't at all a bad start for honoring
great American women.

To start this off with a real spark for voices for an anti war effort
and ultimately an international peace movement, it would seem a good
idea to refer to those who stand out in
this regard. They would include such women as Cindy Sheehan, Eartha
Kitt, Cynthia McKinney, Correta Scott King, and Jane Fonda.

Women having a stronger feminine side with all the nurturing,
sensitivity, compassion for others, sense of justice, and
identification with standing in solidarity with those suffering
oppression have the wherewithal to provide a vanguard not only for
anti war effort, but a full fledged international peace movement.
Furthermore, it's very appropriate that US women should do this as it
still is, as it was, their "own government" which is "the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today," as Martin Luther King Jr
said in 1967.

Eartha Kitt, a US activist, cultural symbol, and internationally
renowned singer who had protested the Vietnam War in the White House
in 1968 to the First Lady herself,
died on Christmas Day last year was an outstanding example of women
standing up to US militarism.

Coretta Scott King stood at the side of Martin Luther King Jr, one of
the greatest Americans in all US history, and she backed him in his
struggle for racial justice at home, in his opposition to the Vietnam
War. After he died she would continue his struggle including that
against US militarism and imperialism, for civil rights at home, for
other justice issues at home, and also very importantly she would
provide leadership in opposing W's foreign policy of endless war.

The others are still around.

Barbara Lee, who is now the leader of the Black Caucus in the US
Congress and was the only member of that body to vote against W's
resolution to seek military action after the 9/11 attacks has been,
and surely will continue to be a solid, courageous voice in any anti
war effort and could easily have a leading role in any real
international peace movement.

Cindy Sheehan became active in opposing Iraq War and W's "war of
terrorism," after her son's needless death in W's Iraq War based on
lies and fraud, has led this effort as well other efforts opposing the
insane domestic and foreign policies of W's administration, and she
continues to do so "to her everlasting credit," as the late Wayne
Morse would have said.

Media Benjamin of Code Pink has been in this struggle way back when W
sold his phony Iraq War to the country.

Cynthia McKinney as a presidential candidate of the Greens in 2008 and
since has shown she's willing and able to go all in the struggle as
part of anti war effort and likely help
lead in women moving to form a vanguard of an international peace
movement.

Jane Fonda would show her leadership in opposing the Vietnam War, in
supporting the women's movement, in supporting Tom Hayden, her one
time husband's fight for economic democracy, and not least for certain
she would, and does continue, to oppose the Iraq War.

These women can lead the way toward an all out international peace
movement so desperately needed today. Men and other women as well can
surely be part of such a movement. Those who lead for a time may
become followers later, and those who start out as followers may
become leaders later. Only those with an hierarchal orientation must
have have the same leaders all the time and have any
institutionalization of same.

Along with the women already cited, then let us honor and recognize
others below. These women provided outstanding examples for the
progressive movement on a variety
of issues.

Brought up as a Quaker, Susan B Anthony was an activist in many causes
mainly in the 19th Century, and these included, but aren't limited to
the anti slavery movement, the women's suffrage movement, the movement
to get better working conditions for employees in the labor force, and
the movement to get equal pay for women and other equality for women.
She was a brave woman who in one case during her activism for the anti
slavery movement even encountered, not just the threat of violence,
but violence literally breaking out. But she didn't back down. Nor did
she back down on other great causes which she lent her name to.

Oh, how about Eleanor Roosevelt for a great American woman? She was a
first lady, who, thankfully, never knew "her place" as a woman, as she
always must have been convinced that she had a right to speak out on
the great issues of the day. She was known to be quite outspoken on
racial injustice in the USA, when it was definitely not in vogue to
be. She spoke out on human rights abroad as well. Franklin D Roosevelt
had a great woman at his side in his fight for the mass of people
against the "economic royalists." She was also a supporter of the
United Nations as an organization. For liberals and progressives, she
often showed the leadership which others lacked the foresight or guts
to provide. She may have been, and probably was wrong now and then.
But who the hell isn't?

Rosa Parks, who had never had a prominent role in activism before
1955, would on a fateful day that year in Montgomery Alabama take a
stand by sitting and refusing to give up her seat at the front of a
local transit bus to a white man and by doing so start the ball
rolling big time for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
The Brown vs Board Education decision by the US Supreme Court in 1954,
while certainly important didn't trigger the kind of activism in the
civil rights struggle, and especially with regard to legally
sanctioned segregation that Rosa ParKs stand by remaining seated did.

Fannie Lou Hamer, who would become famous for saying, "I'm sick and
tired of being sick and tired," would lead in the civil rights
movement in Mississippi, especially with regard to getting voting
rights for blacks. She
would also lead a challenge delegation to both the 1964 and 1968
Democratic National Conventions to more dramatically seek to get black
representation in the party which has too often, and especially since
the early 1990s, taken blacks, other people of color, and working
class whites for granted. She would later get involved with and in the
National Women's Caucus within the women's movement.

Colin Powell or Chuck Hagel to Be GOP's Ike in 2012

ahgoldberg — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:23:52 -0700

Colin Powell or Chuck Hagel to Be the GOP's Ike in 2012

Look for either Colin Powell with his tremendous credibility as
an authority figure with his top level military background and
opposition to neo con policies both domestic and foreign or
Chuck Hagel, Vietnam combat vet and same basic orientation
on policy issues to be the GOP's Dwight D Eisenhower in 2012
as Barak Obama runs out of gas not following through on his
"change you can believe in" partially due to his own lack of
guts to stand up to the GOP and partially as the GOP will
just keep hammering him, with the media in the old back
pocket right here in the "good old USA, with either Hagel
or Powell, which ever one is the lucky one taking enough
states and areas which Obama took for his party in 2008
to retake the presidency then.

Rash Windbag is just extra baggage in this case,
and probably as far as either Hagel or Powell are concerned,
excess baggage which they aren't all that interested in anyway.
The new GOP national chairman is a definite good sign.

Both Hagel and Powell have taken on Rash Windbag,
radio talk mouth piece for the far right/loony right neo
con, phony lying, BSing, blow hard, who knows the
true meaning of hot air and how to produce a maximum
quantity of same. Oh, and I left out Straussian in referring
to Windbag which fits his gangster crowd of turn ethics on
its head clique believing Straussian garbage about the fact
that not only must those in power lie to keep power, but that
they have a moral right to do so, easily outdoing Machiavellian
types who at least have the good judgment to leave ethics
out of their advice to those holding power.

Hagel and Powell both easily have such a solid grasp on
ethics that they are head and shoulders above the Sarah
Palins both women and men. Oh, and that brings up the
wonderful subject of Powell letting go on Palin with a
blast that wouldn't quit. He just tore into her with that
"There's nothing wrong with my value system from the South
Bronx" in response to Palin's comment about small town
values with said comment about small town values in which
Palin seemed to be saying small towns have a monopoly
on values, which is pure drivel. Powell remarked on how
Palin was pushing the GOP further and further to the right,
which couldn't hold up and that Powell had "talked to a number
of leaders in recent weeks and they understand that." Of course,
many in small towns didn't find the GOP national ticket that
appealing in 2008. Saying the GOP "has to take a hard
look at itself," and that he saw "nothing wrong with being
conservative," Powell warned his party against treating
Windbag like the E F Hutton of US politics. He also favors
taking another look at the "Don't ask. Don't tell" policy on
gays in the military. Referring to Windbag, Powell posed
the question of the GOP, "Is this really the kind of party that
we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to
appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"
Powell concluded that Palin's "polarization" hadn't worked
and had "backfired" on the party. Powell still considers himself
a Republican.

Hagel came on strong against the Windbag and all the
far right/loony right "know nothingism" as he aptly referred
to it, which as he said was really just about tearing down
others and that Windbag really didn't have any answers
even though he claimed to have all the answers. Hagel sardonically
said he wished Windbag "and others like that would run for office.
They have so much to contribute an so much leadership and they
have an answer for everything. And they would be elected overwhelmingly."
Making his case, Hagel insisted, "Engagement isn't appeasement.
Diplomacy is not retreat. . ."

Both Powell and Hagel have opposed AIPAC from time to time
as well, and this could be another positive sign. Of course the AIPAC
and neo con agenda tend to overlap quite a bit if not overwhelmingly.
With either Powell or Hagel at the helm, this could be in sync with Ike's
GOP.

The GOP also chose Michael Steele, former Maryland lieutenant
governor, the first black to be its national chair. Steele has called
this 'the dawn of a new party." Steele told those gathered that he
was going to say "to friend and foe alike. We want you to be part of
us. We want you to be with us. And those who wish to obstruct, get
ready to get knocked over." The RNC seemed clearly to be rebelling
against the domination it had been under for the four years of W's
presidency. Clearly the GOP hierarchy is smarting from the 2008
loss of presidency and of diminished strength in congress. Steele
has said he won't concede any segment of the population or any
of the country to the Democrats. Steele's opponents were clearly
to his right, thus making this choice all the more significant. Here's
the GOP hierarchy that appears clearly to show it desires a new
direction for the party away from the current neo con, far right
garbage.

Steele chairs GOPAC, an organization which recruits and trains
candidates for the party.

This is good news for both Powell, Hagel, and others who want to
see a new direction away from the far right, neo con agenda.

February-- Black History Month in the USA

ahgoldberg — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:58:05 -0800

Start at the start with Crispus Attucks, one
of the first people to give his life in the fight
by the 13 colonies against George III in
Boston on March 5, 1770, in what became
known as the Boston Massacre. He was
a black man who gave his life for a country
that was to come into being as a result of
the rebellion against the British sovereign,
even though he and blacks then and later
would have no rights in that country. Without
Attucks and others fighting in that rebellion
against George IIII, no independent US history
black or white or otherwise would even exists
for the United States would never come into being
as an independent country.

Then move right on two absolutely indispensable
blacks, Martin Luther King Jr and Charles Richard
Drew. With Dr King so deeply involved in the struggle
to save his country in the 1960s at the end of his life
from "spiritual death" as he referred to it from militarism,
racism, and imperialism that had put the USA on the
wrong side of history. Then put Dr Drew in who as
a surgeon would develop blood plasma which would
literally save so many lives bodily of those in his country.
He would go to England to put in the first blood bank with
the sanction of the British government.

Next it would be good to look at Paul Robeson, an activist politically
and otherwise, and internationally recognized actor and singer who
stood for his ideals of a better for all across the spectrum of issues
at home and abroad, whom the communist bashing fanatics who
got too much power in the hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s would
destroy the career of due to their hatred of his political ideals and crazy
dogma of knee jerk anti communism and their guilt by association mentality.
Ultimately in 1950 the State Department would take his passport, which he
wouldn't get back until 1958, thus depriving Robeson his best opportunities
which were in countries where he would have to have a passport to travel
to. That Robeson could get as far as he did in this loony right/far right era
was a tribute to his greatness, courage, and brilliance, for deprived of his
passport, Robeson had no real opportunity during that period to continue
with his career at home in the USA, as US communist bashing fanatics had
created there such an atmosphere of hostility, hatred, and anger at Robeson
for his "unAmericanism" which wasn't, but which the US media peddled
as gospel so completely. However, Robeson had his brief moment at a
HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee) when he called out
these low life, foaming at the mouth mad dogs for what they were calling them
the real "UnAmericans," and telling them "You should be ashamed of
yourselves," as he stood there representing the highest and best of
the ideals of the founding fathers and the best of what this country should
stand for and for best of Americanism. But the US media would do its "job"
erasing much of Robeson's life and sending it down a memory hole. For after
all Robeson openly said he was a socialist, even if he put the stress on
democratic socialism. These US media types were much more concerned
with any threat to the US brand of capitalism, which they were, and are still
so much a part of. Robeson proved to be right about the need for negotiation
rather than confrontation with Moscow, as a one time top level CIA official
put it, "The 10 feet tall Russians" was always BS. Robeson would have to
endure many racist incidences in the USA throughout his life, but the worst of
all came in August and September of 1949 in Peerskill NY where he was
scheduled to give concerts, with the first scheduled for August, but cancelled
after violence. Then in September Robeson was scheduled to perform at
another concert which he and Pete Seeger sang at, with people carrying
racist, anti Semitic, and communist bashing signs literally attacking those
attending with baseball bats and bricks, even dragging some out of their cars.
With the fascists and racists and anti Semites attacking the pro Robeson crowd
many of whom were veterans of the Second World War and having fought
against fascism.

Dr King would get pegged by the same media types with the label of "black
leader" and glorified for what he did up through the march on US capital
in August 1963, but the same media types would make sure not to have
much to say about him after that and until his speech attacking the Vietnam
War. Then these media types would go after him all out. Lyndon B Johnson
would refer to that "goddamn (N word pejorative for black) preacher." Was
little bit of racism going on here? Dr King put it well when he said he had "wandered
off the plantation of race and criticized the Vietnam War." These press types
had praised Dr King when he spoke out only on civil rights especially in the
US South, but now that he was taking on the Vietnam War, US imperialism,
and militarism and racism and tying them all together, the torrent of abuse came
in a flood. These media types just didn't get it that as Dr King said, "Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Nor that as he put it, "I've spent
too much of my life fighting segregation to start segregating my moral concerns. I'm
not going to do that." In response to these media types Dr King put it so aptly,
"The thing is I'm a Negro leader. I'm supposed to stay in my place. . ." We can
be so glad he didn't stay in "his place"-- damn glad! Dr King likewise repeatedly
had to endure violence and threats of violence until his assassination in 1968.

In Dr King's case, those high in the US Government and in such outfits as HUAC
or at the top level of the FBI wouldn't take Dr King on openly and publicly, and
they didn't have to as these media types did their hatchet job for them. Otherwise
the FBI with their director's approval, would sneak around looking through peepholes
at Dr King's love life seeking to use that to hurt him.

If the same press types had known that actually like Robeson, Dr King too was a socialist,
they would have really got their "knickers in twist" as folks say on the island of Britain.
Yes, Dr King was a socialist and said that to Caribbean writer C L R James when
insisted, "You don't hear that from me in the pulpit, do you?" "I don't say such things
from the pulpit, James, but that is what I really believe." Furthermore, what a person says
in private and in confidence pretty much is the real person." In public a leader has to
watch the words more carefully, but in private and with some, that same person will
tell it just like the leader actually sees it. This should be less of a surprise to those who
know more about the stress Dr King put on class struggle in the last part of his life and
of bringing poor whites, blacks, and others locked out by the system into a coalition to
change that system to make it better for all. Dr King's real dream wasn't just about getting
rid of Jim Crow, but about a better world for us all, about saving the US soul from damnation
of the "spiritual death" he said in that speech on the Vietnam War which the USA was
"approaching" by spending more on the military "than on programs of social uplift." Today
we still face that same stark choice.

Eartha Kitt standing up against the same insane war in 1968 in the White House and telling
the First Lady the same can't be left out. Kitt paid the price for speaking truth to power, as those
with the power sought to punish her for bringing out the truth. But she persevered as had these
others.

Jesse Jackson Sr, activist, ordained Baptist minister and like Dr King in the social gospel tradition
would break new ground with two campaigns for the presidency in 1984 and 1988, building up
support for progressive ideas and stimulating debate as well building up a grass roots progressive
movement, which is now showing some results. Blacks would get registered in massive numbers.
He would get strong showings at both 1984 and 1988 Democratic Conventions despite the fact
he didn't win. He would go on to be involved in and advocate progressive causes both at home
and abroad.

I won't attempt to list every black American who has made great contributions to this country
so numerous that they are surely way out of proportion to their percentage of the US population.

Let us pay tribute to all black Americans who through about 85 years of this country's existence
of fighting for "freedom," lived in slavery after having been brought over to this country on slave
ships in the worst of conditions, then sold off into slavery to live in chains, then to face Jim
Crowism in the South and de facto segregation and discrimination in the North, to face
lynchings in both North and South-- though with more in the South, to only get enforceable
voting rights nationally here in 1965, then face poverty and racism that stinks to high heaven,
all the while fighting in every war for the same country whose system so oppressed them, and to keep
struggling for a better life, and sometimes not just for themselves but others as well is a great
achievement for any people to have achieved. As the Medal of Honor would say it was, "above beyond
the call of duty."

Their religion, often a social gospel Baptist and AME (African Methodist Episcopal) one, their music
their poetry, and so much else in what they did in the rest of the arts letters and education and otherwise
have kept them going. Bless them. For so many times have their votes in recent times saved the rest
of this country from itself. That on other occasions too many of their white brothers and sisters been
too self indulgent, ignorant, narrow minded, self seeking, and otherwise flawed leading to the worst of
results is no fault of their own with the white vote going heavily enough the wrong way.

Today these same brave and decent black people face a bleak future even as whites begin to face
a similar yet not as dark future. For poverty, homelessness, lack of decent economic opportunity are
their lot today. Whites are now feeling some of the same from the failed neo con/far right/loony right
control by divide and rule policies. Others are also feeling the hard times.

Maybe now we can have the kind of coalition for real change for a better life for all which blacks have been
supporting for so long. That's something that would give hope for all.

My Apologies, Daschle's Correct Email Address

ahgoldberg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:04:17 -0800

Tom Daschle's correct email address should be tdaschle@americanprogress.org or tom.daschle@alston.com.

I'm pretty sure this is right. I sent in something to the other address and got error message. This should be
right-- thanks for everybody's consideration.

Health Care as an "Inalienable Right" for All with Single Payer

ahgoldberg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:28:01 -0800

An Interview with an Emergency Room Doctor and the "Inalienable
Right" to Health Care vs the Heath Insurance Industry Tyranny

Paul Hochfeld, MD who is an emergency room doctor in Corvallis
OR spoke with me on January 11th this year in an interview about
the need for single payer, as it provides quality health care for all
at less expense and provides for "someone" to run such a system, and
we now have no system, but a complete mess insuring a shortage
of primary care doctors. Dr Hochfeld has made a documetary on
the health care crisis in this country and what should be the solution
with single payer. I have to add with some person or persons in
charge of such a system in the federal government, we could have
accountability which is now completely and absolutely lacking.

Now the Wall Street Journal, the voice of big business in this country
no less says we have a shortage of surgeons so severe that people
are now getting surgeons who are temporaries going from one town
to another. The American College of Surgeons condemns this practice
The media mouthpiece for big business says this shortage of surgeons
has been going for 25 years and is most pronounced in rural area. This
has literally then become a matter of life or death, and especially in
these rural areas.

Most doctors, most health economist, and most of the American people
back single payer, Dr Hochfeld has said in an article which came out
December 30th last year in the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Why hasn't this country adopted single payer which would, as it
should, establish health care for all as an "inalienable right" as Thomas
Jefferson would so aptly put it?

Start with what ought to be clearly and absolutely obvious to everybody.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical insurance industries having it
so good riding a gravy train and making piles of money, and thus aren't
the least bit interested in single payer, which is so predictable. They
just want to keep their gravy train going.

It's greed trumping need as I would hasten to add.

AARP is right in there with the health insurance and pharmaceutical
industries fighting single payer, while putting on act of being a good
guy as Dr Hochfeld says. They makes a pile of money from the profit
side of the organization and talk as if their non profit and profit side
are completely separate, but AARP is in this fight, not for anybody's
but for the money.

Furthermore, AARP's influence is pervasive as successful as it at passing
itself off as the good guys as Dr Hochfeld points out. Dr Hochfeld also said
that AARP has even threatened legislators in Oregon who vote for single
payer that AARP will make sure they're defeated. This organization, Dr
Hochfeld says, has been spending piles of money lobbying to stop single
payer for years. Dr Hochfeld tells how AARP seeks to demonize single
payer with the "socialized medicine" label.

This is the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries' line as well
along with all the talk about people losing their choices, which health
care as the health insurance now runs it, means no choice. The health
decides who can see which health care provider, what health care that
person can get, how much, the amount to pay, the amount of coverage
by the health insurance industry, and this includes pharmacies to go to
get prescriptions, which ones are allowed, which amount of coverage,
the payment, and right on through-- no choice. With Single payer, all
the people any damn health care provider they want to see, when they
want to see that provider as long as that provider is available and it's
for needed health care, and nobody goes without health care. Add to
that a good estimate is that it would save a third of trillion dollars. But
that would take money away from the bean counting, parasitic health
insurance industry and its welfare program for itself.

AARP along with the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries want
the kind of "change" they can believe in, change in their pockets which they
line with our money. They just want to have funds.

Having joined this outfit just as I retired years ago when I thought it was
an advocate for retired people, I just continued my membership, but the
things AARP says in its magazine show what it's all about, and that's good
to know to insure I know how phony it is and how this outfit puts its greed first.
Then it's "divided we fail" if the hierarchy in AARP doesn't get what it wants.
As a member of AARP, I happen to know first hand how this organization,
these "good guys" pressed for a "compromise" resulting in cuts in Medicare
coverage of prescriptions, and after that happened AARP was right there
to tap into this new involuntary market to make lots of money. This shows
how much of an axe those running AARP have to grind to make sure single
payer doesn't pass. It would substantially, if not overwhelmingly cut down on
their revenue. Thus we have AARP alligned with those who put greed over
need. AARP has been able to play this role of being an advocate by the US
mainstream media playing right along and passing this off as the gospel truth.

Thomas Jefferson, for all his faults put it so well when he said, "Greed degrades."

Meanwhile the country's mainstream media also fails to or virtually fails to cover
Dr Hochfeld and the majority of doctors favoring single payer. The same is true
of other health care providers who favor single payer. The same media if it does
cover single payer, always comes up with BS put down that could easily be
knocked down by Dr Hochfeld or many other health care providers, but lack
of coverage insures that never happens-- more on this and reasons for same
later.

As someone who has experienced this country's health care first hand, I have
personally had to wait at least an hour and a half to see a doctor in an emergency
facility in metropolitan Minneapolis/St Paul. That's long enough that I or anyone
else could easily have died. It's worse in other major metropolitan areas, and the
Nation even had an article showing that at times people would be moved from
one emergency room to another due to the shortage of doctors. Do believe some
have surely died as result of this health care mess. Others have done without care
they need due to the shortage of primary care doctors and often to not having any
health insurance coverage at all. This was years ago, and things are definitely worse
now.

This country thus has endured as Jefferson would say, "a long train of abuses"
It has health care of, by, and for the health insurance industry with the drug industry
and AARP getting a piece of the action and big time money at our expense. The
health insurance industry, though, is the primary ruler here, with other two simply
being along for the ride. But tyranny it surely is, for none of these institutions with
all their power or recognizes they should "derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed." With that in mind, as Jefferson said "governments (institutions
in this case) are instituted to secure "the inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness." With Jefferson also referring at one point to health as being
"essential" for happiness, thus it should be an inalienable right, and when "governments
(again in this institutions) "become destructive" of such rights, then the people have
"a right to alter or abolish" them, and replace them with "new governments" (in this
case a new institution, single payer) providing proper "safeguards" for the people.
This single payer would definitely do, providing health care "of, by, and for the
people" as Abraham Lincoln would say, and thus end the current health insurance
industry tyranny over the people's health care with that industry's arbitrary authority
and abuse of such power in determining who gets to see which health care provider,
get what health care, what coverage, charging as it so chooses with no accountability
nor consideration of those it rules over and consideration of "deriving its just powers
from the consent of the governed," treating these "subscibers" as lowly subjects, making
victims of them victims of this same tyranny. It' time to stop this nonsense of letting the
health insurance industry while the people pay the price.

The US health insurance industry controls health care and maintains it tyranny by
divide and rule strategy of playing off heath care providers against patients. When
talking to health care providers, the industry blames the patient for abusing the "system"
which really isn't a system, by using when they don't need it, thus causing high costs.
When dealing with patients, the industry will blame the health care providers for charging
too much. AARP takes the line that the health care providers are at fault with its members,
overwhelmingly patients, but never gets at the real cause of the problem, the health insurance
industry, as AARP is gettting piles of money off this "system," which puts the quid pro quo
back in the status quo, stressing as it does the buying of politicians to get what they want
monetarily.

With the pharmaceutical industry, the key to their piles of
money lies in the fact that with full private control, the industry
can charge what it likes, as long the federal government, once the
people's government, isn't negotiating prices for prescriptions.
This is the conclusion I'm forced to on this.

We need a system Dr Hochfeld is saying. Currently it's clear we don't
have a system, but hodgepodge and complete mess is the conclusion
I'm forced to.

Now as to the media not covering those health care providers including
doctors who favor single payer. Why would that be? Hey, how about
the huge amount of MONEY these media types get from big business
especially the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which they
might lose if they covered such topics as single payer, which one professor
of mine in a University of Oregon journalism program referred to as thematic bias-- certain
topics are just off limits, and this tends to be due to advertising the media
get from certain sources. These media types know which side their
bread is buttered on.

Then the fact that the media itself tends to be a big business anyway, with
the same interests as the rest of big business. Interests overwhelmingly will
determine which side people come down on once push comes to shove,
and the media is no damn exception. That's just plain institutional analysis
or prostitutional analysis. Thus we have what Edward S Herman and Noam
Chomsky would call the media "manufacturing consent."

Dr Hochfeld has said single payer isn't getting discussed at all from what he's
seen.

A grass roots progressive movement has to speak up and speak truth to
power on this one.

What can we do about all this? A start might well be lettting Tom Daschle know
just how much and how strongly the people support health care of, by, and
for the people-- also known as single payer. After all Barak Obama has
put Daschle on the job to reach out to folks to get their input. Hey, let's
do some inputting. With that in mind, the following contact information
is provided, as that University of Oregon journalism professor would say
as mobilizing information. Damn it, I would just love to see some mobilization
on this, and therefore here's the good old mobilizing information to let folks
start putting in with the input. Do keep in mind, Daschle has probably getting
a lot of hot air and misinformation about single payer blown his way and
definitely needs the fresh air of those advocating health care of, by, and
for the people. It's time fight back against the "power of concentrated wealth"
with the people power of a strong nation wide grass roots movement. Let's
do it!

Tom Daschle's email address-- tom.daschle@americanprogress.org.

Disaster Capitlism and Neo Constipation Come to Minnesota

ahgoldberg — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:16:25 -0800

While Stephen Harper and his Canadian Conservatives have no unitary executive
authority though the current governor general seems to be legitimizing it in seeking to
bring a hidden agenda of disaster capitalism to Canada, Minnesota's governor and mouthpiece
for North Oaks, the main concentration of the state's super rich and defender of class war on their
behalf against the folks, does have some legal unitary executive authority acting as an official in
part of separate branch of government and elected separately unlike the Canadian chief
executive with that parliamentary system, and he's seeking to bring same disaster capitalism
to the state, exploiting the current economic crisis to carry out class warfare on behalf
of the super rich against the rest of the people. With the help of spineless Democrats
doing their impression of the Key Stone Kops, he can do just that and take the nice
out of Minnesota nice. By doing this the GOP governor and head neo con thug with
Democratic enablers in the legislature can impose what has been a secret far right/
loony right agenda on the state clobbering public education, public transportation,
and other essential services for the people while handing over tons of taxpayer
dollars to the super rich by turning public assets over to the private sector selling
off to same, meaning to the super rich and by tax breaks for same rich parasites
off the working people of Minnesota and meanwhile increasing taxes on public
education and public transportation, for taxes they are, but calling these "user
fees" with all the Orwellian language of slavery to the rich and super rich is
really freedom, and class war on behalf of the super rich is really peace, and
neo constipation of the system is really regularity is just plain BS.

If Canada can get disaster capitalism so aptly referred to and discussed so
well by Naomi Klein, then Minnesota is now getting ready for same courtesy
of not just the GOP governor, but you guessed it, those "wonderful" go along
to get along, follow the line of least resistance "Democrats" right here in the
Minnesota Legislature, at least the "leaders." We're talking about such
enablers as the House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelleher and House
Majority Leader Tony Sertich. No word is officially available yet from the
senate majority leader who may be thinking about actually acting like
a voice for the people of Minnesota, but don't hold your breath on that just
yet. The economic crisis it appears is bring together the "strange bedfellows
of politics," and just in time to get things back to the old trickle down/give
everything away to the rich and super rich after taking away everything
from the rest. Hey, it's class war by any other name, but that really is
what disaster capitalism wherever it plays out really is using crises to as Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky would say to "manufacture consent." These "Democratic
leaders," if they would be real Democrats and leaders they must regain their backbone,
realizing and recognizing the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, when he said "greed
degrades." They must stop their triangulating, refusing to stand for anything but
the power and privilege of holding office, and start standing up in the spirit of
Paul Wellstone and Hubert Humphrey. This is an imperative. They need only
look at their party nationally in the 1990s to see how with the triangulation and
lack of standing for principles got them into minority party and almost minor
minority party status across this country except in presidential politics and
was bad public policy as well. Otherwise these Democrats will have not only
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for themselves, but handed this state
a disgraceful version of what Klein rightly refers to as disaster capitalism which
destroys, but doesn't build anything. With that being the case, they might soon
find they those who stand for nothing, soon have nowhere to stand. For this
dangerous dogma of disaster capitalism will yield a scorched earth for all
and with its smashing of the public sector to hand over rule or really misrule
to the rich and super rich. This isn't "government by the consent of the governed"
nor "government of by and for the people" in the least.

Crises, as Klein so astutely points out, are weapons of disaster capitalism.
So it is here in this once progressive state. But Democrats in the legislature
need not let this happen. They can learn from opposition parties to their
north in Canada, who now have decided to become true opposition parties
and hold those neo con thug Conservatives there accountable for their lack
of consideration of the real needs of the people. That's what opposition
parties are for, to make democracy work for the people. It's why such people
as Thomas Jefferson founded the Democrat Republicans, whom the Democrats
are descended from, to force accountability on politicians. They weren't afraid to
think outside the box of "bipartisan politics."

Meanwhile the mainstream US media, right here the local Star Gazer Tribune,
is big business, and as expected favors a class war for the rich and super
rich as any institutional analysis worthy of the name would predict, and its
coverage shows it. It's out there helping to "manufacture consent." "Help
is on the way," as the line from that Marx brothers movie and these media
types would say. Thus "how dare" we progressives oppose this? Why it's
"unpatriotic."

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both," as Louis Brandeis,
one time US Supreme Court justice once put it.

The problem is clearly the threat of neo constipation of the system. The solution
is for people to pour a huge quantity of the equivalent of Castor oil on the
system, thus clearing it out. A grass roots progressive movement offers the
vehicle for doing just that.

Democrats in the state legislature must decide which side they're on. If
they wish to side with those who as Martin Luther King Jr referred to in his
day as siding with the "landed gentry" in Latin America and elsewhere
in what was then a class war for the rich of the time, they can do that and get
on what Dr King called the wrong side of history and back a morally
bankrupt policy as well. On the other hand, they can choose to stand up to
be a voice for the voiceless, to stand up against this class war for the super
rich and against all the rest and back good policy and good politics as well.

Stuart Symington in the Army/McCarthy hearing would reply to Joseph McCarthy
after citing chapter and verse of his outrageous charges, "It seems some
people just want anarchy." This is just what's going on here

The partisans of this "shock and awe" of disaster capitalism live for
for crises-- the easier to scare the hell out of people to make sure the
"wonderful heroes" can ride to the rescue on their "white horses"
or some would say jack asses. Those "damn terrible liberals
and progressives" have no "respect" nor proper deference to the
proper authority of the "great trickle down" rip off tyranny and con
game of the neo cons.

The response to disaster capitalism with all its "shock and awe" dogma
shouldn't just be "aw shocks."

The Media, Political Scandals, and Double Standards

ahgoldberg — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:12:51 -0800

The US mainstream media including the local greater Minneapolis/St Paul
based Star Gazer Tribune use double standards in covering scandals such
as the one involving selling influence specifically senate seats, one in Minnesota
a GOP one by perhaps the senator himself and another one in Illinois by the
Democratic governor. Both cases are at this stage unresolved, but with the FBI
looking into both. But the one in Illinois where Rod Blagojevich, the governor is
under investigation for selling the senate being vacated by Barak Obama is getting
big time US mainstream media play, while the case of Norm Coleman in Minnesota
the current senator fighting for reelection and with the FBI looking into Coleman selling
at least some "stock' in his seat is getting virtually no national coverage by the US
mainstream media, even though the local Star Gazer Tribune, a full fledged member
of the US mainstream media has revealed that the FBI is looking into the case involving
a Texas business making payments of $75,000 to a company where Coleman's
wife is employed and by doing so funnelling money to Coleman. Obviously, news of political
corruption should get coverage no matter what party or ideology of the politician is
involved, but clearly in these relatively similar cases that hasn't been close to true.

Now why might that be? How about the fact that the US mainstream media is a big
business, and definitely includes the Star Gazer Tribune, and thus has the same interests
as the rest of big business and these interests will surely color their coverage of such
scandals, with the politicians perceived to be favoring big business getting less or even
minimal, if any coverage, as opposed to those politicians seen as being opposed to
the big business agenda, this is just plain old fashioned institutional analysis. It isn't
brain surgery.

A law school dean, who like law professors and lawyers should know more about the
law than others, has said he doesn't see that any conviction except for conspiracy is
at all likely based on what he's seen of the evidence, and that even with the conspiracy
charges, it might end up with an acquittal. In no way does he say what Blagojevich has
done is ethical. but then again how many US politicians would that be true of anyway?

On a similar note, Alexander Cockburn points out how all the screaming against Blagojevich
being such a bad example for US politics is just plain "nonsense." As he hits the old
nail right on the head, this is simply way of politics in this country outside such hard core
good government states such as the Dakotas and Washington, where a "social democratic
ethic" prevails. The whole idea of quid pro quo being so much a part of the US political
status quo is the reality, and this kind of thing as Cockburn says really is the best "check and
balance agaisnt the arrogance of power." Speaking of which the upscale neo con pimps on and
off Wall Street know how to do "arrogance of power," and their prostitutes in the mainstream US
media know how to defend same. Hell, they know which side their bread is buttered on.

Blagojevich has shown he favored the employees who went on strike in Chicago against
Republic Window and Doors, saying he would back the Illinois Department of Labor bringing
the issue into federal court if the employees failed to get the $1.5 million they owned under
federal and state law as well their contract. The governor said, "We're going to do everything
possible in Illinois to side with these workers." The governor had arrived at the plant only hours
after the Chicago Tribune ran a December 8 story apparently confirming employees' fears that
the company had moved its business to a non union outlet in Iowa, hiding behind a different
name, Echo Windows which officially is listed with the secretary of state's office.

In the case of Coleman, like the Blagojevich, the FBI is investigating, and similarly Coleman
hasn't been convicted of any crime. The main objective fact which is different is the fact that
law enforcement authorities have so far failed to arrest Coleman. But to the Star Gazer Tribune's
credit it did carry a story in its December 11 issue on its front page showing the FBI was investigating
the case. For some "reason" this country's mainstream media hasn't covered any of the Coleman
scandal, and even the Star Gazer Tribune refused to call it a scandal. I have to differ on that given
the fact that the FBI is investigating the matter as the Tribune story points out makes it a scandal.
Does it prove criminal conduct? No, it doesn't, but this is likewise true in the Blagojevich case,
and an arrest by law enforcement authorities sure as hell doesn't change the fact that this country's
system of jurisprudence holds, if I'm not mistaken, that an individual is innocent until proven guilty
not the other way around, which is at least the tone of the coverage of the Blagojevich case. The
fact that no less than the Wall Street Journal is already piling on with the guilt by association
McCarthyite style hot air that the Blagojevich scandal has now touched Jesse Jackson Jr, a
prominent Democratic congressman from Illinois, as he has made it clear that he would like
to fill Barak Obama's senate seat and got the word to Blagojevich. Now that would obviously
say Jackson is guilty of wanting to be one of two senators from Illinois and having the "nerve"
to let the governor, an individual with the authority to appoint said senator know about this,
thus making him clearly guilty of wanting to be a US Senator. Yes, this is a new McCarthy
era, as has been aptly pointed out by the Progressive, but this time the new McCarthy has
been the president not just a senator. The fact that Jackson's name came up during the FBI
investigation doesn't say anything at all. The same mainstream media nationally isn't at all
shy about being all out McCarthy/guilt by association oriented by talking about how the Service
Employees Union is also "touched by this scandal." Oh, is that right? Hey, if that unions' touched
by this "shocking" scandal, it sure as hell took the McCarthyite, bought and owned lock, stock
and barrel by the upscale big business pimps, on and off Wall Street, to make it the case. A
little bit of that old guilt by association smear sewage by the US mainstream media sure goes a
long way to put out so much damn hot air. That union got mentioned in the investigation, and
presto and that union is "touched." Maybe it's the mainstream US media that's a tad touched.

In the Coleman case, Paul McKim who founded and was the CEO of the Deep Marine contends
in a lawsuit that this company funnelled $75,000 into the insurance company where Coleman's wife is
employed, a company known as Hays Companies of Minneapolis, with Nassar Kazaminy the
man who runs Deep Marine having said he was doing this as Coleman didn't get paid enough as
a senator. McKim maintains that Kazaminy made these comments about Coleman not making
enough as a senator to company executives and saying that the payments were to help Coleman
financially. McKim also says that Hays didn't provide anything goods or services for said payments.

We may not get Cockburn's type of checks and balances against the arrogance of power, but if those who
are trying to "help" Minnesota's "poor old" Coleman get their way, at least we'll get a better "balance
for Coleman's checking accounts."

Of course, I don't see why this case in Minnesota with Texas business money coming into buy Coleman
or at least some stock in him is less important than a governor, if it's true, trying to sell a senate seat,
but to those in that same state. At least in Illinois all the money was coming from within the state and
would benefit somebody in that state.

This whole tone nationally of guilt by association harkens so much back to the age of Joseph
McCarthy's as to show the "good old" US mainstream media knows how to get hysterical and
blow smoke up people's booties with the wildest of charges supported by not one solid fact to
keep their agenda, that of big business going full speed ahead

The US mainstream media by not covering the Coleman case at all and by its absolutely heavy
handed coverage of the Blagojevich case has shown it has no problems with double standards
to promote its big business agenda.

Thanksgiving Day is a Real Turkey-- Ask Native Americans

ahgoldberg — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:28:43 -0800

Today, let the one of to five per cent of the US population
who are the richest and overwhelmingly, and specifically
white men or their women or if gay their men should give
thanks for having the privilege, and clearly the disgraceful
arrogance of their power to take what wasn't theirs from
the Indians to whom it did belong, this land of the "free."
Yeah, "free," free to rape, torture, pillage, kill, enslave,
and yes to put a huge number of Indians in concentration
camps, euphemistically referred to as reservations, as this
would supply the white man, particularly the rich and super
rich white man with more slaves, as not enough were at
the time were available for the rich white man in Europe,
and especially Western Europe. Sure the sovereign in
England and others like he had brought many such as
the Irish into slavery after taking what wasn't theirs by "
brute force of the sword, but they had not yielded enough
slaves for their "majesties." Bringing over slaves from
Africa would help the rich white man, but he "needed"
even more slaves to carry out the "proper duties" of
serving their "majesties" in the way that their "majesties"
had great desire of becoming accustomed to. Thus the
Indians in this land of the "free" were just what the
sovereign in England and later his rebellious subjects,
the white ones, and especially the rich white men would
absolutely demand, and would do so more brutally than the monarch
in England ever had once the new United States with all its
"freedom" accompanied by black slavery for at least 80 years
of its existence came into being as an independent country.

The British sovereign, which had been the English sovereign,
as the monarch in England had only been for England, but in
1606 with the whole island of Britain having one sovereign for England,
Wales, and Scotland, a British sovereign was coming into being,
and in the Act of Union of 1707 officially became the one monarch,
and the entire island one country made up of those three countries.
This monarch would put relatively tight limits on white settlers in
the 13 colonies infringing on Indian land. Furthermore all those in
lands which became part of this sovereign's empire were then
British subjects with all rights of same. Whereas with the new
"republic' of the United States, Indians, the indigenous people
weren't citizens, blacks who were in slavery also weren't citizens,
women had no rights of citizens regardless of race or color. Add
to that white men without property had no minimal say in things
political with only New Hampshire not having property ownership
requirements for voting.

Olive Dickson, a Canadian hsitorian has shown that Indians
had at least minimal voting rights in Canada in 1857 in her book
entitled Canada's First Nations. This Metis, person of part Indian
and part European ancestry, also points out that during the 1870s
that one Indian who led an uprising against the Canadian government
would go on to be elected to parliament twice even though never
allowed to take his seat. Try picturing that coming close to happening
in this land of the "free," where these most minimal of voting rights
for Indians didn't come through until 1924 with a treaty. From Dickson's
book it's also clear that Canada never carried out such a grand crusade
and genocide against its Indians as did the "good old USA." The British
influence seems to have had a role in this, as the British authorities
including the monarch had never had such a backward attitude toward
the Indians.

Yes, "freedom" wasn't free, and it really wasn't at all for Indians.
These native people in this land that a monarch in England had
brought under his rule, would now be misruled much more brutally
by the "freedom loving" USA, where at least the rich, and especially
the rich white man knows he's free, "free" to rape, torture, kill, pillage,
and enslave others to suit his needs and greed and other weird
desires to dominate and make a pile of money off of, in this case the
land that wasn't even his in the first place. Damn Lee Greenwood,
"full enslavement and tyranny ahead for the rich white man."

It was a case of the wonderful, flowery, idealistic rhetoric of the founding
fathers giving way to the reality of "meet the new rich white man bosses/
same as the old rich white man bosses" with different dialects with last
shots fired in that war for "independence" and against George III's empire,
and this was definitely BTW, before the Who.

This is a day to remember that the rich white man and his flunkies
would kill or incarcerate Indians and even some others showing the
slightest willingness to resist the rich white man's rule, "the white
man's burden" or to use a complete sentence as a blood from
the ghetto would do, "The rich white man is the burden."

America on this day celebrates a day that really is a day of living a
lie of democracy even existing where the indigenous people of said
country have so completely been deprived of their most basic of
rights including ownership of their own land and by government genocide
against them, almost their own existence as a people. As William Cullen
Bryant once said "No lie can live forever, because truth crushed to earth
will rise again"-- not too bad for a European Caucasion, if I as someone of
that same European Caucasion persuasion can say so.

But as Martin Luther King Jr would put it so well, "Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere," and what Dr King said especially
holds true in this case of injustice and oppression of Indians, the first
nations of this country whom European tribes such as mine robbed
them of, and now is the time to right this wrong and to give amnesty to
Leonard Peltier, as the political prisoner he is, who simply chose, as
did others of his people to defend themselves against an evil, oppressive
government helll bent on literally attacking these native people for just
standing up for themselves and demanding their right to self government.
It's time for a new deal for the truly forgotten man and woman, the native
Americans, with a Marshall Plan for them, and it's way the hell overdue.

GOP Hierarchy to Go For Win in 2010 and 2012

ahgoldberg — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:25:48 -0800

The GOP Hierarchy Goes for Win in 2010 and 2012--
Obama to Get One Term

Losing elections really ticks off those in the GOP hierarchy, and
after all major parties in this country have always been about
winning elections and running the country. To move the ball
their way, two very crucial elements, this writer predicts, will
assert themselves rather strongly after this last election debacle
which handed the Democrats control of the presidency and increased
control over the congress. The big boys at the GOP, here referred to
are the Wall Street types and the Southwest oil and gas gang, who
really live to dominate this whole world and make the maximum
amount of money off same, but they can't do that when the Middle
East/Central Asia are so unstable as it is today, thus they will
be looking to get change they "can believe in" in official control of the
GOP to accomplish their "wonderful" goals. This will, include, for
the longterm recruiting another Dwight D Eisenhower to take on
Barak Obama in 2012, as Obama won't give these GOP bigwigs
the stability in this critical region they so desperately need to accomplish
their already stated objectives. Obama will pretty much continue what
W has started in that region, maybe switching troops more over to
Afghanistan after a long time, but the region will continue to be way
too unstable to suit these GOP bigwigs, who in large numbers in the
last election had their money going both ways to cover their bets. Money
talks, and BS walks.

But that really gets so expensive, and these "good old boys and girls"
will have their Terry Bradshaw moment of "Why you save money" by
only having to buy out one party instead of two. When that moment
comes, and it won't be long as these super rich types are really tight
with their money, then they will get busy doing what they know how to
do best, buy friends and influence politics and policy.

The AIPAC crowd will be upset, but these Wall Street and Southwest
oil and gas types have done without their help throughout much of their
history, and couldn't really give a damn less about such.

Harry Truman in 1948 was to win the presidency by four points, with his
party getting back control of the congress that party had lost in 1946, but
Truman was a real fighter and would stand his ground when he was convinced
he was right come hell or high water. Obama isn't that sort of fellow by a long
shot. Truman many could agree was wrong about the Cold War, he got the
country into the Korean War. That war carried great weight in 1952, and
along with phony garbage of about ''communists" taking over was enough to
take the GOP to victory both for the presidency and the congress that year.

Truman had in fact won his presidential victory despite the fact that his party
had controlled the White House for about 16 years by then and the congress
for 14 of those years. His party, likewise did well down the ticket taking back
the congress it lost in the previous 1946 midterm election. This was a significant
victory, given the fact that Truman trailed his GOP opponent in 1948 after both
major party conventions by 15 points in the polls. Obama hasn't exactly shown
himself as having this ability despite his vaunted charisma.

Furthermore, Obama will likely take his direction from those who have provided
the piles of money for his campaign and go against his base when the big money
types go a different direction. Money talks! This will mean he won't be about to
go ahead with any New Deal style pump priming, public works projects which
would rebuild the country's infrastructure, schools, health care, et al and provide
so many with needed and constructive employment. The base thus being abandoned
won't have much patience with their pied piper and will either opt for not voting or
maybe even vote for the GOP in the midterm. Come 2012 though, the GOP hierarchy
will have the Ike ready and be training their big guns on Obama and the Democrats
for failing to end two wars or doing so so belatedly as to be outrageous and not
getting the domestic economy back on its feet that the Republican bigwigs will
be ready to take back the presidency and the congress to again get back to to
getting a stabler world to make their piles of money off of. The upside for the country
is another Ike will be a move in the direction of peacenik oriented politics. Hey, the
folks on Wall Street and the Southwest oil and gas gang can go that direction if
the situation calls for it and it means more money they can make as a result and
they can come closer at least to dominating this world, if not actually doing it, which
probably isn't in the cards as things stand and the trend is now.

If this scenario seem so improbable, it's well to remember that back in the 1950s
I F Stone was calling for people to vote "Ike for peace." This writer finds it simply
fits with the desire of those with big money to get and stay in control, at least indirectly
through the party they back and to keep making a killing. It also fits with their willingness
to go along with a war now and then, but to see that too much war is bad for business,
as it makes this world too unstable.

US Mainstream Media Spin 2008 Election as Top Down Affair

ahgoldberg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:20:34 -0800

The mainstream media in the USA is now, and has been,
since calling Barak Obama the winner in the presidential
race, spinning the 2008 election as a coat tail effect/top
down affair to weaken the vast loose net US progressive which
has propelled the Democrats in the congress and Obama
to victory, seeking to force Obama and his party to the
right in a not so unpredictable turn of events, but which may
have a huge impact on politics and public policy for some
time, as those running the US mainstream media are
afraid of this movement which carried out a guerrilla action
knocking down the most powerful political machine since
Tammany Hall, and this has been a machine so powerful
as to make Tammany Hall seem like nothing by comparison.
Tammany Hall was only a local machine, this neo con dominated
GOP one is national big league gang of criminals.

In this case, as in many others the "liberal" mainstream media
which doesn't really exist, is quick to get into its spin mode,
calling the election an Obama coat tail effect/top down affair,
the better to undermine a genuine, grass roots progressive
movement gaining so much steam that it knocks down the rulers of
the body politic in a bottom up rejection of neo con insane,
failed, and morally bankrupt policies which Norman Solomon,
a great progressive had called for. His wish has been the
American people's command at least to the degree they could
perceive some way to do this. Pouring the equivalent of Castor
Oil into body politic to cure it of the highly fatal neo constipation.

FAIR, a progressive media watch dog group has documented
time and again, specifically in the cases of the 1992 presidential
race and the 2006 midterm election, very notoriously pressed for
the Democrats to move to the right after both those victories, spinning
both those Democratic victories as being the result of the power of
the "center," which these same media elite put over on the right,
then push the Democrats to keep on moving to the right, which is
has become an article of virtual mainstream media theological
truth is where elections just have to be won. The facts actually
show time and again the winners have to take care of the base
constituencies.

FAIR has tried to counter this constant spin with its radio program
CounterSpin. But the mainstream media is the giant with deep
pockets putting out its tons of hot air, fiction, and propaganda for
the super rich and status quo which it is so much a part of.

Enter the internet with freer access to a new technology to enable
progressives to counter fiction and propaganda with facts, and
the mainstream media becomes more than a bit concerned.

Here again the US mainstream media is spinning again on how
this election result was all about Obama's cautiousness, "centerism,"
and other "lovely virtues" of the same media elites, but this time
especially stressing the "coat tail effect/top down affair" which
this election definitely wasn't, and even the same mainstream
media coverage election night contradicts it. These media types
called for or projected substantial or big net gains for the Democrats
in the US House of Representatives at the latest starting at about
7 PM central time, with the presidential race still too close to call
for another roughly two or more hours, thus the lack of coat tail
effect unless a reverse one going from down the ticket upwards
and being a bottom up affair.

As a rule a coat tail effect comes into play when the top of the
ticket takes rest of the ticket nationally in a national election
to victory. 1964 with Lyndon B Johnson, and the same media
establishment media elites calling him the winner practically as
the coverage election night began and saying it would be huge.
It was 22 points. The same media elites wouldn't project the
number of US House seat gains for the Democrats with real
precision until later in the night. This is coat tail effect. 1980
also comes to mind on the opposite end of the spectrum with
these media elites calling the presidential race for the Gipper
not the late into the night, and then projecting a more exact
figure on his party gains in US House races later in the night.
The Gipper won with about 10 points. Obama, like Franklin
D Roosevelt in his fourth race in 1944 won by seven points
and with 53% of the total popular vote.

The internet has helped to bring together disparate elements
of this loose net progressive movement, bringing down the
rulers of US political system and even challenging the rulers
of the US mainstream media itself, and thus being something
which is really "scary" for these US media elites. The corruption
of power has manifests itself in this attempt to snatch defeat from
jaws of victory by framing the 2008 election as nothing more
than a coat tail effect/top down affair and anointing Obama,
as the king of the progressive movement, though Obama hasn't
sought it, to provide the US media elites with the opportunity to
be enablers for the those political ruling elites the American
people have just soundly repudiated from coast to coast.

With the neo con side carrying on their "holy war" agaisnt
those on the liberal and progressive end of the spectrum.
It's time US progressives think along the following lines.
As Winston Churchill said in the dark days of the Second
World War after a key victory for his side, "We have victory,
victory at last. . ." "No this is not the end nor even the beginning
of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. "

Martin Luther King Jr once said, "The arc of the moral universe is
long, but it bends towards justice." But Dr King couldn't foresee
or maybe he could that the arc of the US mainstream media is
short like its memory, but it bends towards hot air, which it's
filled like a hot air balloon with, but it blows hardest at election
time and right after to huff and puff and blow progressives'
houses of victory down and force politics to the right.

Keeping Pressure on for a Progressive Agenda

ahgoldberg — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:22:13 -0800

Bottom up/Reverse Coat tail Effect, and Vote
for "Socialism" Gives Obama Victory

Due to GOP loony right attacks on Barak Obama's
"socialism," the socialist agenda with a bottom up/
reverse coat tail effect gave Obama a victory in the
USA on this November election day. Democrats made
a large gain of new seats in the US House of Representatives
and surely garnering a much larger margin than Obama,
with the party gains where these Democrats were seen as
"heeding the siren song of socialism" as Dwight
D Eisenhower once got attacked by Barry Goldwater
as doing early in his administration. This is a win
for sanity at least, and nuclear war with Moscow at
least for now, even with Moscow's first strike policy
on nuclear weapons which none of the US mainstream
media would talk about, is less likely. With McCain, nuclear
war was a virtual certainty, given his complete unstable
character, which Obama's campaign never talked
about unfortunately.

The American people clearly were voting for that
idea from the island of Britain that "Those who create
the wealth should share in the fruits of their labor." That's
something that British labor, a party which backed democratic
socialism used to say it stood for very directly. This country's
people have now come around to seeing, after all these years
of the multi national businesses here waging a class war on
everybody else, it's time to stand up to this gang and put a
stop to this, putting the wealth back in the hands of the working
people, whether they call themselves middle class or working
class, as they created this wealth. Even Adam Smith in his
classic book The Wealth of Nations, said the rich didn't create
the wealth, and thus without maybe spelling it out, was saying
that others, thus working people however they refer to themselves
had created the wealth. This is all the more telling as Smith's
work was a defense of classic British capitalism.

This is thus a great moment, at least in terms of the raising
of consciousness of the American people on this matter. The
people here are saying they want the wealth back that Wall
Street and their gang ripped off from them and to have those running
this country's political system to do so in the interests and for the
benefit of them instead of the Wall Street and other pimps of
the prostitutes of American politics. They're saying it's time for
the prostitutes in political office to get themselves to legal whore
houses in Nevada and be done with it.

As usual the US mainstream, loony right/far right
echo chamber media with al its political prostituting
for Wall Street and their ilk got it wrong talking
about how it was a coat tail effect for Obama with
his careful strategy, even though he clearly was
running behind the party in the overall contests for
the US House of Representatives, with people voting
in new Democrats the voters perceived would oppose
the continuation of the rip neo con give away to Wall
Street and especially the pay off of the $700 billion
ranson note to the Wall Street bank robbers led by Hank
Paulson and their "we'll shut the country's economy down
unless. . ." This election has been a rejection of 28 years
of misrule of this country on behalf of Wall Street and
other assorted hard core criminals. The people have said
they want to bring an end to neo constipation of the
USA and they have done what they could to provide
the equivalent of Castor Oil to do the job! Let the
people's will be done!

The US mainstream media tried to put the spin on
the election being a top down affair taking place
with Obama providing coat tails, which is absolutely
false. A coat tail effect is only there when the top of the
ticket is running a ahead of its US House candidates
by more than a bit, and this wasn't the case at all. Even
mainstream media were saying the Democrats would
make decent gains in the House before ever calling
the presidential race for Obama, thus contradicting their
BS about a top down/coat tail effect which they were making
up out of whole cloth.

A less than hard hitting campaign except at the end has
likely cost Obama some political strength, but he can
remedy that by mobilizing bottom up support for a
"socialist" agenda that Johnny "Maverick" hit so hard
at the end of his campaign in absolute political desperation.

Push progressive legislation through with a "damn
the torpedoes, full speed ahead" thrust. Put the jack
asses on the run from the start. Probably Obama won't
do this, but Obama will also likely be a one term president
with the economic and other problems awaiting him if he
doesn't.

But a progressive social movement is afoot, and
needs to keep the pressure on for progressive action.
This movement must keep the pressure on on domestic
and foreign policy. Move to the left, Obama, or ruin the
country and plan on one term in the White House. Remember
that talk of "It's not about me. It's about you."

Congratulations to Barak Obama

ahgoldberg — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:38:04 -0800

Today this progressive writer in the USA congratulates Barak Obama on his election victory and urges him to be the progressive president that the people have voted for in their desire to return rule in this country to the people.

Obama to Lose, Nuclear War and Nuclear Winter Coming with McCain

ahgoldberg — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:32:07 -0700

Barak Obama, this writer predicts will coast to defeat in the presidential race this year in the USA and
with Moscow's first strike policy on nuclear weapons, Johnny "Straight BS" will make the wrong move that
will get Moscow to use its first strike triggering a nuclear war to blow this planet up, and this writer is sick
and tired of all the damn candy coating even in most alternate and progressive media or outright
avoidance and denial on this matter which could easily take Obama to victory. Obama's campaign
is helping matters much by completely remaining silent on this issue, which prove so powerful
in Lyndon B Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign against another Barry Goldwater. Thus this writer
is glad not to be part of the Obama campaign, leaving the writer the freedom to tell it just like it is.

This writer is also fed up with all the triumphalism coming from some backing Obama and so punch
drunk with stupid over confidence that they reek of the 1948 Tom Dewey campaign. The Obama
campaign is beginning to seem like the over confident, got it made Dewey campaign of 1948.

With the wide perception among progressives that Obama and McCain have little significant differences,
this is an issue where that isn't at all the case, given the well documented in chapter and verse portrayal
in CounterPunch of McCain's absolute emotional instability, which even a GOP senator remarks makes
him tremble when he thinks of McCain's finger on the nuclear trigger. That senator is Thad Cochrane.

Hey, nuclear mushroom clouds, Strontiem 90, and nuclear winter are forever. The good news is people
won't have to worry about global warming nor the economic meltdown. The bad news is it will be the end
of civilization, human race, and what little is left of democracy anywhere. The good news is it will be the
end of tyranny everywhere and bank heists such as the recent on Wall Street with the Keystone Kop
Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid leading the way to pay off a 700 billion dollar ransom
note which a solid inside source cited by CounterPunch said will lead to a total ransom payoff of a
trillion dollars.

The good news again is that the crooks won't get much time to enjoy their ill gotten gains once the old
proverbial nuclear war with Moscow comes. The bad news is too many good people will have to pay
with their lives for this insanity, but maybe at the last moment folks in Obama's campaign will find their
voices on this crucial issue and speak out on it, particularly through surrogates, with the US mainstream
media completely turning a blind eye to this matter ever so vital the survival of all in this world. They
could say, "This time vote like your life depended on it, because it does." Perhaps a mention of
Moscow's first strike policy on nuclear weapons, McCain at his craziest looking self, and a muchroom
cloud in the background would be great for TV and other ads to get the message through.

An Open Letter to the Canadian People

ahgoldberg — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:31:57 -0700

An Open Letter to the Canadian People--
Make Canada Canada Again-- Send
the Neo Constipated Conservatives back
to Their "Beloved" Private Sector.

On October 14th this year in Canada, people can
show the way not only for the USA, though that
surely would be the case, also for people everywhere
by rejecting the absolutely morally bankrupt, phony,
corrupt and anti democratic polices of the neo con
dominated Conservative government (as it's
referred in parliamentary states) of Stephen Harper
by thinking nationally and internationally and voting
strategically and tactically in each parliamentary
constituency for the candidate which has the most
realistic opportunity of defeating these "wonderful"
Conservatives taking their marching orders from the
US neo con gangsters and collaborators in governmental
crime against decent hard working people for the
benefit of multi national businesses and the rest of
the super rich.

This is a great opportunity for a great people, who
can now, if they choose to, in the words of Franklin
D Roosevelt, "revive and survive," and as well set
a great example for others and send such a loud
message that it will be heard throughout this world.

Stephen Harper's Conservative or Tory government
has pushed through legislation mandating a specific
date for Canadian federal elections, which should
provide for the next federal election being scheduled
in 2009, yet Harper has seen fit to call for an election
in October of this year to seek maximum advantage for
his party like the true opportunist, phony, fraud, and
Straussian neo con or neo can (Canadian version
of neo con) he is, easily outdoing Machiavellians,
by defending the completely unethical idea that
not only must those who have power lie to keep it,
but that they are morally right to do so.

"Now is the the time," as Martin Luther King Jr would
say to reject such evil and ethics completely turned
on its head, to actually privatize these privatizers and
put others back in the public service who are devoted
to providing public service to Canada. This is a moral
imperative as Dr King would surely have said. For
these aren't Conservatives in the tradition of many
years ago who put principles and ideals that they had
above power, prestige, and status; but people who
do just the opposite putting their power, prestige, and
status ahead of principles, ideals, and all that is great
about Canada.

Archimedes once said, "Give me a place to stand and
I will move the earth." If the Canadian people will take
a stand to restore control of their political system to
the great people of Canada, they can move the earth with
that stand.

A heavy dose of Castor Oil is needed for this election
to eliminate the Harper Conservatives neo constipation
of the Canadian body politic.! It's time to just do it to
put Canada back to being Canada again in all its
greatness and devotion high ideals, principles, and
values that have brought such great credit on such
a great country.

Paul Newman a Great One is Gone

ahgoldberg — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:07:06 -0700

Paul Newman, feature film actor, political activist, lover of car racing of his family and much more is gone from this
Earth, dying at his home in Connecticut after a struggle with cancer at age 83.

This writer can recall Newman being on network TV with Martin Luther King Jr and others talking about getting support for the 1968 campaigns of members of the US Congress opposed to the Vietnam War. Newman didn't seem so enthusiastic at the time, but he would go on to be a strong backer of Eugene McCarthy's anti war campaign of that year. He had also been a strong supporter of civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Later he would be a solid advocate fo the bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons between the USA and Moscow to get control over the Cold War tension and the danger of nuclear war. Like Dr King he saw the dangers of militarism and racism.

Accumulating a fortune and much fame from his career as a feature film actor over 60 years along with an Oscar, he wasn't in the least the typical Hollywood type, known more as the faithful husband to his second wife whom he had met and married a bit after a failed earlier marriage. He once said of adultery, "Why go out for hamburger, when you've got steak at home."

A philanthropist, he believed in giving back to others.

He was a part of team that won a professional car race at age 70, the oldest man to have to have done so. Race car driving became a great interest to Newman after narrating a feature film about the subject.

Never impressed nor obsessed by the Hollywood style, he followed the "road less traveled" that Robert Frost wrote about. He didn't need nor apparently get into problems with street drugs or alcohol the way so many Hollywood types do. He lived and died as an individual and real non conformist, and this world is the less without him.

The Dulles Gang Betrayal of the USA to the Nazis

ahgoldberg — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:07:20 -0700

The other night at home I watched a bit of a TV show, and the USA fighting for
"freedom" in the Berlin airlift of 1948-49 against those "terrible" Communists
in Moscow, carrying out that "awful blockade" of those "wonderful" people in
the Western zones of military government and occupation of Germany as
provided for at the end of the Second World War. Moscow was acting "unprovoked"
except for the Western power having economically merged their sectors of occupation
of Germany and providing them with he same currency in 1947, with France being
the last holdout, and these same Western powers locking Moscow out and thus
putting the economic squeeze on Moscow's zone in Germany. The US and British
zones had adopted the same currency in 1946, and the French zone followed in
1947.

But the nice fairy tale version of the Western powers, especially the USA fighting for
"freedom" in the Cold War is the one the US TV and the rest of the mainstream US
media have fallen in love with no mater how absolutely false it is.

This is more than solidly documented in Blowback, a book by Christopher Simpson, at
one time with he Institute for Policy Studies. It was back in March 1945 with one account
of March 8th and going through March 19th when Allen Dulles, the big time traitor and
Nazi lover he had been before and during the Second World War and his fellow traitors
to his country made a sweetheart deal with with two Nazi generals to put them on the
US intelligence payroll, not taking them as prisoners, but instead having them advise
the US Government what a "great threat" Moscow, the then US ally "really" was to Western
and especially US "freedom." "Operation Sunrise," as it was called but better called
Operation Quisling didn't shorten the fighting in Italian campaign against the Nazi regime,
the worst tyranny in history, and actually combat continued until May 2nd that same year.
Thus did Dulles and his fellow traitors gave absolute "aid and comfort" to "enemies of the
United States" and commit their outrageous act of treason.

Dulles was then a top level US operative with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), then
the principal US intelligence apparatus operating in US Army intelligence and directly
a part of the US Army. Dulles would go on to become the director of the Central Intelligence
Agency continuing to bring those who had been fanatical enemies of the USA into the
US intelligence apparatus. Dulles and his gang were parties to bring hard core Nazis
onto the US intelligence payroll, penetrating it, and ultimately dominating it. At this
point the hard core Nazis were as happy as a bunch of S & Mers at a whips and chains
convention.

That Dulles and his allies would purge records of such hard core Nazis including those
in the SS, SA (storm troopers), SD, and the Gestapo of anything showing their hard core
Nazi connections, provide them with fake identiteis, fake passports, et al insured Dulles
Dulles and these Nazi thugs would escape detection of any kind by those US authorities
so inclined to perform their patriotic duties.

Very early Klaus Barbie, one of the worst Nazi war criminals came under the protection
and got on the payroll of US intelligence. By 1953 the CIA was bankrolling and protecting
the top level of Adoph Eichmann's gang.

Some opposition to the Dulles/hard core Nazi line on the "terrible" threat from Moscow
quickly emerged at the then Research and Analysis (R & A) branch of the OSS, where
analysts were simply engaged in gathering information to independently and objectively
provide it to the top of the US military and government providing with information needed
to better formulate foreign policy, as they saw no threat at all from Moscow after looking
at same information. But one individual in R & A who had been a Communist in the 1930s
but long ago quit the party was enough to give the advantage to Dulles and his gang once
they could find out about this, as R & A hadn't hidden or purged the records of any its members.
Dulles and his crowd used this big time to win their fight with R & A for influence with the top
of the US military and the US Government. The Dulles gang and R & A had both made charges
against each other, with the Dulles side attacking R & A for pro communist bias and R & A rightly
charging the Dulles gang with pro fascist and pro Nazi bias, but the Dulles gang's charges of
pro communist bias against R & A carried more weight with the top of the US military and at
the White House when it came out that one R & A member had been a Communist. The Dulles
gang successful purging of the Nazi past of their hard core Nazis this gang had recruited made
the crucial difference. After this the US Government moved to get rid of R & A, thus ending the
independent analysis it had provided and the opposition it could provide in the US intelligence
community to the Dulles gang, some of whom naively believed that the Nazis they were dealing
were simply people some US military officers "hated" because them because of their "nominal"
membership in the German military alone. This purging of R & A came about before the Cold
War officially started.

Later when Joseph McCarthy came along, the hard core Nazis would align themselves with
him, and McCarthy would use them to dig up dirt on those opposed to him and his fanatical
"grand crusade" against the "communists" in the State Department and elsewhere.

Other opponents with significant influence or authority of this Cold War "grand crusade" ended
up in this time being likewise purged.

Add to this the fact that the US intelligence community would later recruit fanatical anti Casto
Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, hard core security types for the corrupt, oppressive right
wing regime in Saigon in the late 1960s, and of Somocista dominated contras fighting their
criminal war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and it's clear
how US foreign policy can be so distorted and not all in US national interests or reflecting
democratic values in the least.

Moreover, with the pervasive influence in the US national security apparatus of the hard core
Nazis along with those just cited, the current neo cons, and the threat is even greater. With
Moscow now having a first strike policy regarding nuclear weapons, that's especially true. Now
with Johnny "Straight BS" McCain and the neo cons seeking to renew a Cold War with Moscow,
it's crucial to look at why the other one wasn't worth a damn.

McCain-- Fortunate Son, Prisoner of Privilege, and Phony Faith of his Father

ahgoldberg — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:56:55 -0700

"Some folks are born sliver spoon in hand/Lord don't They help themselves. . ."
. . .
"Some folks inherit star spangled eyes, ooh, they send you down to war, Lord/but when you ask them, how much should we give/ the only answer is more, more, and more. . .."

-- Song lyrics from Credence Clearwater song "Fortunate Son."

Prisoners of war in the USA who were with John McCain in Hanoi say he collaborated with Hanoi to get special treatment, thus showing what a real fortunate son, prisoner of his own privilege and one with a phony faith in his own false sense of entitlement McCain was in giving in so heavily to Hanoi and yet having the nerve today to pass
himself off as a "war hero." This is the reason Doug Valentine in CounterPunch says McCain is so completely unstable and just a termper tantrum waiting to go nuclear, and most likely, this writer says, would if he gets to the White House. Just picture that mushroom cloud and the Strontium 90 that wouldn't just be for breakfast anymore, for that breakfast of "macho champions." "These are the stakes. . . " as that TV ad put it so aptly in that 1964 campaign with another Arizonan, who fortunately never got to the White House. But hell for those who like nuclear war, they'll love McCain. Oh, this same McCain wants a hundred year war-- "when you ask them (or him) how much should we give . . ." McCain is just waiting to explode over be found out in what a phony about being a "war hero."

Doug Valentine cites chapter and verse on McCain collaborated with Hanoi to get special treatment in his account based on prisoners of war who were with McCain. McCain, the "war hero" not only didn't just give name, rank, and serial number as is required of US military captured by the enemy, but actually provided Hanoi with such "lovely" information as the name of the air craft carrier he was based on, the number of aircraft in his formation, number of pilots who were lost, where rescue ships were at the time, with all this being enough to the "wonderful war hero" even until now, making him as Thad Corcoran, a GOP senator has said someone the senator trembles at the thought of being in the White House with his finger on nuclear trigger. Valentine maintains McCain was a "go to" collaborator with Hanoi for years, and that is really what is eating him up, making him the time bomb just waiting go off. Thus McCain is a phony who is covering up more than a bit or to use a Churchillian phrase, "He's modest, and he's got lots to be modest about."

But then again McCain was quite tight with the Keating gang, the USA's top bank con artists back in 1980s when that "lovely" scandal broke and he escaped from that one and his profitable associating with these criminals, which the US mainstream media seem to love to ignore, but then again these folks know which side their bread is buttered on and that they are big time members of the ruling and wealthy immoral species running and ruining the USA. But they can't win them all. Hey, was't that "just terrible" all that "rabble out in the streets" destroying "wonderful tranquility" of the US ruling and privileged class lately. "Damn," why it's "just terrible." What do "those people" want? The solidly progressive journalist, Alexander Cockburn is the source of the information on the Keating scandal. All of this is backed up in CounterPunch. As the song at the opening of this article says, "Some folks are born silver spoon in hand/Lord don't they help ;themselves . ."

Johnny "Straight BS" McCain, "our man" in the USA, was and is a fortunate son, prisoner of privilege, and someone with the phony faith of his legacy of his father in "true faith" of the political and economic theology of the rich white man's affirmative action program going strong big time for hundreds of years as brought over to this country from Europe, and especially Western Europe. His false sense of entitlement almost surely comes from being son and grandson of two big time US Navy admirals, giving him the idea he should always get what he wants including the presidency.

9/11, US Neo Cons' Reichstag Fire Moment and War on Democracy

ahgoldberg — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:31:21 -0700

9/11 was the neo cons' Reichstag fire moment in the USA, a date that they and the US mainstream media have insured lived in hysteria, because on that date in 2001, Manhattan and the Pentagon and this "great bastion of freedom" came under "unprovoked attack" W and his neo cons and their mouthpieces in the US mainstream media hold told everyone by "some absolutely terrible people" who "hate our freedom," and that "God has told us" to go out to wage war on democracy in their neck of the woods and make them pay with a pound of flesh for daring to challenge the "halo covered" Uncle Sam that he is today with W in the White House and to challenge other "enlightened presidents' leadership" who have only sought to exercise the US big business owned and rich white man's establishment's "divine right" to rule over rape, torture, pillage, enslave, and kill people in the Third World. If the US war machine, oh that is, defense must "show these heathen "Moslems, Arabs, and others" who stand in the way of big US and other Western businesses making a killing off them and "Western civilization" itself and the "American way," then W and his "freedom loving" folks say so be it in this "fight for freedom." These "fine people" in the "proud tradition" of European imperialism and militarism, the Roman Empire at its worst, the Axis powers in the Second World War, and other "kindly and civilized" types. just aren't going to listen to those such as John Pilger talking about a US "war on democracy" even if it's true. These "fine, upright" folks "know" the "truth," even though it's
an Orwellian lie, and have learned this "truth" by putting their blind faith in Leo Strauss, who outdid Nicolo Machiavelli by saying those in power not only must lie to keep power but they have a moral right to do so, thus turning ethics completely upside down. These neo cons and their disciples "know" that the "heathen" Third World people and some others as well aren't capable of self government even if Thomas Jefferson once said about this. Hey, didn't the "patriotic" John Birch Society once say that Jefferson was a left winger or some kind of earlier day communist? Oh, and what's all this about Pilger being the best journalist writing for the British media. This "terrible" Pilger has no respect for W, "our man." Then Jefferson had the nerve to refer to "rebellion against tyrants" as "being obedience to God."

Oh, and don't start talking about that other 9/ll back in 1973 in Chile with that regime change another GOP president backed bringing an end to democracy in that country over the dead, and often tortured bodies, of thousands, bringing them puppet government presided over by Augusto Pinochet, that same GOP president's tyrant and puppet in chief.

Furthermore, don't bring up that "inconvenient and terribly offensive" reference to the 1967 US Government coup against a democratic government in Greece, the birthplace of democracy, bringing in a thug, military tyranny as the government in that "little" regime change. This support for the Greek military carrying out this coup was about "freedom" to get rid of an "improper and wrong thinking" government which was going "too far" with its democracy.
This kind of government "didn't even know" to do what the US Government and others backing it were telling them to do. "Sometimes" even European white people have to be "controlled" to make sure they "have the right kind" of government to make sure the rich European white man and his women, and when gay, his men, can continue to be in control and do "what needs to be done."

Another case in Australia in 1975, of a political coup against a Labor government, was "necessary," because the "terrible left wing, pro communist" government had opposed the GOP president in the 1970s on the Vietnam War, which "absolutely was intolerable." This Australian government and the prime minister at the time were taking their democracy "too far," even if the people are, with the exception of the Aborigines, "good" European white" folks. Thus democracy of this kind was just "not right." Now this is documented in Jonathan Kwitney's Crimes of Patriots, a book on this and other matters. even though he takes the "damn left wing, communist loving side."

Oh, and don't dare bring up that recent massacre in Bolivia carried out by the US neo con backed far right/loony right,
racist separatists against the Bolivian campesinos. Just "let the US neo con backed lighter skinned oligarghy rule" or else democracy is going to get "out of control" like the "flames of 1776" which that "terrible left winger Jefferson talked about.

But back to the "fight for freedom." the neo cons and their "disciples" want all the "freedoms" for people. These include freedom of religion, as long as people are members of a Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist congregation, and the more fanatical "one true religion" oriented the better; freedom of the press, as long it's not some Amy Goodman or Democracy Now or other similar types spreading "left wing propaganda" and "vile slander, sedition, and treason" against W, the USA's supreme ruler and virtually "our god" with "such terrible heresy" against the one true political religion of neo constipation" and providing what amounts to the intellectual equivalent of Castor Oil to the people; and for freedom of speech, as long it's not some "left wing militant" such as Dennis J Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and Cynthia McKinney and all those supporting impeachment or even criminal charges against W "our great enlightened, kind hearted, freedom loving, ruler" in his proud Orwellian (Orwellian as in "war is peace, tyranny is democracy, and slavery is freedom") and Straussian tradiition.

W and his neo cons want "freedom," the freedom to take democracy away from other nations, especially in the Third World, but sometimes in such breakaway republics as Ossetia in Europe with their European white people, but the "wrong political attitudes" about the "proper new wold order" and who must rule all. This is a "devout" faith in the "freedom" to rule over, rape, torture, pillage, enslave, and kill people who get in the way of the rich white man's establishment's control over all. Thus comes the "true freedom" as the neo con useful stooges being used by the neo cons will tell everybody willing to listen to the "gospel" as preached their "father who art in the White House." For this freedom to rape, torture, enslave, profit from said slavery, and kill these people will end if these "uncivilized and heathen" people get themselves democracy and are allowed to keep it. This "grand crusade" on behalf "Western civilization" and the "white man's burden," European white man in this case, "must keep going" if it takes it for 100 years or more as Henry V would gladly agree, and surely not count the French as white anyway.

The "fight for freedom must" go on, as W and his neo cons tell all the "broadminded" folks of the mentality that they don't want to be confused with the facts, because their damn minds, such as they are, are already made up. Now
"take that" Pilger.

Free Press Holds Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis

ahgold — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:06:26 -0700

Free Press, an organization concerned about reforming the media held its conference in Minneapolis from June 6- 8 this year, as this writer would put it, to make democracy in this country more than just a dream and with the basic message if that is to come true it must be the people who take a hand in making it happen, for democracy, by definition means the people rule. For much of this country's history this has surely not been the case. In the beginning virtually all those allowed to vote or hold elective office were property owning white men. Thus even allowing for predictable age barriers to participation, the USA was no democracy. Later and around the time of Andrew Jackson getting to the White House, property ownership and thus the class barrier would come down. The race/color barrier would remain even officially until after the US civil war, ending officially but not actually, in 1865 for blacks. Indians weren't actually included under coverage by the 15th Amendment, with the US attitude still being that Indians were savages. Not until a 1924 treaty would Indians even get limited rights to vote or hold elective office. The gender barrier would end a little earlier with the 19th Amendment. In 1948, according to an ACLU website, US native people would get a basically unlimited right to vote and hold elective office.

Blacks even though officially getting the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, would often not be able to exercise that right as white racists would prevent them doing so.

Not until 1965 with the Voting Right Act, did blacks really get a real and enforceable right to vote in the USA throughout the land, and that has since been violated overwhelmingly in 2000 in Florida and 2004 nationally in that election thanks to Republican partisans. Added to this disenfranchisement of blacks, was that of Indians and working class whites, and urban centers with large concentrations of blacks, other people of color, and working class whites, especially in Ohio were particularly egregious, with extensive and systematic failure to provide near enough voting machines for the folks in these areas. Add to that many machines broke down. But areas expected to vote heavily for the GOP had more than enough voting machines, especially in Ohio. Thus this country had GOP partisans renewing actually the race/color and class barrier to voting. The mainstream media covered this very poorly at best.

But as to a key panel on media criticism, Janine Jackson of FAIR (Fairness in Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog group) seemed by far the best advocate for reform. She talked with this writer about how US exceptiionalism in the educational system fed into the media with money driven bias going as people already know-- toward the status quo and really the right more than is the case in such countries as Britain, Australia and Canada and other industrialized countries, as this writer cited this and Michael Parenti as an authority on this. Otherwise, other countries do also have a bias in the direction of the money and the bottom line as well, but the warped idea of US exceptionalism planted in people's minds easily makes matters worse than would be the case in other countries
Jackson spoke of the problems of the media with the bias based on class, race, and disability.

But the problem with even this panel was that the people generally didn't get into any discussion of how the US educational system is part of the problem by not teaching how those in authority in the USA have systematically sought to keep blacks, other people of color, women, and working class people from participating at all and or having a voice in government here, and also has sought to gain control over either the resources of or cheap labor of those in other lands to and for the benefit of the rich and super rich white men and to a degree women around them. With such ignorance, it's much easier for the press here to get away with more than would be the case in other industrial countries. The US empire is not referred to as empire as it would be if it were British, German, French other Western European empire as part of US exceptionalism, which is why Michael Parenti's contribution is so important for calling the US empire just that.

This panel also misused the term left, which by the international version of the Oxford Dictionary of Current English definition means socialist, not simply liberal or progressive, which is virtually not a part of the US body politic. But left is so often misused by those who should know better both here and abroad that this isn't really a major criticism of the panel.

The panel also didn't give enough attention to how the US mainstream media tend to neglect any historical context in its coverage, which leaves people without much needed information even if these media happen to get things correct in the coverage provided.

The panel was right on the mark in reference to the effect big business has an effect on media coverage, but failed to mention the key fact that today and for a rather long time the mainstream media itself has been big business, and would thus have the same interests as other big businesses even if it weren't so dependent on advertising from other big businesses.

Thematic bias of the media which is that of putting certain topics off limits and which a top journalism professor this writer once had, is the result, moreover, of the fact that the press ends up putting certain topics off limits due to the fact that it might upset particular businesses providing advertising revenue these media, resulting in loss of such advertising revenue. The bottom line decides, and a misinformed populace is the price along with democratic government at risk.

Also to the panel's credit, it did cite the fact that the concentration of so much of the media in so few hands was a problem. This obviously leads to less and less diversity of views over time and with this greater and greater concentration of said media in these hands.

The panel also erred in saying basically that people really can get access to alternate sources to make up for the mainstream media. At least this writer, due to working class background, knows that's not the way especially working class people will be able to find what's really going on, as they tend to depend to heavily on television, and maybe now and then on mainstream newspapers, and this is almost surely true of many middle class people. The internet does provide some alternative, but progressives have to steer people to that alternative and inform people of such sites as FAIR's, Common Dreams, Counter Punch, this blog and others which provide real information instead of neo con misinformation favoring the ruling big business class and hundreds years long rich white man's affirmative action program.. FAIR, already referred to and founded in 1986 by Jeff Cohen has pioneered in this struggle, but much remains and absolutely needs to be done.

One other problem with the panel was a general consensus which was that the mainstream media aren't evil, but they definitely are. When the media which should be informing people to provide with the information, the tool for keeping a democracy going, instead lies to the people and does so repeatedly simply because says it had to repeat the president's lies, it is damn evil, and the moral judgment of the people of this country should be upon the media for doing so. Looking at the ethics of this issue doesn't in the least mean a person has to be a theist, an atheist can well have just as much interest in morality as Jean Paul Sartre, hero of the French resistance proved in his day.

Moreover, contrary to the consensus on the panel the New Yorker isn't part of the solution, but part of the problem, and not just because of some silly, stupid, off the wall cartoon.

Speaking of Cohen, whom the writer spoke with briefly at the conference, he said that had it been left up to him, he would have invited Alexander Cockburn, John Pilger, and Michael Parenti to the conference. He also saw what the writer was talking about with respect to the special role played by US exceptionalism in the educational system in making people in this country more vulnerable to media misinformation and the reason the media here can get away with things they couldn't get away with in Canada, Britain, Australia, and other industrial countries.

A democracy, Thomas Jefferson once pointed out requires "an informed populace," which thanks to both the US educational system and media the USA doesn't come close to having. This can't continue indefinitely without a complete end to even the most nominal pretense of the USA being a democratic state. Media reform will need to be a top priority those with the time and opportunity to devote to it to insure some hope at least of stopping the trend toward tyranny in government and moving it back in the direction of democracy. but as Martin Luther King Jr would point out the problem has an "interlocking nature." Thus those who would solve the problem much act not only to reform the media, but the educational system, libraries and other institutions which provide people with information, as all of them currently fail to provide that much needed information currently too often censured, and so crucial for moving toward a democracy in the US political system. The need really is for a US pro democracy movement with a broad based agenda. In the spirit of Dr King, people must move in that direction. That is the moral imperative of this time.