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Lewis Carroll’s White Queen would have a career in the media today

Alice and the White Queen, drawn by John Tenniel
By Catte | OffGuardian | February 26, 2018

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll – Alice Through the Looking-Glass

Lewis Carroll invented the White Queen as an absurdist emblem of a refusal to deal. But now that deluded lady would slot right in at the BBC, CNN, Guardian et al. In fact to live in the mainstream western culture of today we need to be able to believe a lot more than six impossible things before breakfast. We need to plug into an entire matrix of the unreal, never happened, never could happen and purely ridiculous.

There is now almost no point of contact between the world described in daily mainstream news and social commentary and the actual veridical experiential world in which real people really live. The most basic “facts” upon which they operate are almost completely false. They produce hours and hours of comment and analysis based on events that never occurred, words that were never said, a history that doesn’t exist. It’s not about explaining reality any more, it’s about making it up.

In this world Russia is an “outlaw” for helping to defend an elected government in Syria, and the US is an emblem of law-abiding decency while it has spent 70 years carving up the world and murdering people it doesn’t like – and moreover is currently enabling terrorists and illegally occupying a swathe of Syrian territory.

In this world Putin, having cleaned up a good deal of the lawless mafia-rule that characterised the Yeltsin years, is a “kleptocrat” and a “gangster” while Yeltsin was a “democrat.” Facing an election with 60-80% popular support, Putin is a “tyrant” who needs to fix the vote in order to win. With reckless disregard for even the basics of narrative consistency he is portrayed by turns as an ignorant “thug” and a political mastermind. So brilliant he swung the US election using 13 lowlife trolls and a restaurateur, and so mindbogglingly stupid he had Boris Nemstov, the political nobody, gunned down for no reason right outside the Kremlin so that even more stupid western analysts could say “Putin must have done it because it was right outside the Kremlin!”

In this world Navalny, another political nobody, polling 2% popular vote is “the opposition”, cruelly silenced by being ruthlessly convicted of the fraud he almost certainly actually committed, and sent to the Gulag given a suspended sentence and the freedom to bullhorn his remedial-level “anti-corruption” narrative (designed primarily for western consumption and TV soundbites btw) to all twelve of his regular followers.

In this world even mass-shootings are starting to look like movie versions of themselves, and the victims interview each other, exchanging cliché mass media talking points, and improbable personal narratives that sound like Facebook statuses, while waiting to die.

Because reality is something even those living it in its rawest form can no longer process or recognise for what it is.

So, we have to salute Mr Pozner for his refusal to partake in this increasingly macabre farce. Maybe we should all follow his example, be like Alice, just walk away from the Mad Hatter’s tea table and let the lunatics continue to sit there, babbling empty memes at one another. They probably won’t even notice we’ve gone.

(and yes I know the White Queen and the Mad Hatter are not in the same chapter or even in the same book)

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US Choppers Reportedly Transport Daesh Terrorists to Syrian Training Camp

Sputnik – February 26, 2018

A new report by Syrian media about the evacuation of Daesh militants adds to the growing evidence that the US is using its aviation to assist terrorists.

According to the Syrian state-run news agency SANA, the US has evacuated Daesh leaders from the Al-Shaddadah area in the northeastern al-Hasakah Governorate using its helicopters.

The extremists have been transported to Sabah al-Khair, a base located 20 km south of the city of al-Hasakah, which US forces use to train militants, the civilian sources said as cited by SANA.

The sources added that the helicopters dropped off four senior Daesh terrorists, including one holding Belgian nationality.

They also noted that the evacuation occurred amid reports on social media accounts held by terrorists that the militant called “Abu Qasim al-Iraqi” had disappeared along with his wife and a bodyguard as well as a large amount of money.

The reports of US collusion with extremists emerge on a regular basis. On February 21, an anonymous source from al-Hasakah told Sputnik that local residents had witnessed US helicopters landing on the territory of a local prison and then leaving; the source explained that the flights were for the evacuation of radicals.Earlier in November 2017, reports had emerged saying that “US military aviation” was used to take Daesh commanders from the town of al-Mayadin just before it was recaptured by the Syrian army.

The Russian Defense Ministry has said that the US-led coalition was engaged in the training of  former Daesh and Nusra Front terrorists on a base near al-Hasakah in order to create the new militant formation called the “New Syrian Army.”

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Endgame Russia: NATO Sprawl Invades Eastern Europe, No More Illusions

By Robert BRIDGE | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.02.2018

In the past, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) justified its militarization of large swaths of Eastern Europe by pointing to the omnipresent threat of terrorism, or some ‘rogue’ foreign state, inherently understood to be Iran. Today the mask has slipped and it is no longer denied that NATO’s primary target is Russia.

But first, a trip down nightmare lane. The road to ruin – at least as far as US-Russia relations were concerned – began immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks. Three months after that fateful day, in December 2001, George W. Bush informed Vladimir Putin that the US was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a strange move considering that the treaty had kept the peace between the nuclear superpowers since 1972. This geopolitical “mistake,” as Putin rightly defined it, allowed the US to begin the process of deploying a missile defense system, smack on the border with Russia, allegedly to shield the continent against an attack by Iran. Never mind the fact that Tehran had absolutely no reason, not to mention the wherewithal, to carry out such a suicidal mission. But Washington has never been one to let facts get in the way of a forced move on the global chess board.

Thus, the Bush administration advocated on behalf of a land-based missile defense system with interceptors based in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. However, due to serious objections from Russia, not to mention the apprehensive citizens of the host countries, the plan had reached an impasse in 2008 – just as Obama was replacing Bush in the White House. Some would call that impeccable timing. What happened next can only be described as a devious sleight of hand on the part of Washington.

In September 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama, announced to great fanfare that the US would “shelve” the Bush plan. This announcement was received in Moscow and beyond as a sign that America’s first black president was truly the real deal when it came to working on behalf of global peace. Suddenly, it appeared that the Bush reign of error had been an ugly anomaly, a bad eight-year dream. That grand illusion lasted for about as long as it took to read that sentence.

Barack Obama, the man who had seduced the global masses with his velvety albeit teleprompted delivery, shifted gears the very next day, announcing that the US would be deploying, in four phases, sea-based SM-3 interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe instead. An opinion piece in the New York Times, penned by then Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, provided all the information to understand that the world had been hoodwinked.

“Steady technological advances in our missile defense program — from kill vehicles to the abilities to network radars and sensors — give us confidence in this plan,” Gates wrote. “The SM-3 has had eight successful tests since 2007, and we will continue to develop it to give it the capacity to intercept long-range missiles like ICBMs. It is now more than able to deal with the threat from multiple short- and medium-range missiles — a very real threat to our allies and some 80,000 American troops based in Europe that was not addressed by the previous plan.”

“We are strengthening — not scrapping — missile defense in Europe,” he concluded.

With the benefit of hindsight and common sense, it seems that Washington’s plan from the start was to move forward with the sophisticated SM-3 system; the bulky Bush initiative just provided the necessary distraction to usher in the advanced Obama plan, which presents a major threat to the global strategic balance.

But all that is ancient history compared to what is happening today. Under the guise of ‘Russia aggression,’ a concept that was peddled to the unsuspecting masses based on the fake news of a Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine and Crimea, compounded by claims that Russia somehow swayed the 2016 US presidential elections, US-led NATO has dropped all pretensions and declared open season on Russia. Combined with Donald Trump’s empty threat that the US would exit NATO if member states did not start spending more on defense (2 percent of annual GDP), Eastern Europe has become a veritable hothouse of paranoia-driven militarization.

In what the Kremlin has described as the greatest amassing of military assets on its border since World War II, NATO troops and hardware have set up camp from as far north as Estonia, down through Latvia and Lithuania, into Romania and Poland, where the rotation of US troops is now standard operating procedure.

Meanwhile, massive military games aimed at deterring the Russian bogeyman continue unabated on Russia’s border. In April, British journalist Neil Clark described just one of these exercises, dubbed Summer Shield. The NATO military exercises “got underway at the Adazi military base. Soldiers from Latvia, the US, Bulgaria, Estonia, Canada, Lithuania, the UK, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, Germany and also non-NATO member Sweden are taking part in the drills,” Clark wrote.

He then went on to make a rather unsettling yet accurate observation: “Today’s mantra regarding ‘Russian aggression’ is the 2003 equivalent of ‘Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,’ to be repeated ad nauseum by anyone supporting NATO’s Drang nach Osten. And like the WMD claim, it’s based on zero evidence.”

Such reckless behavior would have been difficult to fathom less than a decade ago.

But these are brave new times, and American madness has settled upon the realm of foreign relations like a noxious cloud, forcing client states to crack open their tattered wallets or be left out in the cold when the big, bad Russian bear comes a knocking.

Consider the case of Romania, one of Europe’s poorest countries. Prompted by Donald Trump’s warning that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members must fork over 2 percent of their GDP on military spending, Bucharest just made a down payment on a $1 billion American-made M142 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), as well as four new multi-function corvettes.

Romanian Defence Minister Mihai Fifor told Jane’s that these exorbitant purchases would “improve Romania’s national and allied defense capability” and emphasized that Romania’s commitment to the 2% of GDP spending cap “for the next 10 years is strong”.

Prime Minister Viorica Dancila said, “We want those procurement programs to also strengthen our defence industry based on offset arrangements where possible”.

This was not the first American military incursion into Romania under the guise of guarding against Iran and other alleged rogue players.

In May 2016, the US activated its $800 million missile shield in Romania, which Russia obviously views as a direct threat.

“At the moment the interceptor missiles installed have a range of 500 kilometers, soon this will go up to 1000 kilometers, and worse than that, they can be rearmed with 2400km-range offensive missiles even today, and it can be done by simply switching the software, so that even the Romanians themselves won’t know,” Vladimir Putin told reporters during a visit to Greece in May 2016.

“We have been saying since the early 2000s that we will have to react somehow to your moves to undermine international security. No one is listening to us,” Putin warned.

It remains to be seen how long NATO tone deafness will continue before the militarization of Eastern Europe gets completely out of control and the situation becomes untenable. Or perhaps the point of no return has already come to pass and, fait accompli, we are merely enjoying an illusory calm before the storm.

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Same Old: Notorious White Helmets Report a Chemical Attack, Blame Damascus Again

Sputnik – February 26, 2108

An infamous NGO that was repeatedly accused of falsifying information about its operations and essentially working as a propaganda outlet for anti-government militants in Syria, now claims that Damascus deployed chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.

The notorious White Helmets group claims that the Syrian government deployed chlorine gas against the town of Al-Shifoniya town in Eastern Ghouta, killing one child and causing “widespread suffocation” among the local civilians, Anadolu Agency reports.

The White Helmets, a group that styles itself as an NGO seeking to ease the plight of civilians in Syria suffering from the ongoing conflict in the country, has previously been accused of falsifying information about its work in Syria and staging “rescue” attempts in its propaganda videos.

Earlier the Russian Defense Ministry warned that militant groups in Eastern Ghouta were preparing a false flag attack in an attempt to blame Damascus for using chemical weapons against civilians.

“Evidence has shown that the leaders of illegal armed formations in Eastern Ghouta are preparing a provocation using poisonous agents in order to accuse the government forces of using chemical weapons against its civilians,” a statement issued by the ministry said.

The Arabic-language news channel al-Manar, citing al-Ikhbariya, has also reported that White Helmets were distributing protective masks in Eastern Ghouta in preparation for a new plot to blame another chemical attack on the Syrian government, while the Russian center for Syrian Reconciliation’s  representative said they were tipped by a resident of Idlib province about Nusra Front militants delivering “more than 20 bottles of chlorine and personal protective equipment in three cars” for an upcoming provocation.

As Syria’s Information Minister Imad Sarah told Sputnik, while Syrian armed forces and their allies battle terrorist groups in the field, it is equally important to counter the efforts of groups seeking to distort facts and to mislead the international community about the real state of affairs in the country — “to refute endless fake reports that mangle the actual state of affairs in the country and play with terms,” as he put it.

The minister also remarked that members of the White Helmets have been awarded for their exceptional action, which says a lot about the scale of the conspiracy against Syria and its people.

Syria has repeatedly denied allegations of chemical weapons use, underscoring that it had no weapons of mass destruction, which was confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

On April 4, 2017, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, supported by the United States, accused Damascus of the Khan Sheikhoun incident in Idlib province, which that  left 80 people dead and 200 injured. Western governments blamed Bashar al-Assad for being responsible for the use of Sarin gas, an allegation he has firmly denied.

Moscow, in turn, also demanded a thorough investigation of the incident.

READ MORE:

French President Macron Threatens to Strike Syria if Chemical Attacks Proven

UN Can’t Verify Claims of Chemical Attacks in Syria ‘Independently’ – De Mistura

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Chlorine attack reported in Syria after Russian warning

Press TV – February 26, 2018

A suspected new chemical attack has reportedly hit the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta just after Russia warned that militants were planning a gas attack there to pin it on the Syrian government.

Militant sources were quoted as saying that several people suffered symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine gas in the al-Shayfouniya area on Sunday, and one child was killed.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is sympathetic to militants, said 14 civilians had suffered breathing difficulties after a Syrian warplane struck the village in the Eastern Ghouta region.

The London-based center quoted victims, ambulance drivers and others as saying that they had smelt chlorine after “an enormous explosion” in the area.

“At least 18 victims were treated with oxygen nebulizing sessions,” Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified militant source as saying.

The Syrian government has consistently denied using chemical weapons in the war that will soon enter its eighth year.

For years, foreign-backed militants have appeared to release chemical substances in the areas close to the site of government airstrikes and capture the aftermath on videos.

On Sunday, videos released by militants depicted a child’s corpse wrapped in a blue shroud, and several bare chested men and young boys appearing to struggle for breath, with some holding nebulizers to their mouths and noses.

The suspected gas attack came just after the Russian Defense Ministry warned Sunday that militants were preparing to use toxic agents in Eastern Ghouta so they could later accuse Damascus of employing chemical weapons.

Last April, the United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in response to what it claimed was a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people.

The Syrian army is currently in the midst of an operation to drive violent Takfiri militants out of Eastern Ghouta from where they launch mortar attacks on Damascus.

A ceasefire announced by the UN Security Council on Saturday does not apply to the areas held by Daesh, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front along with “individuals, groups, undertakings and entities” associated with the terrorist groups.

On Sunday, Iran’s Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Baqeri said that the architects of the ceasefire had it passed at the UN in order to forestall the Syrian army’s eradication of terrorists in the Damascus suburbs.

“The West and supporters of the terrorists insisted that this ceasefire be put in place,” he said of the resolution which demands a 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow for humanitarian aid deliveries and medical evacuations.

“We will adhere to the ceasefire resolution; Syria will also adhere,” Baqeri said, while noting that parts of the suburbs of Damascus, which are held by the terrorists, are not covered by the ceasefire and clean-up operations will continue there.

The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.

Western governments and their allies however have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place.

In April, a suspected sarin gas attack hit the town of Khan Shaykhun in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, taking at least 80 lives. Accusing Damascus, the US then launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base.

Earlier in February, French President Emmanuel Macron said if the use of chemical weapons against civilians were proven in Syria, “France will strike.”

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

New Proposal Designed to Confuse Public and Prevent Medicare for All

By Margaret Flowers | HealthOverProfit | February 23, 2018

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington-based Democratic Party think tank funded by Wall Street, including private health insurers and their lobbying group, unveiled a new healthcare proposal designed to confuse supporters of Medicare for All and protect private health insurance profits. It is receiving widespread coverage in ‘progressive’ media outlets. We must be aware of what is happening so that we are not fooled into another ‘public option’ dead end.*

The fact that CAP is using Medicare for All language is both a blessing and a curse. It means Medicare for All is so popular that they feel a need to co-opt it, and it means that they are trying to co-opt it, which will give Democrats an opportunity to use it to confuse people.

This effort could be preparation for the possibility that Democrats win a majority in Congress in 2018 or 2020. It is normal for the pendulum to swing to the party opposite the President’s party during the first term in office. If Democrats win a majority, they will be expected to deliver on health care, but they face a dilemma of having to please their campaign donors, which includes the health insurance industry, or pleasing their voters, where 75% support single payer health care.

The public is aware that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) protects the profits of the medical-industrial complex (private health insurers, Big Pharma and for-profit providers) and not the healthcare needs of the public. “Fixing the ACA” is not popular. Last year during repeal attempts, people made it clear at town halls and rallies that they want a single payer healthcare system such as National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA). By offering a solution that sounds good to the uninformed, “Medicare Extra for All,” but continues to benefit their Wall Street donors, Democrats hope to fool people or buy enough support to undermine efforts for NIMA.

This is an expected development. If we look at the phases of stage six of successful social movements by Bill Moyer (see slide 8), we see that as a movement nears victory, the power holders appear to get in line with the public’s solution while actually attacking it. If the movement recognizes what is happening, that this is a false solution and not what the movement is demanding, then we have a chance to win NIMA. If the movement falls for the false solution, it loses.

Our tasks at this moment are to understand what the power holders are offering, recognize why it is a false solution and reject it.

“Medicare Extra for All” versus National Improved Medicare for All

The basic outline for the new proposal is that people would be able to buy a Medicare plan, a form of ‘public option,’ including the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private health insurers. People who choose to buy a Medicare plan would pay premiums and co-pays, as they do now for private health insurance. The new Medicare system would replace Medicaid for people with low incomes.

Private health insurance would still exist for employers, who currently cover the largest number of people, federal employees and the military. While workers would have the option to buy a Medicare plan, it is unclear how many would do so given that most employers who provide health insurance have their own plans and that private health insurers are experts at marketing their plans to the public.

NIMA, as embodied in HR 676: “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” would create a single national healthcare system, paid for up front through taxes, that covers every person from birth to death and covers all medically-necessary care. NIMA relegates private insurance to the sidelines where it could potentially provide supplemental coverage for those who want extras, but it would no longer serve as a barrier for people who need care.

Here are the flaws in the CAP proposal:

  1. CAP’s plan will continue to leave people without health insurance. Instead of being a universal system of national coverage like NIMA, coverage under the CAP plan relies on people’s ability to afford health insurance. Only people with low incomes would not pay, as they do now under Medicaid. Just as it is today, those who do not qualify as low income, but still can’t afford health insurance premiums, would be left out. Almost 30 million are without coverage today. There is no guarantee that health insurance premiums will be affordable.
  2. CAPS’s plan will continue to leave people with inadequate coverage. Under NIMA, all people have the same comprehensive coverage without financial barriers to care. The CAP plan allows private health insurers to do what they do best – restrict where people can seek health care, shift the cost of care onto patients and deny payment for care. This is the business model of private health insurers because they are financial instruments designed to make profits for their investors. People with health insurance will face the same bureaucratic nightmare of our current system and out-of-pocket costs that force them to delay or avoid health care or risk bankruptcy when they have high health care needs.
  3. CAP’s plan will continue the high costs of health care. NIMA has been proven over and over to have the best cost efficiency because it is one plan with one set of rules. It is estimated that NIMA will save $500 billion each year on administrative costs and over $100 billion each year on reduced prices for pharmaceuticals. As a single purchaser of care, NIMA has powerful leverage to lower the costs of goods and services. The CAP plan maintains the complicated multi-payer system that we have today. At best, it will only achieve 16% of the administrative savings of a single payer system and it will have less power to reign in the high costs of care.
  4. CAP’s plan will allow private health insurers to continue to rip off the government. NIMA is a publicly-financed program without the requirement of creating profits for investors. With a low overhead, most of the dollars are used to pay for health care. The CAP plan maintains the same problems that exist with Medicare today. Private Medicare providers cherry pick the healthiest patients and those who have or develop healthcare needs wind up in the public Medicare plan. This places a financial burden on the public Medicare plan, which has to pay for the most care, while private health insurers rake in huge profits from covering the healthy with a guaranteed payor, the government.
  5. CAP’s plan will continue to perpetuate health disparities. NIMA provides a single standard of care to all people. Because all people, rich and poor (and lawmakers), are in the same system, there are strong incentives to make it a high quality program. CAP’s plan maintains the current tiered system in which some people have private health insurance, those with the greatest needs have public health insurance, some people will have inadequate coverage and others will have no coverage at all.
  6. CAP’s plan will continue to restrict patients’ choices. NIMA creates a nationwide network of coverage and consistent coverage from year-to-year so that patients choose where they seek care and have the freedom to stay with a health professional or leave if they are dissatisfied. CAP’s plan continues private health insurers and their restricted networks that dictate where patients can seek care. Private plans change from year-to-year and employers change the plans they offer, so patients will still face the risk of losing access to a health professional due to changes in their plan.
  7. CAP’s plan does not guarantee portability. NIMA creates a health system that covers everyone no matter where they are in the United States and its territories. CAP’s plan maintains the link between employment and health coverage. When people who have private health insurance lose their job or move, they risk losing their health insurance.
  8. CAP’s plan will perpetuate physician burn-out. NIMA creates a healthcare system that is simple for both patients and health professionals to use. Under the current system, which the CAP plan will perpetuate, health professionals spend more time on paperwork than they do with patients and physician offices spend hours fighting with health insurers for authorization for care and for payment for their services. This is driving high rates of physician burnout. Suicides among physicians and physicians-in-training are higher than the general population.

The new proposal is a ‘public option’ wrapped in a “Medicare for All” cloak. It is a far cry from National Improved Medicare for All. And, contrary to what CAP and its allies will tell you, the CAP plan will delay and prevent the achievement of NIMA.

Co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program**, Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, explained why the public option would not work in the last health reform effort:

“The ‘public plan option’ won’t work to fix the health care system for two reasons.

“1. It forgoes at least 84 percent of the administrative savings available through single payer. The public plan option would do nothing to streamline the administrative tasks (and costs) of hospitals, physicians offices, and nursing homes, which would still contend with multiple payers, and hence still need the complex cost tracking and billing apparatus that drives administrative costs. These unnecessary provider administrative costs account for the vast majority of bureaucratic waste. Hence, even if 95 percent of Americans who are currently privately insured were to join the public plan (and it had overhead costs at current Medicare levels), the savings on insurance overhead would amount to only 16 percent of the roughly $400 billion annually achievable through single payer — not enough to make reform affordable.

“2. A quarter century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan — which started as the single payer for seniors and has now become a funding mechanism for HMOs — and a place to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option does not lead toward single payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan.”

What we must do

The movement for National Improved Medicare for All experienced tremendous growth in the past few years. All of the flaws of the Affordable Care Act are becoming reality as people are forced to pay high health insurance premiums, face high out-of-pocket costs before they can receive care and have their access to health professionals or services denied. There is a strong demand for NIMA that has resulted in more than half of the Democrats in the House of Representatives signing on to HR 676 and a third of the Democratic Senators endorsing the Senate Medicare for All bill. Medicare for All is becoming a litmus test for the 2018 elections and 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Power holders are feeling threatened by support for NIMA. They are looking for ways to throw the movement off track and allow lawmakers who don’t support NIMA to support something that sounds like NIMA. This is why they invented “Medicare Extra for All.” It is common for the opposition to adopt our language when we have strong support.

This is the time when the movement for NIMA needs to remain focused on our goal of NIMA, resist compromising and escalate our pressure for NIMA. We are closer to winning, it’s time to increase our efforts to pass the finish line.

Here are our tasks:

  • We need to expose the reasons for CAP’s proposal. It is designed to protect  health insurance industry profits.
  • We need to educate ourselves and others about the reasons why CAP’s proposal is flawed and deficient.
  • We need to educate and challenge lawmakers and candidates who speak in favor of CAP’s proposal and push them to support NIMA.
  • We need to be loud and vocal in our demand for nothing less than NIMA, as described in HR 676.
  • We need to make support for HR 676 a litmus test in the upcoming elections.

We need to practice “ICU” – being independent of political party on this issue by not tying our agenda to the corporate agenda of major political parties, being clear about what will and what will not solve our healthcare crisis, and being uncompromising in our demand for National Improve Medicare for All.

With a concentrated effort for NIMA, we can overcome this distraction*** and win National Improved Medicare for All. This is the time for all supporters of single payer health care to focus on federal lawmakers from both parties. Movements never realize how close they are to winning and victory often feels far away when it is actually close at hand.

The fact that the Democrats are proposing something that sounds like NIMA means we are gaining power. Let’s use it to finally solve the healthcare crisis in the United States and join many other countries in providing health care for everyone. NIMA is the smallest step we can take to head down the path of saving lives and improving health in our country.

 

 

*The ‘public option’ dead end occurred during the health reform process of 2009-10. Faced with widespread public support for National Improved Medicare for All, and 80% support by Democratic Party voters, the power holders had to find a way to suppress that support. They created the idea of a ‘public option,’ a public health insurance for part of the population, and convinced progressives that this was more politically-feasible and a back door to a single payer healthcare system. Tens of millions of dollars were donated to create a new coalition, Health Care for America Now (similar in name to Healthcare-Now, a national single payer organization – this was intentional), that organized progressives to fight for this public option and suppress single payer supporters (they were openly hostile when we raised single payer). Many single payer supporters fell for it, and the movement was successfully divided and weakened. Kevin Zeese and I wrote about this in more detail in “Obamacare: The Biggest Health Insurance Scam in History.”

** Read more about this from Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program in his Quote-of-the-Day.

*** Read more about intentional distractions through incremental approaches to prevent National Improved Medicare for All in this presentation.

February 25, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

America Needs a 21st Century Church Committee

Former members and staffers of the Church Committee | March 17, 2014

Dear Congress, Mr. President and the American public,

In 1975 the public learned that the National Security Agency had been collecting and analyzing international telegrams of U.S. citizens since the 1940s under secret agreements with all the major telegram companies. Years later, the NSA instituted another watch list program to intercept the international communications of key figures in the civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements among other prominent citizens. Innocent Americans were targeted by their government. These actions were uncovered — and stopped — only because of a special Senate investigative committee known as the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee.

We are former Church Committee members and staffers and write today as witnesses to history and as citizens with decades of collective experience in Congress, the federal courts, the executive branch and the intelligence community. We write today to encourage Congress to create a Church Committee for the 21st century — a special investigatory committee to undertake a thorough and public examination of current intelligence community practices affecting the rights of Americans and to make specific recommendations for future oversight and reform. Such a committee would work in good faith with the president, hold public and private hearings and be empowered to obtain documents. Such congressional action is urgently needed to restore the faith of citizens in the intelligence community and in our federal government.

The actions uncovered by the Church Committee in the 1970s bear striking similarities to the actions we’ve learned about over the past year. In the early 1970s, allegations of impropriety and illegal activity concerning the intelligence community spurred Congress to create committees to investigate those allegations. Our committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Church, was charged with investigating illegal and unethical conduct of the intelligence community and with making legislative recommendations to govern the intelligence community’s conduct. The bipartisan committee’s reports remain one of the most searching reviews of intelligence agency practices in our nation’s history.

Our findings were startling. Broadly speaking, we determined that sweeping domestic surveillance programs, conducted under the guise of foreign intelligence collection, had repeatedly undermined the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. A number of reforms were implemented as a result, including the creation of permanent intelligence oversight committees in Congress and the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Even though our work was over 30 years ago, our conclusions seem eerily prescient today. For example, our final report noted:

We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as “vacuum cleaners,” sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme, which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings.

The need for another thorough, independent and public congressional investigation of intelligence activity practices that affect the rights of Americans is apparent. There is a crisis of public confidence. Misleading statements by agency officials to Congress, the courts and the public have undermined public trust in the intelligence community and in the capacity of the branches of government to provide meaningful oversight.

The scale of domestic communications surveillance the NSA engages in today dwarfs the programs revealed by the Church Committee. Thirty years ago, the NSA’s surveillance practices raised similar concerns as those today. For instance, Church explained:

In the case of the NSA, which is of particular concern to us today, the rapid development of technology in this area of electronic surveillance has seriously aggravated present ambiguities in the law. The broad sweep of communications interception by NSA takes us far beyond the previous Fourth Amendment controversies where particular individuals and specific telephone lines were the target.

As former members and staffers of the Church Committee, we can authoritatively say the erosion of public trust currently facing our intelligence community is not novel, nor is its solution. A Church Committee for the 21st century — a special congressional investigatory committee that undertakes a significant and public re-examination of intelligence community practices that affect the rights of Americans and the laws governing those actions — is urgently needed. Nothing less than the confidence of the American public in our intelligence agencies and, indeed, the federal government, is at stake.

Sincerely,

Counsel, advisers and professional staff members of the Church Committee, including

Chief Counsel Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr.

Loch Johnson

John T. Elliff

Burt Wides

Jim Dick

Frederick Baron

Joseph Dennin

Peter Fenn

Anne Karalekas

Michael Madigan

Elliot Maxwell

Gordon Rhea

Eric Richard

Athan Theoharis

Christopher Pyle

February 25, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Haley and Abbas have exposed the fallacy of PA representation at the UN

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 22, 2018

The outcome of the UN Security Council meeting does not bode well for the people of Palestine. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas gave a lengthy speech during which opportunities for hammering out the truth of the matter were reduced to statements showing that little has changed in terms of how the PA interprets history and time frames.

Abbas declared that Israel “has transformed the occupation from a temporary situation as per international law into a situation of permanent settlement colonisation.” He also described the PA as having become “an Authority without authority.” The inaccuracy of these statements is the suggestion that their claims have just become obvious, highlighting the refusal to recognise that the facts of the matter have been very clear since the start of the occupation — Zionism is an expansionist ideology forever seeking “Greater Israel” — and the creation of the PA, whose sole role is to serve Israeli interests. Having allocated enough space in order to portray the alleged deterioration of the situation as opposed to current circumstances being the result of a premeditated plan of colonisation and collaboration, Abbas is entrenching a poor bargaining position for Palestinians.

This deficiency has been recognised by the US. The response to Abbas by America’s Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, emphasised that the only option considered by the US is “compromise”. In Haley’s words: “You can choose to put aside your anger about the location of our embassy and move forward with us towards a negotiated compromise that holds great potential for improving the lives of the Palestinian people.” In other words, forget about a state; you can have the crumbs off the table, which is better than no crumbs at all.

Haley’s response cannot be read solely within the context of a diatribe against Abbas. It is a direct attack on Palestinians rights and aspirations for liberation. Indeed, this exchange portrays the consequences which Palestinians suffer as a result of political isolation. The rhetoric within international institutions takes place in such a detached manner that it is possible to discern a narrative for UN forums that only skims the surface of what is deemed acceptable to discuss. The choice of discourse has been determined away from Palestinian reality.

The diverging narratives are imbued with recognition and repudiation, with the latter reserved for Palestinians. Haley is emphasising this discrepancy and exploiting it at a time when Israel and the US are working overtly to accelerate the colonisation process so that “Greater Israel” becomes more of a reality day by day. Recognising the colonial narrative at an international level is aided by the fact that Abbas is not speaking for all Palestinians. His calculated discourse, which should generate outrage at the way decades of Israeli violations are being recognised by himself and the PA so belatedly — particularly after US President Donald Trump’s unilateral declaration on Jerusalem — is a blatant example of pandering to colonial complicity.

Haley’s statement on Palestinians’ limitations unfortunately rings true. Whether or not the US is involved in negotiations, the damage to the Palestinians and their cause is immense. Turning to international organisations with weak leadership for solutions will ultimately result in the diminished power of the people. The fact that Abbas continues to engage with the international community without acknowledging its role in isolating Palestinian voices can only mean an extension of the current situation, with long-term benefits for Israel. Engaging with the US after the measures it has taken to hinder the legitimate claims of Palestinians on their territory to the point of elimination should not be an option.

Whatever Abbas chooses, and recent history has shown many examples of how the PA fluctuates from one degenerative option to another, it is important to remember that the decisions are not Palestinian choices. The people of Palestine have been experimented upon from all sides — even militarily — and options offered by parties across the political spectrum ignore the fact that the genuine possibilities for Palestinians can only be generated from within; Abbas knows this only too well. It is with calculated intent that the entire world has been allowed to impose anything and everything upon the Palestinians apart from their legitimate rights. The added indignity is having these same impositions articulated in the name of the Palestinian people by someone like Mahmoud Abbas.

February 24, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Painting an Israeli Attack on Syria as Israeli ‘Retaliation’

By Gregory Shupak | FAIR | February 21, 2018

Israel claimed that it intercepted an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace on Saturday, February 10; Iran denied that it had a drone there. Israel then bombed a Syrian airbase, saying it was the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone. The Syrian government shot down an Israeli jet that had bombed the base, and Israel subsequently launched more airstrikes against Syria.

Reuters (2/13/18) described the latter airstrikes as Israel having “retaliated” for the downing of its aircraft. Vice (2/13/18) too characterized them as “retaliatory”; the Los Angeles Times (2/11/18) did the same three times. These word choices wrongly imply that Israel was acting defensively, when it was Israel who fired the first shots in the weekend’s exchanges: These outlets were saying that Israel was “retaliating” against Syria for defending itself against an ongoing Israeli attack.

“Retaliation” is an exculpatory term. To say that a party is “retaliating” is to say that their actions are an understandable response to another party’s provocation. As FAIR’s Rachel Coen and Peter Hart (Extra!, 5–6/02) wrote more than a decade and a half ago, the term “lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being ‘retaliated’ against, since they presumably initiated the conflict.” In this case, casting Syria and Iran as the aggressors rests on the dubious assumption that flying a drone over Israel—if Israel’s charge is accurate—is more aggressive than Israel dropping bombs on Syria.

CNN: Israel: Jets Faced Heavy Syrian Anti-Aircraft Fire

Painting warplanes carrying out an aggressive bombing raid as victims

It also rests on the flawed assumption that the timeline of hostilities between Israel and the Syrian government began on Friday, February 9. However, despite the Associated Press’s untenable claim (2/10/18) that “Israel has mostly stayed out of the prolonged fighting in Syria,” Israel admits to having bombed the Syrian government and its ally Hezbollah nearly 100 times since the war in Syria began in 2011 (Reuters, 2/6/18). If Brigadier General Amnon Ein Dar, the head of the Israeli Air Force’s Air Division, is to be believed (Ynet, 2/11/18), the Israeli military has “carried out thousands of missions in Syria in the last year alone.”

A Washington Post article (2/10/18) made the similarly dubious assertion that “Israel has largely stood on the sidelines of the Syrian conflict over the past seven years.” In the next paragraph, though, the author acknowledges that “Israel has conducted dozens of covert airstrikes against [the Syrian government-aligned] Hezbollah weapons convoys in Syria,” and the piece goes on, in a spectacular display of self-contradiction, to note that “Israel has carried out a number of significant attacks in Syria in recent months.”

Israel has also supported the Syrian armed opposition for years, the Wall Street Journal (6/18/17) reported, supplying fighters with food, fuel, medical supplies “and money payments to commanders that help pay salaries of fighters and buy ammunition and weapons.” According to the Journal, the Israeli army “is in regular communication with rebel groups,” and Israel “has established a military unit that oversees the support in Syria—a country that it has been in a state of war with for decades—and set aside a specific budget for the aid, said one person familiar with Israeli operation.” There is even reason to believe that Israel has had an alliance with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Middle East Monitor, 5/26/15; Electronic Intifada, 6/16/15). None of the articles cited here on the February 10 clashes mentioned this important backdrop.

Turning an Occupation Into a ‘Border’

Coverage of these events also failed to correctly describe the status of the Golan Heights, a piece of land that is central to the Israeli/Syrian conflict. Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war, fought off a Syrian effort to reclaim it in 1973, and illegally annexed it in 1981. Israel has sought to take advantage of the war that has devastated Syria for nearly seven years by, as Matt Broomfield writes in the Electronic Intifada (11/11/16), planning a fivefold increase in the number of Israeli settlers in the Golan, allocating $108 million for 750 new Israeli agricultural projects in the territory, and significantly expanding military forces along the boundary between Syria and the area under Israeli control.

The New York Times (2/10/18) made two references to “the Israeli-held portion of the Golan Heights,”  a rather anodyne depiction of territory that is internationally recognized as Syrian, but which Israel seized by force of arms and claimed for itself.

The Washington Post (2/10/18) said that “Israel shares a contentious border with Syria—the Golan Heights.” But the Golan isn’t “a contentious border”; it’s a territory that, despite Israeli claims to the contrary, unambiguously belongs to Syria under international law.

A CNN report (2/11/18) closed by saying that “authorities also accused Syria in November of violating the 1974 ceasefire agreement [with Israel] by “conducting construction work” in the northern part of the Golan Demilitarized Zone.” While it’s unclear which authorities are being referenced, this passage neglects to mention that by late 2015, Israel had built 30 settlements, housing 20,000 settlers, in the Golan, or that a year later it announced plans for 1,600 new homes in the territory, “construction work” that has been roundly condemned by “authorities” like the United Nations.

Moreover, 20,000 Syrians live in the Golan, and many are directly harmed by Israeli policies. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Israel’s discriminatory land, housing and development policies in the territory have made it hard for Syrians to get building permits, leading to increasingly overcrowded Syrian towns and villages. The UNHRC also points out that Israel has demolished a Syrian home, and that a number of Syrian homeowners have reportedly received demolition notices.

This larger context of Israel’s Syria policies would have helped news readers make sense of what occurred on February 10, but it was absent. Given that Israel had just launched an airstrike on a Syrian base, has apparently bombed Syria close to 100 times in the past six years, has carried out perhaps 1,000 attacks against it in the last year, has backed an armed insurgency against the Syrian government, and has stolen and illegally colonized Syrian land while oppressing and dispossessing Syrian civilians, it is far more accurate to say that Syria retaliated against Israel on February 10.

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Mindblowing Corruption At FBI – NSA Whistleblower Reveals

The Jimmy Dore Show | February 20, 2018

February 23, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Russiaphobia Is Out of Control

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | February 21, 2018

As has been made perfectly clear, Robert Mueller’s “indictment” of 13 Russians and 3 companies is just another hoax.

All Mueller has found is a bait-click commercial marketing scheme that had nothing to do with election interference.

Why is Mueller comfortable bringing a transparently false indictment?

The answer is, as Glenn Greenwald makes clear, that Mueller knows there are large numbers of warmongering politicians and media whores who will seize on the fake indictment as proof that Russia has “committed an act of war equivalent to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.” The fact that what Mueller has indicted is only a bait-click marketing scheme will never be mentioned by politicians and presstitutes shouting the military/security complex’s slogan that “Russia must be punished.”

Greenwald supplies the names of some of these reckless and irresponsible people who are willing to bring on war with their rants: politicians Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Jeanne Shaheen, Jerry Nadler, Marco Rubio—indeed almost all of Congress—Clinton aides such as Philippe Reines and John Podesta, and the legions of presstitutes such as Karen Tumulty, David Frum, Chuck Todd, Tom Friedman—indeed, the entirety of the print and TV media with the exceptions of Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan.

When a country armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and overwhelmed by its own exceptionalism and indispensability has political and media lunatics equating a bait-click commercial marketing scheme with Pearl Harbor, that country is a recipe for the end of the world.

Note: Two presstitutes at Bloomberg, Lauren Etter and Ilya Arkhipov think that filming disadvantaged Americans in order to cast the US in a bad light is the same as interfering in the presidential election, and they think that a Russian food caterer is heading a Russian disinformation campaign.

This shows how utterly stupid the US media is. The entire article is based on nothing, just what some people say they think. Prigozhin’s business is a bait-click marketing scheme. What the utterly dishonest Mueller and the presstitutes are doing is turning a bait-click marketing scheme into an election interfering scheme. The only way this “indictment” could succeed in a court would be if no evidence could be presented, only Mueller’s absurd “indictment.”

Mueller’s “indictment” is not meant to go to court. It is just a propaganda device, and that is how the presstitutes are using it.

As Glenn Greenwald reports, three CNN “journalists” had to resign for their fake news “Russia threat” stories. In actual fact, the entirely of the US print and TV media should have to resign.

February 21, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Argentina: Fernandez Brands ‘Iranian Pact’ Allegations ‘Arbitrary,’ Demands Immediate Trial

teleSUR | February 20, 2018

Argentine senator and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has requested a public trial be held “immediately” to “expose the arbitrariness of the accusation (against her) to the whole society.” Fernandez is being prosecuted for an alleged cover-up of Iranian officials and citizens accused of perpetrating a terror attack in 1994.

In July 1994 the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community center, was attacked with a car bomb killing 85 people and injuring 300 more.

In a legal recourse sent Monday to judge Claudio Bonadio by Fernandez’s lawyers, Alejandro Rua and Graciana Peñafort, they demand the investigation be elevated to a public trial.

Judge Bonadio prosecuted the former head of state and other former government officials, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Hector Timerman, for concealment and treason.

The treason charge was dropped in a second instance hearing, but the National Chamber of Criminal and Correctional Appeals confirmed the prosecution of the defendants for concealment arguing they covered up Iranians accused of the AMIA attack through a Memorandum of Understanding with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.

The memorandum, which would have created a Truth Commission to investigate the case, was never applied because it wasn’t ratified by the Iranian parliament.

The case against Fernandez was opened after federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman formally accused her and other politicians in 2013 of covering up Iranian suspects. Nisman was found dead in 2015, before testifying.

A federal judge dismissed the case arguing the minimum conditions to launch a criminal investigation were not met. According to Pagina 12, a local newspaper, five prominent Argentine jurists agreed that there was no crime in Nisman’s accusation. However, the dismissal was revoked last year after an appeal by the Delegation of Israeli Argentine Associations.

In the document elevated to the court by Fernandez’s lawyers, they claim Bonadio’s conclusions “are false and are contradicted by the collected proof,” and clarify they will not request the dismissal because their client “does not expect Justice” from Bonadio’s court.

February 20, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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