A science fiction story

HOW I regret having to criticize Obama, knowing that in that country there are other potential presidents worse than him. I understand that in the United States that office is currently a tremendous headache. Perhaps nothing could explain it better than the information in yesterday’s Granma that 237 members of the U.S. Congress; in other words, 44% of them, are millionaires. That does not mean that every one of them is obliged to be an incorrigible reactionary, but it is very difficult that they might think like any of the many millions of U.S. citizens who lack medical care, are unemployed or have to work hard to earn a living.
Obama, of course, is not a beggar, he possesses millions of dollars. As a professional he was outstanding; his domination of language, his eloquence and his intelligence are undisputed. Despite being an African American he was elected president for the first time in the history of his country in a racist society that is suffering from a profound international economic crisis, the responsibility for which falls upon itself.
It is not about being or not being anti-American, as the system and its colossal media try to describe its adversaries.
The U.S. people are not responsible for, but the victims of an unsustainable system and, what is worse, one that is now incompatible with the life of humanity.
The intelligent and rebel Obama who had to endure humiliation and racism during his childhood and youth understands that, but the Obama who is educated and committed to the system and the methods that led him to the presidency of the United States cannot resist the temptation to pressure, threaten and even deceive others.
He is obsessive in his work; possibly no other president of the United States would be capable of committing himself to a program as intensive as the one that he proposes to undertake in the next eight days.
According to his program, a wide-ranging tour will take him to Alaska, where he is to talk with troops deployed there; to Japan, Singapore, the People’s Republic of China and South Korea; he is to take part in the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); he will have talks with the prime minister of Japan and His Majesty Emperor Akihito in the Land of the Rising Sun; the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang; of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, and of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao; he will give speeches and press conferences; he will carry his nuclear briefcase that we trust he will not need to use during his accelerated tour.
His security adviser has informed that he is to discuss with the president of Russia extending the START-1 Treaty, which expires on December 5, 2009. Certain reductions in the enormous nuclear arsenal will doubtless be agreed, without significance for the economy and world peace.
What is our illustrious friend thinking of taking on during his intensive voyage? The White House has solemnly announced it: climate change, economic recovery, nuclear disarmament, the war in Afghanistan, the risks of war in Iran and in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is enough material here to write a book of fiction.
But how is Obama going to resolve climate problems if the position of his representation in the preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen Summit on greenhouse gas emissions was the worst of all the industrialized and rich countries, both in Bangkok and in Barcelona, because the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, nor is that country’s oligarchy disposed to genuinely cooperate.
How is he going to contribute to the solution of the grave economic problems affecting a large part of humanity, when the total debt of the United States – which includes federal government, state and local governments, companies and families – amounted at the end of 2008 to $57 trillion, equivalent to more than 400% of its GDP, and when that country’s budget deficit rose to close to 13% of its GDP in the fiscal year 2009, a figure that Obama is doubtless aware of.
What can he offer Hu Jintao when his policy has been openly protectionist in order to hit Chinese exports; when he is demanding at all costs that the Chinese government should revalue the yuan, which would affect growing Third World imports proceeding from China.
The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff – who is not a disciple of Karl Marx, but an honest Catholic, one of those who is not prepared to cooperate with imperialism in Latin America – recently affirmed: "…we are risking our destruction and the devastation of the diversity of life."
"…almost half of humanity is now living below the poverty level. The richest 20% consume 82.49% of all the Earth’s wealth and the 20% poorest have to sustain themselves with a miniscule 1.6%." He quotes the FAO warning that "…in the coming years there will be between 150 and 200 million climate refugees." And he adds that in his estimate: "humanity is now consuming 30% more than its reposition capacity… The Earth is showing unequivocal signs that it cannot take any more."
What he affirms is a fact, but Obama and the U.S. Congress have not as yet heard that.
What is he leaving us in the hemisphere? The shameful problem of Honduras and the annexation of Colombia, in which country the United States is to install seven military bases. They also established a military base in Cuba more than 100 years ago and still occupy it by force. On it they installed the horrific torture center known worldwide, which Obama has been unable to close as yet.
I sustain the belief that before Obama concludes his mandate there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America allied to the empire. Likewise in the near future, the most right-wing sector in the United States will try to limit his mandate to a period of four years. A Nixon, a Bush or somebody like Cheney will once again be new presidents. Then one would see with all clarity the significance of those absolutely unjustifiable military bases that are now threatening all the peoples of South America on the pretext of combating drug trafficking, a problem created by the tens of billions of dollars from the United States being injected into organized crime and drug production in Latin America.
Cuba has demonstrated that in order to combat drugs what is needed is justice and social development. In our country, the crime figure per every 100,000 inhabitants is one of the lowest in the world. No other [country] in the hemisphere can show such low indices of violence. It is known that in spite of the blockade, none other possesses such high educational levels.
The peoples of Latin America will know how to resist the onslaughts of the empire!
Obama’s tour would seem to be a science fiction story.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 11, 2009
7:16 p.m.

Food stamp usage at record levels - America the hungry

A front-page report in Sunday’s New York Times, detailing the skyrocketing rise in food stamp use, provides a far different picture of America at the end of 2009 than the complacent assurances of economic “recovery” voiced by Wall Street and the Obama administration.

The Times conducted a statistical analysis of food stamp use by county, in an effort to present a more detailed social portrait of the 36 million people currently on the food stamp rolls. “They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare,” the report noted.

Among the significant findings:

* In 239 counties, more than a quarter of the population receives food stamps.
* In more than 750 counties, at least one in three African-Americans receives food stamps.
* In more than 800 counties, more than one-third of all children depend on food stamps.
* In 62 counties, food stamp rolls have doubled over the past two years.
* In 205 counties, food stamp rolls are up by two-thirds.

The geographical dispersal of the mounting social need for food is staggering, from traditional centers of poverty such as rural Appalachia and inner-city urban ghettos to the suburbs built up in the Sunbelt in the last two decades. The map showing the counties where food stamp usage is growing most rapidly includes the affluent Atlanta suburbs, most of the state of Florida, most of Wisconsin, western and northern Ohio, and most of the Mountain West, including large swathes of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho.

While unemployment is the main trigger of rising food stamp usage, the immediate economic cause varies widely, from the collapse of the housing bubble in the southwestern states and Florida, to the collapse of the auto industry in the Great Lakes region, to the layoffs sweeping through white collar America as the recession worsens.

The Times notes the impact on affluent suburban areas, long dominated by the Republican Party, where food stamp usage has more than doubled since the official start of the slump in December 2007, such as Orange County, California and Forsyth County, Georgia. Food stamp use has grown more slowly, in percentage terms, in cities like Detroit, St. Louis and New Orleans, but only because so much of their populations were already living in poverty and receiving food assistance when the slump began.

All these figures significantly understate the level of social deprivation. An estimated 18 million people who are eligible for food stamps do not receive them, partly because of institutional barriers like inadequate outreach services, particularly to immigrant communities—the state of California reaches only half of those eligible—and partly because of the social stigma attached to receiving “welfare,” especially in suburban areas where impoverishment has been a sudden and recent event.

According to a study by Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell University and Mark R. Rank of Washington University in St. Louis, half the children in America will depend on food stamps at some point during their childhood. The figure rises to 90 percent for black children. The study was published this month in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Since it is based on analyzing 29 years of data, the latter study gives a picture of the levels of social need during a period when unemployment averaged well below the 10.2 percent mark hit last month. A protracted period of double-digit unemployment—now widely predicted by business and government economists—will make more and more children dependent on federal aid to meet their basic nutritional needs.

The findings of both these studies confirm the conclusions of a US Department of Agriculture survey released November 16 that found 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, were not consistently getting enough food to eat in 2008. The vast majority of the 17 million families struggling to put food on the table had at least one employed worker in the household, but with wages too low to ensure basic necessities. The level of food insecurity was the highest since the USDA began keeping records in 1995.

These figures demonstrate that for American working people, the social reality today is the worst since the Great Depression. Some 30 million people are unemployed or underemployed. Nearly 50 million lack health insurance. Nearly 50 million have difficulty feeding themselves and their children. Some 40 million live below the official poverty line, and the figure would rise to 80 million if a realistic family budget were used as the yardstick.

Young people face the greatest challenge. According to a Pew Research Center report issued last week, 10 percent of adults under 35 have moved back with their parents due to the recession. More than half of men 18 to 24 were still living with their parents, and 48 percent of young women. The proportion of young people with jobs—46 percent—is the lowest since records began in 1948.

These figures are an indictment of American capitalism and its criminal sabotage of the productive forces of society. How is it possible that in a country whose agriculture is so productive that it can literally feed the world, tens of millions of people struggle to feed their children and themselves? It is because production and distribution take place on the basis of private profit, and feeding hungry children is far less profitable for the ruling elite than speculation in the financial markets.

These figures are also an indictment of the political representatives of big business in the Obama administration and the Democratic and Republican parties. Apparently hunger, like unemployment, is viewed by Obama merely as a “lagging indicator”—something that the American people simple have to endure, but not a crisis, not even a cause to lift a finger.

Having funneled trillions into the financial system, to ensure a return to profitability and seven-figure bonuses on Wall Street, and set his course for military escalation in Afghanistan at the cost of countless billions, Obama is now declaring that his top domestic priority is deficit reduction. After Wall Street and war, there will be little or nothing left over to meet the needs of hungry children—or their parents.

Patrick Martin

The cruelest face of the blockade

The repercussions on health care of the economic war imposed by the United States were in excess of $25 million from May 2008 to April 2009

• THE blockade of Cuba, maintained for more than 50 years by successive U.S. administrations with the intention of undermining the population through hunger and disease has led to repercussions in the public health care sector amounting to $25 million from May 2008 to April 2009 alone.

The report titled The need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba, to be put to the vote in the UN General Assembly on October 28, states that the damage caused in this sensitive sphere is cruel not only in terms of its material effects but particularly for the suffering that it causes patients and their families and for the direct incidence on the health of the population, especially children.

The document states that the list of Cuban children to undergo open heart surgery increased by eight last year: Osdenis Díaz, 30 months; Leinier Ramírez Pérez, 9 months; Leidy Reyes Blanco, 2 years; José Luis Sanamé, 13 years; Yusmary Rodríguez Márquez, 12 years; Pedro P. Valle Ros, 5 years; Osniel Pérez Espinosa, 5 years, y Roilán Martínez Pérez, 3 years.
The William Soler Pediatric Hospital’s Cardio-Center in Havana has been prevented from acquiring devices used to diagnose and treat children with complex congenital cardiopathies via catheterization. The U.S. Numed, AGA and Boston Scientific companies are prohibited from selling these products to Cuba.

In addition, Cuban children suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia cannot be treated with Erwinia L-asparaginasa, a medicine commercially known as Elspar, given that the U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck and Co. refuses to sell this product to Cuba.
Children’s hospitals face serious obstacles when it comes to acquiring materials suitable for small children, such as better quality and more durable vesicular, digestive and tracheal probes, Huber needles for tracheotomies and lumbar injections, most of which come from the United States.

The National Genetic Medicine Center (CNGM), the institution of national reference for the Cuban Diagnosis, Management and Prevention Program for Genetic Diseases and Heart Defects, is likewise suffering from the effects of this cruel and unjust blockade.

Since 2003, the center has been trying to acquire, without any result, analyzer equipment for genes with the capacity for automatic sequencing capability and fragment analysis, essential for the study of the origin of high-incidence diseases in the population and which are among the prime causes of death: breast, colon and prostate cancers; arterial hypertension; asthma; diabetes mellitus and mental disorders, among others.

In an interview with Granma International (published edition Number 30 on July 26, 2009) Dr. Beatriz Marcheco Teruel, the director of CNGM, spoke about this case and noted that they had been unable to acquire it because the company that produces the equipment and software, ABI, is American.

Dr. Marcheco also said that the institution is forced to pay up to three times more than any other laboratory in the world to obtain certain reagents needed for investigations being carried out by the center.

Another of the various examples mentioned in the report is that of MEDICUBA, an entity that requested, via the Cuban company Alimport, the purchase of vascular prostheses from Bard, forceps for Endomyocardial biopsies from Cordis, and implements for inflation to be used with balloon catheters from Boston Scientific. Just one negative response was received from the Bard Company along with notification that it could not provide Cuba with a quote on the product requested because of the blockade law. The other companies did not even reply to the requests.

The economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba for over 50 years is the most elevated expression of a cruel and inhuman policy, lacking in legality and legitimacy and deliberately designed to create hunger, disease and desperation within the Cuban populace.

There has never been such a wide-ranging and brutal blockade of any nation.

On the one hand, this classifies as genocide by virtue of Section C of Article II of the Geneva Convention of 1948 on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and, on the other hand, as an act of economic warfare, according to the stipulations of the declaration regarding Maritime War adopted by the 1909 London Naval Conference. In addition, the blockade of Cuba is more than a bilateral issue between our country and the United States.

THE EXTRATERRITORIAL APPLICATION OF A POLICY OF GENOCIDE

The report also shows how the public health sector is affected by the extra-territorial application of that policy of genocide imposed on Cuba by successive U.S. administrations over the course of more than 50 years.

The repeated extraterritorial application of US laws and the persecution of legitimate interests of companies and citizens of third countries have significant repercussions on the sovereignty of many other states.

Under that policy, persons who are ill in Cuba cannot benefit, in many instances, from new diagnostics, technologies or drugs, even though if their lives depend on them because – independently of the fact that these products are available in a third country, the blockade laws forbid that Cuba acquires even one single component or program originating in the United States.

In this way, the document explains how non-U.S. companies like Hitachi and Toshiba are refusing to sell high technology equipment to Cuba.

For example, Hitachi is refusing to sell Cuba an electronic microscope of the kind used in pathological anatomy, which is forcing the island to look elsewhere for alternatives, making the final price of the product much more expensive.

Meanwhile, Toshiba is acting in the same way with high technology equipment such as the gamma chamber (used to do studies with radioactive isotopes in nuclear medicine), magnetic resonance, and high precision ultra-sound. As a result, health services for the Cuban population have been affected.

Another eloquent example is that of the Cuban company GCATE S.A., which specializes in the purchase of technological equipment for the health sector; it has faced serious difficulties with the Dutch company Philips Medical because, after a range of equipment was bought and installed, the Dutch company refused to provide spare parts, forcing us to buy them through third countries; this increases the price and makes maintenance an even more difficult task.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, analyzed the case of that Dutch company in his September 6 Reflection titled "The double betrayal of Philips."

The economic damages are basically due to the need to acquire products and equipment in markets that are further away, using intermediaries for such purposes, and the subsequent increased price that such procedures bring with them.

Likewise, the refusal to grant visas to Cuban scientists and health specialists so that they can take part in numerous scientific congresses and events in the United States constitutes an obstacle for professional updating, their witnessing of techniques being used in the treatment of different conditions, and an exchange of experiences that, under different conditions, could be beneficial to both countries.


Lilliam Riera

Voices against the G20

A SUMMIT meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) in Pittsburgh September 24-25 was met by an outpouring of challenges and protests by activists from a broad range of social movements, community groups, unions and progressive organizations.
The G20 is made up of finance ministers and central bankers--and at such summit meetings, heads of state--of the world's top 19 most economically developed countries plus the European Union. Its critics in labor and social movements charge that it represents multinational corporations and banks whose single-minded quest for maximizing profits is responsible for the devastation of the economies, cultures and environments of countries throughout the world.
Educational forums and other activities--including several demonstrations--were the result, culminating in a massive Peoples' March, with some 8,000 participants, according to march organizers, on Friday, September 25.
Starting off the "G20 week" in Pittsburgh was a Peoples' Summit September 19-22, organized by educators and activists who called for "a world in which basic rights--freedom of expression, freedom of thought and religion, freedom from fear and freedom from want--are enjoyed by all people."
Peoples' Summit organizers estimate that 700-800 people attended one or another session of the three-day event. Among those addressing the Peoples' Summit were global justice activist Walden Bello of the Philippines; Privilege Haangandu from Jubilee Zambia; Mexican labor leader Benedicto Martinez; journalist Jeremy Scahill; and historian Howard Zinn, who called for the gathering to challenge "the bigwigs of finance and industry who are trying to determine our fate" with an agenda of "what working people need," based on "solidarity across national lines."
United Steel Workers (USW) Education Director Lisa Jordan and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka brought to the Peoples' Summit their sense of optimism from the just-concluded AFL-CIO national convention, which had taken place in Pittsburgh.
Also drawing support from the USW and United Electrical workers (UE) was a "March for Jobs" through the Hill District, in the heart of Pittsburgh's African American community. The march on September 20 drew some 500 people and was organized by Bail Out the People. Speakers included USW Vice President Fred Redmond and Clarence Thomas of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Bail Out the People also organized a weeklong "Tent City on the Hill" to focus attention on the plight of the unemployed and the homeless and the need for a jobs program.
UE's International Labor Affairs Director Robin Alexander was a key organizer of "Peoples Voices," another series of forums on the problems of the G20 and corporate globalization, on September 23-25. Sponsoring groups included Jobs with Justice, Grassroots Global Justice and Alliance for Responsible Trade/Hemispheric Social Alliance.
The first day's panel discussion included community and international activists; Steelworkers President Leo Gerard; and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, former World Bank vice president and chief economist, and critic of global economic policies and bodies. The next day's event featured 10 issue circles that indicted the G20's policies and called for alternatives; this led to a "People's Tribunal," that found the G20 guilty of violating human rights.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A VARIETY of other activities took place. Among these were demonstrations, vigils and educational efforts by a progressive and ecumenical religious coalition dubbed the G6 Billion. An educational encampment was organized by Code Pink and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and another by the Three Rivers Climate Convergence (which was, however, targeted and essentially closed down by police repression).
Public officials and news media--in particular TV news--spent the months leading to the G20 stoking fear and loathing of protestors and predicting violence. Outside police agencies augmented Pittsburgh's 900-officer police department to a security force of 4,000 police and 2,000 National Guard troops. As one newspaper columnist noted, this was the largest mobilization of armed force in Southwest Pennsylvania since 8,000 National Guard troops were sent to crush the Homestead steelworkers in 1892.
Considerable media attention was attracted on September 24 by the anarchist-led confrontations of the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project. Its non-permitted actions, drawing about 1,500 people, were repressed fairly quickly by several thousand heavily armed and armored police forces, using tear-gas and pepper-spray, disrupting the working-class neighborhoods of Lawrenceville and Bloomfield, and making over 40 arrests.
Far more impressive, however, was the week's culmination--a Friday afternoon peaceful, legal Peoples' March with a broad and diverse outpouring of 8,000. Demands included: End war and occupations; Allow public input; jobs for all; Environmental justice; Economic justice.
Initiated by the Thomas Merton Center and its Anti-War Committee, the action drew endorsements from 70 organizations, including the USW and UE. The three-mile march was punctuated by three enthusiastic rallies, which included labor and community representatives and whose co-chairs included labor musician Anne Feeney and UE News editor Al Hart.
An ugly aftermath occurred on Friday evening, at the University of Pittsburgh, in the form of an unprovoked yet massive, highly coordinated police assault on students and others. Many saw this as "pay-back" from militarized and hyped-up police forces who had anticipated large-scale street battles that never materialized.
Over 100 arrests were made--including a number of by-standers and journalists. The assault has been widely denounced, including by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh (Communications Workers of America Local 38061), representing employees of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noting that:
[M]any of those arrested were attempting to lawfully exercise their First Amendment rights of peaceful assembly and of press freedom, rights that are essential to the survival of democracy. Others were bystanders who found themselves caught between lines of police ordering them to disperse and then blocking their dispersal until they were arrested.
The consensus among organizers and activists was that the week's events posed an important and effective challenge to the policies represented by the G20.

Washington faces deepening debacle in Afghanistan

Today marks eight years since the launching of the US war against Afghanistan. The aerial bombardment of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad was followed by the deployment of CIA and military special forces units which directed US warplanes in the annihilation of Taliban fighters. The militias of the Northern Alliance—a collection of warlords tied to the opium trade and implicated in war crimes over the previous decade—served as Washington’s proxy army.
Within two months, all of Afghanistan’s provinces had fallen to the US intervention, with large numbers of the Taliban resistance taken prisoner and massacred and others driven into the Tora Bora mountains or across the border into Pakistan. In those two months, a total of 12 US soldiers were killed.
Now, eight years later, the Obama White House and the Pentagon are engaged in a heated debate over whether to send another 40,000 troops—on top of the 68,000 US and 38,000 NATO troops already deployed—in an attempt to salvage an intervention that has succeeded only in intensifying the resistance to the US-led occupation and spreading it throughout the country.
The number of US and NATO troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year has risen to 400—nearly six times as many as died in the first year of the US intervention. The war has gone on twice as long as US forces were engaged in World War II.
The Bush administration launched the war in the name of smashing Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. It was justified as retribution for the attacks of September 11, 2001, tragic events whose real origins have not been seriously investigated to this day.
The Obama administration employs this same essential pretext, describing Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”—in contrast to the “war of choice” in still-occupied Iraq. Like his predecessor, Obama insists that the war is aimed at preventing another terrorist attack, maintaining this pretense even as his national security adviser, retired General James Jones, admitted this week that there are no more than 100 members of Al Qaeda in all of Afghanistan, with no means of attacking the US.
The World Socialist Web Site rejected this rationale as a lie from the outset. In an editorial board statement posted on October 9, 2001, two days after the war was launched, the WSWS explained:
“… while the events of September 11 have served as the catalyst for the assault on Afghanistan, the cause is far deeper. The nature of this or any war, its progressive or reactionary character, is determined not by the immediate events that preceded it, but rather by the class structures, economic foundations and international roles of the states that are involved. From this decisive standpoint, the present action by the United States is an imperialist war.
“The US government initiated the war in pursuit of far-reaching international interests of the American ruling elite. What is the main purpose of the war? The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago created a political vacuum in Central Asia, which is home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world.”
The statement continued, “By attacking Afghanistan, setting up a client regime and moving vast military forces into the region, the US aims to establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control.”
There is no need to revise a single word in this analysis. Since October 2001, ample evidence has emerged that the decision to invade Afghanistan—like the one to conquer Iraq—was made well before the 9/11 attacks. These served as the pretext, not the cause, of two wars of military aggression.
The debacle confronting US imperialism in Afghanistan is one of its own making. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are both the products of previous US interventions in Afghanistan. Beginning in 1979, Washington funneled billions of dollars in arms and aid to Islamist guerrillas seeking to topple the country’s Soviet-backed government. It deliberately instigated a Soviet invasion and war that claimed over a million lives, turned another five million into refugees and wrecked the entire society.
At that point, bin Laden was part of the CIA-Saudi-Pakistani pipeline. Much of the US aid went to the forces of mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now blamed for last weekend’s attack that killed eight US soldiers in the remote province of Nuristan.
The US-led occupation begun eight years ago has proven another unmitigated catastrophe for the Afghan people. Thousands have been killed in aerial bombardments and repressive raids across the country, with the civilian casualty rate steadily rising.
Already desperate conditions of life have only worsened. The United Nations recently ranked Afghanistan at 181 out of 182 countries in the world in terms of human development indices. Only Niger ranked lower.
Life expectancy has fallen to 43 since the US invasion. At least 40 percent of the population is unemployed and 42 percent live on less than $1 a day. One in five children die before his or her fifth birthday, while one in 50 births ends in the death of the mother, one of the highest rates in the world. Two-thirds of the country’s adult population can neither read nor write.
Conditions have steadily worsened even as some $36 billion in foreign aid has been delivered to the country since October 2001, the bulk of it flowing into the pockets of the kleptocracy headed by the US-installed puppet president, Hamid Karzai.
Hated by the majority of the population and having blatantly stolen the August 20 presidential election, Karzai remains in power solely thanks to the support of Washington, which has concluded that it has nothing with which to replace him.
These conditions of violence, destitution and corruption have created broad popular support for those resisting the occupation. The ongoing debate in Washington is how best to suppress this resistance.
Two main options are reportedly under discussion: the deployment of another 40,000 troops in a redoubled counterinsurgency campaign, as demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the Pentagon, or an intensified use of drone attacks, aerial bombardment and special forces incursions into Pakistan, as proposed by Vice President Joseph Biden and others in the administration. Both spell increased bloodshed and a far wider war.
While there are no doubt bitter divisions over how the war should be conducted, all sides begin from achieving the aims upon which the war was launched: establishing a stranglehold over the energy resources of Central Asia in order to seize a decisive advantage for US imperialism over its economic rivals in Asia and Europe.
The onset of the global financial crisis has only intensified the underlying contradictions that are the driving force of American militarism, above all the conflict between a globally integrated economy and a world system divided by rival capitalist nation states. This finds its most explosive expression in the decline in the economic dominance of US imperialism.
The majority of the American people oppose both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and millions voted for Obama on the basis of this opposition. Yet both wars continue, and Obama is preparing to escalate the carnage in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while threatening military aggression in Iran.
No less than Bush and the Republicans, the Obama administration represents—in both its foreign and domestic policy—the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy that rules America. Wars abroad go hand in hand with mounting social inequality and an assault on the living standards and social and democratic rights of working people in the US itself.
The discussion now going on in the White House—and behind the backs of the American people—about how best to advance US imperialism’s interests in Central Asia poses immense dangers. An escalation of the war, either with more ground troops or intensified air attacks, threatens to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan and all of South and Central Asia. China, a rising power, and Russia, with longstanding interests in the region, will not remain on the sidelines indefinitely while Washington attempts to exert its dominance by armed force.
The war begun eight years ago and the threat of its escalation into a far bloodier conflagration can be ended only by the intervention of the working class in the US and internationally, fighting against the capitalist profit system which is the source of militarism.
In this struggle, the demands must be raised for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, a halt to the US attacks on Pakistan, and the dismantling of the US military and intelligence apparatus so as to provide billions of dollars for reparations to the victims of US aggression and to secure jobs and improve living standards for working people in the US and internationally.
Bill Van Auken

Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

Mr. President, you cannot continue this wretched, dishonest, disastrous war. If you do, your legacy will be poisoned by its obscene history.

George W. Bush was planning and mobilizing his attack on Afghanistan as early as March of 2001, some six months prior to the horrors of 9/11. The Afghan war, consequently, has nothing remotely to do with counter-terrorism. It is not an act even of preemptive self defense, but one of utterly unprovoked military aggression. Expressly prohibited by the charter of the United Nations, George Bush’s incursion into Afghanistan is an international crime.

Nor was the capture of Osama bin Laden of the least importance to the Bush White House—before or after 9/11.

Waiting on his desk when George Bush took office on January 20, 2001 was an offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, an offer negotiated by the Clinton Administration after the al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole. But Mr. Bush turned it down. And twice more during the spring and summer of 2001 the Bush Administration refused the offer. Then on September 11 bin Laden struck again. Four days afterward the Taliban sweetened the offer: now they would also shut down bin Laden’s bases and training camps. Once again the White House refused the offer. Several weeks later the Taliban repeated the offer, again it was rejected, and on October 7, 2001, George Bush launched the war on Afghanistan he had been planning for months on end.

This is the war, President Obama, in which you apparently intend to “succeed.” With your dispatch of 21,000 additional American troops, you now command an American force in Afghanistan larger than the Russians deployed there. And General McChrystal is expected to ask for more troops—10,000-15,000 more will constitute a “high risk option,” 25,000 a “medium-risk option,” and 45,000 a “low-risk option.”

Mr. President, before you commit more young American lives to the tragedy, please confront the facts about George Bush’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Instead of expanding, you must choose to end immediately this hideous and illegal war—or be tarnished as a criminal accomplice.

It is a war of naked imperialism, undertaken for the geopolitical control of the immense hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian Basin: Afghanistan, lying directly between those resources and the world’s richest markets, uniquely offers pipeline routes of incalculable value.

By 1996 the Bridas Corporation of Argentina had a lock on the routes. With signed pipeline contracts from both General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, Bridas controlled the Caspian play.

To the Unocal Corporation of the U.S. (and subsequently to the Bush Administration) that was intolerable. To contest Bridas’ success, Unocal hired a number of consultants: Henry Kissinger, Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and Zalmay Khalilzad. Armitage would later serve George W. Bush as Deputy Secretary of State, and Khalilzad would become a prominent diplomat. Both were enthusiastic members of the “PNAC,” the Project for a New American Century, a far-right group that asked President Clinton in January of 1998 to remove forcibly the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. (Clinton ignored the request.)

In the late ‘90’s Unocal hosted Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas and in Washington D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided. The Taliban refused. Finally, on February 12, 1998, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Vice President of Unocal, testified to the House Committee on International Relations. He asked to have the Taliban removed from power in Afghanistan, and for a “stable government” to be installed in its place.

The Clinton Administration, having rejected a month earlier the PNAC request to invade Iraq, was not any more interested in overthrowing the Taliban: President Clinton understood and chose to abide by the United Nations Charter. In August of 1998, however, Clinton launched a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan, retaliating for al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And he signed an Executive Order prohibiting further trade negotiations with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca was thus doubly disappointed. The Taliban would remain in power, and now Unocal could not even continue its private entreaties.

Unocal’s prospects declined even further on October 12, 2000. In yet another al Qaeda attack, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 more.
Some people in the Clinton Administration wanted immediately to “bomb the hell out of Afghanistan.” A few more cruise missiles wouldn’t do. But the State Department first dispatched Mr. Kabir Mohabbat, a U.S. citizen but a native Afghani, to arrange a negotiating meeting with the Taliban.

The parties met November 2, 2000 in the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. Frantic to avoid the retaliatory bombing, the Taliban offered the surrender of Osama bin Laden.

As the details of the handover were being worked out, however, the stalemated election of 2000 was awarded to George W. Bush. The surrender of Osama bin Laden would be handled by the incoming Administration.

But the new Administration demurred. In letter to the Taliban the Bush White House asked to postpone the handover of bin Laden until February; the Administration was still “settling in.” Kabir Mohabbat, however, was retained as a consultant to the National Security Council.

Unocal's fortunes then improved dramatically. In direct repudiation of Clinton’s Executive Order, the Bush Administration itself resumed pipeline negotiations with the Taliban in February of 2001. (At one meeting, a Taliban official presented President Bush with an expensive Afghan carpet.)

The Administration offered a tempting package of foreign aid in exchange for secure and exclusive access to the Caspian Basin for American companies. (The Enron Corporation also was eyeing a pipeline, to feed its proposed power plant in India.) The Bridas contract might still be voided. The Administration met with Taliban officials three times: in Washington, Berlin, and Islamabad. Still the Taliban refused.

But the Bush Administration meant to prevail, by force if necessary. As early as March 15, 2001, when Jane’s, the British international security journal disclosed the fact, the Administration was engaged in a “concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.” Confirming the Administration’s intended violence, George Arney of BBC News wrote a story published September 18, 2001: “U.S. Planned Attack on Taliban.” In mid-July of 2001 a “senior American official” told Mr. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary that “...military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”

Finally, on August 2 of 2001, the last pipeline negotiation with the Taliban ended with a terse statement by Christina Rocca of the State Department: “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” Shortly afterward, President Bush informed India and Pakistan the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan “before the end of October.”

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

Twice during the spring and summer of 2001 Mr. Kabir Mohabbat was sent to discuss the still pending surrender of Osama bin Laden. At both meetings Mr. Mohabbat could only apologize. The Bush Administration was not yet ready to accept the handover.
Then on September 11 Osama bin Laden struck once more.

With the Trade Towers in rubble and the Pentagon smoking, the Bush Administration seized immediately on the stupendous opportunity to disguise its intended attack on Afghanistan. It would be recast as a “Global War on Terror,” and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice would be its initial, prime objective.

The Taliban asked quickly for another meeting. Once again Kabir Mohabbat was dispatched to arrange it. On September 15, Taliban officials were flown in Air Force C-130 aircraft to the Pakistani city of Quetta, to negotiate with the State Department. Once again desperate to avoid a catastrophic bombing, the Taliban sweetened the deal: now they would also shut down bin Laden's bases and training camps.

The offer was rejected by the White House. The geopolitical need to proceed with the invasion was intractable, but with bin Laden in custody, the argument for the “War on Terror” smokescreen would collapse. Osama bin Laden simply had to remain at large.

Several weeks later the Taliban's offer was repeated. And so was the White House rejection.

On October 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs was unleashed over Afghanistan.
Then, with the Taliban removed from power, Mr. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal consultant, was installed by the U.S. as head of an interim government.

The first U.S. envoy to Afghanistan was Mr. John J. Maresca, a former Vice President of the Unocal Corporation.

The next Ambassador to Afghanistan was Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, also a former Unocal consultant.

On February 8, 2002, four months after the carpet of bombs, Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Perves Musharraf of Pakistan signed a new agreement for a pipeline. The Bridas contract was now moot. The way was open for American companies—Unocal and Enron—to proceed.

About a year later in the British trade journal Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections dated March 20, 2003, the truth about the Afghan war is laid bare. The article describes the readiness of three U.S. Federal agencies in the Bush Administration to fund the pipeline project: the U.S. Import/Export Bank, the Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation. The article continues: “...some recent reports ...indicated ...the United States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent stationing of its troops in the region.”

It didn’t take long for that to occur. At the website of GlobalSecurity.org, a report entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom Facilities” tells what happened:
“Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the U.S. military has deployed to 13 locations in nine countries [in addition to] Afghanistan. More then 2,000 civil engineers deployed to the region building and maintaining bases. Including additional deployments in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Kuwait, by early 2002 over 60,000 U.S. troops were deployed at these forward bases, and hundreds of aircraft were flying from expeditionary airfields.”

Superimposing the base-locations over maps of the pipelines, the Bush Administration’s design is unmistakable. U.S. bases in Afghanistan proper—there are now 15 altogether—precisely straddle the prospective pipeline routes.

Much has changed since President Bush launched his premeditated war of energy imperialism. The warlords, the poppy growers, and the Taliban dominate Afghanistan once more. A “stable government” is nowhere to be seen. The Bridas Corporation was bought by British Petroleum, Unocal is now part of Chevron/Texaco, and the war in Afghanistan has a new Commander In Chief.

Yes, President Obama, this is your war now. This war of naked imperialism is yours. This international crime is yours.

The nation, the world, and the judgment of history await your next decision about the war: what can you justifiably do, for God’s sake, but end it?

By RICHARD W. BEHAN
(Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on various websites over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration.)

The historic decline of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party

The landslide defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan’s election last month marks more than the end of the party’s protracted grip on political power. The rise of Japanese capitalism after World War II, and with it the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats, depended above all on the international strategic and economic framework built on the now waning global dominance of the US. The ignominious electoral collapse of the LDP amid the greatest global economic crisis since the 1930s is another sign that politics, not only in Japan but internationally, is entering uncharted and stormy waters.

The common myths about Japanese politics—the natural dominance of conservative parties in a regimented society with a placid, disciplined workforce—conveniently ignore the revolutionary upheavals following World War II when the fate of Japanese capitalism hung in the balance. Two million people, including many civilians, had died in the war, nearly half of the aggregate area of the cities had been destroyed and industry was at a standstill. Having suffered the horrors of war, economic deprivation and police-state repression, the working class was deeply hostile to the wartime militarist regime and determined to fight for its basic rights.

In conditions in which the major bourgeois parties were widely reviled, the post-war political stabilisation of Japan, like Europe, rested on the betrayals of Social Democracy and above all, Stalinism. The Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and their associated trade unions grew explosively. Amid continuing hunger and poverty, strikes and protests were widespread and led to a broad radicalisation. A planned general strike in February 1947 was called off on the orders of the head of the US occupation, General Douglas MacArthur. For the Communists, the decision to abandon the strike was a logical outcome of their Stalinist two-stage theory, which interpreted the limited reforms of the US occupation as part of a so-called first democratic stage of the revolution.

In reality, by reining in working class militancy, the JCP gave the US occupation and the Japanese bourgeoisie a much-needed breathing space. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the US military had released political prisoners, including JCP leaders, and purged politicians and bureaucrats associated with the wartime regime. After 1947 and the outbreak of the Cold War, Washington reversed course, allowing right-wing figures back into political life and conducting a “red purge” of communists and their sympathisers in the state bureaucracy and, with the assistance of American union leaders, in the trade unions.

The Liberal Democratic Party, formed in 1955 as the amalgamation of the conservative Liberal and Democratic Parties, rested entirely on the framework established by the US occupation. The cornerstone of its foreign policy was the 1952 US-Japan Security Treaty that ended the occupation and established Japan as America’s chief Asian ally in the Cold War. Economically, the revival of industry depended heavily on preferential trading relations with the US. The Korean War from 1950-53 gave a massive economic boost to Japan, which served as a base of operations for US troops. Politically, the LDP tightened its grip on office through a rural gerrymander reinforced by tariff protection for farmers, as well as subsidies and pork barrel construction projects for rural areas.

In the 1960s, amid continued global expansion, Japan became the original Asian “economic miracle”. Japanese businesses, nurtured behind trade barriers by the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, exploited the country’s cheap labour to make major inroads into the US and European markets. Over the decade, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 10 percent.

However, like the post-war boom internationally, the Japanese “miracle” was relatively short-lived. The first rupture came in 1971 when US President Richard Nixon ended the fixed gold-US dollar exchange rate that had underpinned the global economic framework. The following year, the Nixon administration deeply shocked the Japanese establishment by establishing diplomatic ties with China without bothering to consult its Cold War ally. The huge hikes in oil prices in the 1970s also hit Japan hard. While the economy recovered, rising wages compelled Japanese corporations to invest in other Asian countries where labour was cheaper. Moreover, the economic success that transformed Japan into the world’s second largest economy led to sharpening trade tensions with the US.

The political dominance of the LDP, which had ridden the economic upswing, started to unravel in the 1990s. Massive speculative bubbles in shares and real estate collapsed virtually overnight, inaugurating a decade of economic stagnation. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War raised difficult new dilemmas for the Japanese bourgeoisie. The political establishment was deeply disturbed at being excluded from the first Gulf War in 1990-91 by the pacifist clause of Japan’s constitution, but forced by the US to underwrite the cost of the imperialist adventure. Critics began to question the US military alliance and call for a more independent foreign policy. Moreover, the globalisation of production in the 1980s that had undermined the Soviet Union was also rendering the shut-in Japanese economy less internationally competitive.

The break-up of the Liberal Democrats began in 1993 with a series of defections by those pressing for a more aggressive pro-market agenda and foreign policy. The LDP lost office for 11 months in 1993-94 to an unstable coalition of small new conservative parties and the Socialists. The party returned to power in 1994 in a strange coalition with the Socialist Party with the Socialists’ leader Tomiichi Murayama as prime minister. The ruling Liberal Democrats and their loyal opposition, the Socialists, were the central political props of post-war Japanese capitalism. Their grand alliance profoundly alienated supporters of the Socialist Party, which subsequently splintered and collapsed as a significant political force. The LDP staggered on from one crisis to the next, forming a series of weak, short-lived governments riven by internal feuding and incapable of carrying out the economic restructuring demanded by big business.

Junichiro Koizumi’s term as prime minister from 2001 to 2006 appears to be an exception. But Koizumi’s political success rested entirely on his ability to posture as a “rebel” against the party hierarchy. The LDP only turned to Koizumi, who had always been regarded inside the party as an eccentric misfit, when it was staring political oblivion in the face. Koizumi exploited his populist image to push through a series of right-wing policies—the promotion of Japanese militarism, full support for the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” and further economic restructuring. After LDP members in the upper house scuttled his postal privatisation plans in 2005, he expelled the rebels and called a snap election—an unprecedented step in Japanese politics. By focussing on postal privatisation, he effectively sidelined other issues—including widespread opposition to the Iraq war.

The impact of Koizumi’s sweeping pro-market restructuring soon became apparent, however, giving rise to a public debate over economic “winners” and “losers”. When he stood aside in 2006, his popularity was already sliding. None of his successors as prime minister—Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda or Taro Aso—was able to repeat Koizumi’s political confidence trick. The global economic crisis over the past year brought to the surface deep-seated resentment and hostility, not only toward the Liberal Democrats, but to the entire Japanese political establishment over declining living standards, deepening social inequality and the revival of militarism.

The decline of the LDP opens up all of the unresolved political and social questions that erupted after World War II, but were then smothered by the straitjacket of post-war politics. The ruling class will now be compelled to use the Democratic Party, a makeshift amalgamation of former LDP and Socialist Party factions, to implement its agenda—a process that will inevitably bring the new government into collision with the working class. If history is any guide, these struggles will take on a revolutionary character sooner rather than later.

Hopefully I am mistaken!

I read with astonishment weekend news agency reports on the internal politics of the United States, where a systematic debilitation of President Barack Obama’s influence is evident. His surprising electoral victory would not have been possible without the profound political and economic crisis of that country. American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, the scandal of torture and secret prisons, the loss of homes and jobs, had shaken U.S. society. The economic crisis was extending throughout the world, increasing poverty and hunger in Third World nations.

Those circumstances made possible Obama’s nomination and subsequent election within a traditionally racist society. No less than 90% of the African-American population, discriminated against and poor, the majority of voters of Latin American origin and a broad middle and working class white minority, particularly young people, voted for him.

It was logical that many hopes would be aroused among U.S. citizens who supported him. After eight years of adventurism, demagogy and lies during which thousands of U.S. soldiers and close to one million Iraqis died in a war of conquest for the oil of that Muslim country, which had nothing to do with the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers, the people of the United States were weary and ashamed.

Many people in Africa and other parts of the world were enthused with the idea that there would be changes in U.S. foreign policy.

However, an elemental knowledge of reality should have sufficed for not falling into illusions in relation to a possible political change in the United States on the basis of the election of a new president.

Obama had certainly opposed the Bush war in Iraq before many others in the U.S. Congress. He knew from his own adolescence the humiliations of racial discrimination and, like many Americans, admired the great civil rights fighter, Martin Luther King.

Obama was born, educated, went into politics and was successful within the imperial capitalist system of the United States. He did not wish to nor could he change the system. The strange thing is, in spite of that, that the extreme right hates him for being an African American and is fighting against what the president is doing to improve the deteriorated image of that country.

He has been capable of understanding that the United States, with barely 4% of the world population, consumes approximately 25% of fossil energy and emits the greatest volume of the world’s contaminating gases.

Bush, in his ravings, did not even subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol.

In his turn, Obama proposes to apply tighter regulations in the context of tax evasion. He has announced, for example, that out of the 52,000 accounts held by U.S. citizens in Swiss banks, these banks are to provide information on approximately 4,500 suspected of tax evasion.

In Europe, a few weeks ago, Obama committed himself before the G-8 countries, especially France and Germany, to bring to an end his country’s use of tax havens in order to inject vast quantities of U.S. dollars into the world economy.

He has offered health services to almost 50 million citizens who lacked medical insurance.

He has promised the people of the United States to lubricate the productive apparatus, halt growing unemployment and restore growth.

He has informed12 million Hispanic illegal immigrants that he will put a stop to the cruel raids and the inhuman treatment to which they are subject.

There were other promises that I am not enumerating, not one of which questions the system of imperialist capitalist dominion.

The powerful ultra-right is not resigned to any measure whatsoever that diminishes its prerogatives to the most minimum degree.

I shall confine myself just to referring textually to information coming from the United States that has been arriving in the last few days, taken from news agencies and the U.S. press.

August 21:

"Americans’ confidence in the leadership of President Barack Obama has fallen sharply, according to a survey published today in The Washington Post."

"In the midst of growing opposition to health system reforms, the telephone survey undertaken jointly with the ABC TV network from Aug 13 to 17 of 1, 001 adults, reveals that… forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office."

"Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April."

"The heated debate on healthcare reform in the United States is showing signs of an extremism that is worrying experts, alarmed at the presence of armed men at public meetings, paintings of swastikas and images of Hitler."

"Experts in hate crimes recommend closely watching these extremists, and while many Democrats have been overwhelmed by the protests, others have opted for directly facing their co-citizens."

"A young woman carrying a manipulated photo of Obama with a Hitler-style mustache is feeding the theory that the leader is to create ‘death panels’ that would back euthanasia for elderly people with terminal illnesses…"

"Some people are turning a deaf ear and opting for hate messages and extremism, which former FBI agent Brad Garrett is observing with alarm."

"It's certainly a scary time," Garrett told ABC last week, adding that the secret services ‘really do fear that something could happen to Obama.’"

"Without going any further, on Monday, around 12 people airily displayed their weapons outside the Phoenix Convention Center (Arizona), where Obama was making a speech to war veterans, defending, among other things, his medical reforms."

"Another man was carrying a pistol and a sign saying ‘It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty," a reference to Thomas Jefferson's quote that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"Some messages have been even more explicit, wishing for ‘Death to Obama, Michelle and his… daughters.’"

"Those incidents demonstrate that hatred has erupted into U.S. politics with more strength than ever."

"’We are talking about people who are shouting, who are carrying photos of Obama characterizing him as a Nazi… and who are using the term socialist contemptuously," EFE was informed by Larry Berman (University of California, author of 12 books on the U.S. Presidency), who attributes part of what is taking place to the latent legacy of racism."

"After The New York Times reported yesterday that, in 2004, the CIA hired Blackwater for planning, training and surveillance tasks, in today’s edition the daily provides more details on the activities assigned to that controversial private security company whose current name is Xe."

"The daily noted that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recruited Blackwater agents to plant explosive devices in drone aircraft with the objective of killing Al Qaeda leaders."

"According to information given by government officials to The New York Times, the operations were carried out in bases located in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the private company assembled and loaded Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs."

"The agency’s current director, Leon Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June."

"Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program."

"Blackwater was the central private security company responsible for protecting U.S. personnel in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration."

"Its aggressive tactics were criticized on a number of occasions. The gravest case occurred in September 2007, when company agents killed 17 Iraqi civilians."

"Faced by record suicide figures and the wave of depression among soldiers, the U.S. army is gradually training specialized formations aimed at making its troops ‘more resistant’ to emotional stress related to war situations."

August 22:

"U.S. President Barack Obama today launched harsh criticisms of those opposed to his plan to reform the country’s health system and accused them of circulating lies and distortions."

"As he has noted in his speeches, the objective of the reform of the medical care system is to halt its spiraling cost and to guarantee medical coverage to close to 50 million Americans who lack insurance."

"…’should be honest debate, not dominated by falsehoods and intentional distortions circulated by those who would most benefit from things being maintained as they are.’"

"The U.S. State Department is still financing Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries involved in the murder of Al Qaeda leaders and which is now called Xe Services, according to today’s New York Times."

"David Patterson, governor of New York state, stated on Friday that the media has utilized racial stereotypes in its coverage of African-American officials, like himself, President Barack Obama and the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick."

"The White House calculates that the budget deficit over the next 10 years will be $2 trillion more than recent forecasts, a devastating blow for President Barack Obama and his plans for creating a public health system funded to a large extent by the state."

"Ten-year forecasts are seen as highly volatile and could vary with time. However, the new red figures in public finances are going to pose difficult problems for Obama in Congress, and enormous anxiety among foreigners who are financing the U.S. public debt, especially China. Almost all economists consider them unsustainable, even with a massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar."

August 23:

"The U.S. army joint chief of staff stated on Sunday that he was concerned at the loss of popular support in his country for the war in Afghanistan, while he stated that that country still remains vulnerable to extremist attacks."

""I think it is serious and it is deteriorating, and I've said that over the past couple of years – that the Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated, in their tactics," said Admiral Mike Mullen."

"In an interview broadcast on NBC, Mullen declined to specify whether it was necessary to send in more troops."

"A little over 50% of people consulted in a recently published Washington Post-ABC survey, stated that the war in Afghanistan is not worth it."

"At the end of 2009, the United States will have three times more soldiers in Afghanistan than the 20,000 deployed there three years ago."

Confusion reigns in the heart of U.S. society.

Next September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the fateful 9/11. That day we warned in an event in the Ciudad Deportiva [Havana] that war would not be the way to put an end to terrorism.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghanistan war to fight against the Taliban, is an error. The Soviet Union sunk there. The European allies of the United States will steadily put up more resistance to shedding the blood of their soldiers there.

Mullen’s concern over the popularity of that war is not unfounded. Those who plotted the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers were trained by the United States.

The Taliban is an Afghani nationalist movement that had nothing to do with that event. The Al Qaeda organization, financed by the CIA from 1979 and utilized against the USSR in the Cold War years, was the group that plotted that attack 22 years later.

There are shady events that have not as yet been sufficiently clarified before world public opinion.

Obama has inherited those problems from Bush.

I do not harbor the slightest doubt that the racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game in one way or another, at the least possible political cost.

Hopefully I am mistaken!


Fidel Castro Ruz
August 24, 2009

Afghanistan's election debacle

AN ELECTION intended to showcase Afghanistan's "emerging democracy" has instead exposed astonishing corruption, fraud and violence on the part of the U.S.-backed government.

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah are each claming victory amid allegations of vote-rigging and fraud on both sides, with Abdullah's supporters even hinting that his forces will take up arms if the election is stolen by Karzai.

As of August 25, the small number of votes counted showed each leading candidate with about 40 percent of the vote. If no candidate wins an outright majority, a runoff election will be held.

Threats from Abdullah, who served as Afghanistan's foreign minister after the U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001, can't be taken lightly. Abdullah is a disciple of the late Ahmed Shah Masoud, a leading guerilla fighter against the former USSR's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and, later, a leader of the Northern Alliance insurgency against the Taliban regime of the 1990s.

But Karzai's camp has an equally blood-soaked past. To secure support beyond his base of ethnic Pashtuns around Kabul, Karzai chose Northern Alliance warlord Muhammad Fahim as one of his running mates, in an attempt to split Abdullah's base among ethnic Tajik people. Fahim has been accused of human rights violations on numerous occasions. Karzai's other running mate, Karim Khalili, is another notorious warlord.

Karzai also made deals with warlords who dominate other regions and ethnicities: the Uzbek boss Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Hazara chief Muhammad Mohaqeq. In the western province of Herat, Karzai relied on Ismail Khan, another warlord infamous for imposing Taliban-style restrictions on women.

Now, Karzai's rivals allege that he has supplemented his political deal-making by stuffing ballot boxes. According to Faizullah Mojadedi, a politician from the Logar province, a Taliban stronghold, Karzai supporters used low voter turnout as an opportunity to rig the vote. He told the Washington Post:

In Baraki Barak District, only about 500 people were able to vote out of 43,000 registered voters. In Harwar District, nobody at all was able to vote out of 15,000 registered voters. Yet the ballot boxes from these places came to Kabul full. The fact that people were afraid to vote became a big excuse for those who wanted to take advantage of it.

If Karzai was out to steal votes, he wasn't alone. Numerous reports indicate that village headmen voted for entire villages, and men voted by proxy for women. According to Anand Gopal, a Kabul-based journalist, the credibility of the U.S. and the Afghan government have been dealt a major blow. In an interview, Gopal noted:

In many parts of the country, there appears to have been vote stealing, ballot stuffing, proxy voting, intimidation, etc. This creates a major credibility crisis for the Afghan government and its Western backers. One of the most important claims made by the West here is that it was able to bring democracy to the rugged hills of Afghanistan. But with what seems to be an exceedingly low voter turnout in the south of the country, and fraud in most parts of the country, the credibility of the U.S. and its Afghan partners have taken a major hit.

There is a growing feeling among Afghans that the Western involvement here is not helping them, and the elections only furthered that--they were seen by many as a show put on by the international community.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHATEVER THE outcome of the election, the vote isn't a step toward "peace" in Afghanistan, let alone a withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops.

Just days after the election, U.S. commanders in Afghanistan informed U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke that more troops would be needed in addition to the nearly 60,000 American soldiers now in the country.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN that the situation in Afghanistan is "serious and it is deteriorating," adding, "The Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated, in their tactics." Anthony Cordesman, a key civilian adviser to U.S. commanders, earlier argued that 45,000 more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama's commitment to Afghanistan has raised the specter of an endless, bloody conflict that will keep the U.S. on the ground for years. In an article headlined, "Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?" a New York Times journalist observed:

No matter who is eventually declared the winner of last week's election in Afghanistan, the government there remains so plagued by corruption and inefficiency that it has limited legitimacy with the Afghan public. Just as America was frustrated with successive South Vietnamese governments, it has grown sour on Afghanistan's leaders with little obvious recourse.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has countered the recent surge of U.S. troops with attacks of its own. As Anand Gopal described the situation:

The Taliban has responded to the military offensive by going on an offensive of their own. The number of insurgent-initiated attacks have reached record levels this year. Most of the attacks have been roadside bombs, although there have been more ambushes and suicide attacks than ever before.

This is all part of a trend that we've been seeing for the last few years. The number of insurgent attacks increased every year since 2005. In large part, this is because there have been an increasing number of troops each year, so there more targets to fire at. But it's also because the insurgency in general has grown stronger and more resolved.

The U.S. doesn't seem to be serious about buying off "good Taliban"--i.e., giving money and land to rank-and-file Taliban fighters to wean them from the insurgency. There has been a lot of talk about this, but up until now, the programs that exist to bring fighters in from the cold have mostly failed, due to corruption and inefficiency. Of course, if jobs and land had been available to poor rural Afghans in the first place, the insurgency wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is today.

Al-Qaeda plays almost no role in the insurgency. It used to be that al-Qaeda was the core of the Islamist leadership in the region and the Taliban a mere appendage. Nowadays, the situation is exactly reversed--the two Taliban movements (in Afghanistan and Pakistan) are the core, and al-Qaeda the appendage.

In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is almost nonexistent except for tiny pockets along the Pakistani border. In Pakistan, they have been greatly weakened by the drone strikes and the growing lack of safe havens due to the Pakistani state crackdown. Al-Qaeda is a movement that has almost no base among the local population in Pakistan, unlike the Taliban movements.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AT THE same time, the U.S. is having limited success at best in getting the Pakistani government to pursue the Taliban on its side of the border. As Gopal put it:

The biggest boon to Holbrooke and the U.S. was the Pakistani Taliban advance this spring from Swat to Buner, a district of the North West Frontier Province that is less than 60 kilometers from Islamabad. When this happened, the Pakistani military brass decided to retaliate and delivered a weakening blow to the insurgents. The Pakistani Taliban had never really threatened the Pakistani state--this was very exaggerated in the media--but they were a thorn in their side.

As a reward for the Pakistani crackdown, the military is likely to get millions of dollars in aid from the U.S. This has been something of a sore point among ordinary Pakistanis, who see a lot of money going to the military but very little of it filtering down to them.

The logic of U.S. policy in the region will lead Washington to further intensify the conflict, Gopal added:

Right now, some in the U.S. establishment say they don't want more troops, but many of their policy proposals require more. For instance, there's a lot of talk about increasing the size of the Afghan army and police. But to do this will require large amounts of trainers and other troops. Commanders on the ground also say that they want more troops for combat operations, since there are only enough soldiers to hold urban areas--the surrounding rural areas, where most Afghans live, are generally outside of their control.

I suspect that we will see one or two more escalations in the next year. The problem, however, is that this is exactly what we've been seeing for the last four years. U.S. policy makers have not arrived a strategy that is fundamentally different from the military-focused, troop-heavy approach of recent years.

Thus, the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, once seen by many as a limited chapter in a "good" war to overthrow a brutal regime, has become an open-ended military engagement--and a cornerstone of U.S. imperial strategy in Central and South Asia. The antiwar movement, which has long focused almost exclusively on Iraq, has to take note.

Obama, rendition, and the decay of American democracy

The Obama administration’s decision to carry on the practice of rendition, by which “terror suspects” are spirited off to third-party countries to face torture, testifies to the profound decay of American democracy.

Rendition under Obama will be the same as the practice as it existed during the Bush administration. An anonymous source close to the White House’s Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies, who leaked the announcement to the New York Times, offered only vague assurances that prisoners would not be “rendered” to nations known to practice torture, and that diplomats would be allowed greater access.

The Bush administration made similar assurances. In fact, there is no reason for rendition except to utilize the services of those nations most hospitable to torture and impervious to public scrutiny.

The announcement comes after a week of revelations related to the lawless and anti-democratic nature of the “war on terror,” which, taken together, reflect the growing power of the military-intelligence apparatus and the consolidation of the infrastructure for an American police state.

* On August 20, it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired the private security firm then known as Blackwater Associates for a program of “targeted killings” of alleged Al Qaeda operatives. The CIA violated US law in failing to inform Congress of this program.

* On August 21, a New York Times report revealed that the Obama administration employs the same mercenary firm in the operation of the CIA’s unmanned Predator drone assassination program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

* On August 22, Der Spiegel confirmed that the CIA hired Blackwater to transport prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to secret prisons in Central Asia, where they faced torture.

* On August 24, the White House made public a heavily redacted version of a CIA inspector general’s report discussing cases of agency torture and murder of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among other forms of abuse, interrogators threatened inmates with death and warned that their mothers and children would be arrested and raped. The report had been suppressed since 2004 and was released in compliance with a court order stemming from a Freedom of Information suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Confronted with overwhelming evidence that its predecessor systematically violated US and international law—as well as basic human rights—the Obama administration has sought to contain the damage.

After releasing the CIA inspector general’s report, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a prosecutor to investigate a handful of torture cases discussed in the document. The purview of the investigation will be limited to “rogue” agents who supposedly went beyond the forms of torture specifically endorsed by the Bush White House. In keeping with administration policy, there will be no investigations of Bush administration officials, including Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, who formulated and oversaw the torture program.

Obama immediately distanced himself from even this half-measure. A spokesman repeated Obama’s mantra that “we should be looking forward, not backward,” while pinning responsibility for any investigation on Holder, who “ultimately is going to make the decisions.”

The CIA’s open opposition to the report’s release and the appointment of a prosecutor approached the level of insubordination. An agency spokesman declared that the cases had already been investigated by the Bush Justice Department.

“Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability,” said Paul Gimigliano. “That’s already been done.”

After the inspector general’s report was released, the CIA took the unprecedented step of releasing two classified documents whose publication had been demanded by Cheney. The former vice president claimed the documents would demonstrate the necessity of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Predictably, these documents made no specific reference to intelligence secured through torture. Instead, they offered lurid and unsubstantiated claims about terror plots disrupted through CIA interrogations.

Cheney returned to the attack on Tuesday, criticizing the Justice Department’s proposed investigation in the most ominous terms. It raises “doubts about this administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security,” Cheney charged.

The terms of the “debate” that emerged after the publication of the inspector general’s report was very much dictated by the military-intelligence apparatus. It hinged on whether or not torture “works.” This, it was claimed, is a matter for legitimate intellectual discussion.

Current CIA Director Leon Panetta, an Obama appointee, echoed Cheney in declaring that torture had disrupted attacks. Panetta suggested that whether or not such methods are “the only way to obtain that information will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a range of views on the methods used.”

In this context, Obama’s declaration that rendition will continue was a transparent bid to curry favor with the military-intelligence apparatus. Even the Times noted that the announcement “seemed intended in part to offset the impact” of the release of the inspector general’s report.

Obama’s continuation of rendition is yet another repudiation of his campaign promises. In an article in Foreign Affairs in 2007, Obama said he would “eliminate the practice of extreme rendition, where we outsource our torture to other countries.”

Many of those who voted for Obama did so out of revulsion over the Bush administration’s use of torture and other illegal methods. But, as with Obama’s anti-war posturing and his pledges to reverse the pro-corporate agenda of Bush, the campaign promises of the apostle of “change you can believe in” have proven worthless. On every essential question, the Obama administration is continuing and deepening the reactionary policies of his predecessor.

Obama’s endorsement of rendition demonstrates that the anti-democratic methods of US imperialism—torture, kidnapping, assassination, aggressive war—are not rooted in the personal characteristics of politicians and cannot be overcome by replacing one party of American imperialism by another.

The danger of a police state emerges inexorably from the turn by the ruling elite as a whole to aggressive war and militarism as a means of offsetting the deepening crisis of American capitalism. At the same time, the crisis is being used to effect a vast restructuring of class relations in the US to the benefit of the financial aristocracy which controls both parties and all the levers of state power. The social inequality that is being created is such that the brutal measures currently employed in the “war on terror” will ultimately be unleashed on the working class within the US.

Tom Eley

Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

By KIM IVES

Thousands of demonstrators marched through Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on July 15 to mark the 56th birthday of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The demonstration, which was called by and adhered to by two rival factions of the Lavalas Family party (FL), was considered a great display of unity by its organizers.

At 9 a.m. the crowds gathered at the gate in front of Aristide's still gutted home in Tabarre. It was decorated with flowers and large photographs of the party's leader, who remains in exile in South Africa over five years after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'état against him.

The multitude then moved, like a great river, towards the capital.

Lavalas leaders said that the demonstration was a birthday present for Aristide. "Long live the return of President Aristide!" read some of the posters in the march. " Down with the MINUSTAH [UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti, the military occupation force]! Release of all political prisoners! Reinstatement of all fired State employees! Down with the neo-liberal plan!"

Demonstrators also bitterly denounced President René Préval for betraying their expectations that he would help return Aristide to Haiti and fight neoliberal austerity and privatization. Tens of thousands of Lavalas partisans voted for Préval in 2006, helping him win the presidency.

"Our political organization will defeat all those who are working for its demise," declared Dr. Maryse Narcisse, one of the members of the FL's Executive Committee at the close of the demonstration at the Place of the Constitution on the Champ de Mars, the capital's central square.

Narcisse also criticized Préval for seeking to amend Haiti's 1987 Constitution while at the same time violating its laws. "Lavalas remains true to its dream of a better Haiti, where all citizens can have access to education, health, housing, and employment," she concluded. "Realization of this dream goes hand in hand with the return of President Aristide to Haiti."

Also participating in the demonstration was the singer and activist Annette Auguste, known as So An. She was also named to the FL's Executive Committee but presently does not sit with its other three members, Narcisse, Lionel Etienne and Jacques Mathelier. Her faction of the party has proposed some reforms which has caused controversy within the party.

"I am a dedicated Lavalassian," So An told Haiti Liberté. " President Aristide Lavalas is not more Lavalas than me. President Aristide might turn his back on me, but I will never turn my back on him." She declared her full support for Aristide's return and said that the July 15 demonstration was a living testimony to the FL's strength, power, and vitality.

"This event is great proof that the Lavalas would have won the [April 19 and June 21] senatorial elections boycotted by the national majority," she said. " That is why Lavalas was excluded from those elections. The objectively manifest goal is to destroy the Lavalas."

At the Place of the Constitution, Lavalas activists like René Civil and Lavarice Gaudin criticized the government of Préval and his prime minister Michele Pierre-Louis for pursuing policies condemned by Haiti's masses. They demanded the immediate and unconditional return of Aristide to Haiti.

Meanwhile, the Lavalas base organizations which made July 15 a success have called another major mobilization for Tuesday, July 28, the 94th anniversary of the first U.S. Marine occupation of Haiti in 1915.

The popular organizations have planned the demonstrations with some of Haiti's student organizers, marking the first time that the demands of the Lavalas mass movement and those of the student protests, which have raged at the State University in recent months, will be united.

The demands for July 28th are: 1) MINUSTAH's departure; 2) Aristide's return; 3) Apply the Parliament's vote for a 200 gourde a day [$5.05] minimum wage; 4) Reform at the State University; 5) Justice for Roudy, the man shot dead by MINUSTAH soldiers at the Port-au-Prince Cathedral on June 18; 6) Liberation of all political prisoners, above all Ronald Dauphin; 7) Down with the neoliberal plan.

Among the groups calling the July 28 demonstration are the Cité Soleil Action Coalition of the Lavalas Family Base (ABA SATAN), the Assembly of Organizations for Change (ROC), the Network of Multiplying National Organs of the Lavalas Family (RONMFL), the Network of Organizations of the West Zone (ROZO), the National Organization for the Equitable Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ONAPROEDEF), Alternative for Haiti's National Liberation(ALEH), the Force of Principled Organizations for a National Alternative (FOKAN), Movement to Bury Repression (MARE), Group of Popular Initiative, the student group KOMAP/FRAE, and the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN).

"L'union fait la force" (Unity makes strength) says the motto on Haiti's flag. Organizers of the July 28 march hope that the merging of the Lavalas mass movement with the anti-imperialist student movement will lift Haiti's struggle for justice, democracy and sovereignty to a new level.

Obama’s health care counterrevolution

The New York Times is spearheading the campaign for President Obama’s health care proposals. His drive for an overhaul of the health care system, far from representing a reform designed to provide universal coverage and increased access to quality care, marks an unprecedented attack on health care for the working population. It is an effort to roll back social gains associated with the enactment of Medicare in 1965.
It is a counterrevolution in health care, being carried out in the profit interests of the giant pharmaceutical companies, insurance conglomerates and hospital chains, as well as the corporations, which will be encouraged to terminate health care for their employees and force them to buy insurance plans providing less coverage at greater out-of-pocket expense.
In a full-page editorial published on Sunday, entitled “Health Care Reform and You,” the Times seeks to allay growing concerns in the US population over the legislation proposed by the White House that is currently working its way through Congress. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 21 percent believe they will be worse off under the new legislation, double the number in February.
Employing evasion and deception, the Times preys on the widespread discontent with the current state of the health care system to push for Obama’s proposals. It cites the immense burdens which the existing setup places on ordinary people to suggest that things will only get worse and the sole alternative is the cost-cutting overhaul proposed by Obama:
“Premiums and out-of-pocket spending for health care have been rising far faster than wages. Millions of people are ‘under-insured’—their policies don’t come close to covering their medical bills. Many postpone medical care or don’t fill prescriptions because they can’t afford to pay their share of the costs. And many declare personal bankruptcy because they are unable to pay big medical debts.”
This describes the failure of a health care system based on private profit. This—the central issue—the Times completely evades.
Instead, the newspaper shifts the blame onto the so-called “fee-for-service system.” The newspaper writes, “Virtually all experts blame the system for runaway health care costs because it pays doctors and hospitals for each service they perform.”
What experts? The newspaper does not say.
The editorial justifies Obama’s drive to do away with the fee-for-service system by replying to critics who fear that health care will be rationed to cut costs. “The truth is that health care is already rationed,” the Times writes, adding cynically, “No insurance, public or private, covers everything at any cost.”
The Times notes that “An earlier wave of managed care plans concentrating on reining in costs aroused a backlash among angry beneficiaries who were denied the care they wanted.” In an attempt to disarm such concerns, the newspaper provides a series of sophistic arguments on the theme that ending fee-for-service and imposing cost controls and restrictions will actually improve patient care.
Under the present payment system, it states, “patients often get very expensive care but not necessarily the best care.” Fee-for-service provides a “financial incentive to order excessive tests or treatments, some of which harm the patients.” It adds, “The most expensive treatment is not always the best treatment.”
These are loaded words, which conceal an unstated agenda. What is “excessive” or needlessly “expensive” will be determined not by patients and doctors, but by insurance companies, drug companies and hospital chains, which are driven by the profit motive.
Mammograms do not detect cancer in every instance. By the logic employed by the Times, they can therefore be deemed “excessive.” The most advanced drugs do not always improve medical outcomes. Another source of waste and “inefficiency.”
Needless to say, such judgments will apply only to ordinary people. The rich will continue to have access to the most “excessive,” expensive and “inefficient” care.
It does not take a great deal of critical reflection to recognize that these are rationalizations for depriving millions of workers and poor people access to the most advanced procedures, tests and drugs.
That the newspaper is seeking to sell the public a bill of goods is demonstrated by the deliberately vague terms it employs to describe the Obama scheme. The bills in Congress “would require all Americans to carry health insurance with specified minimum benefits or pay a penalty,” the editorial states. The bills would require most businesses to “provide and subsidize insurance that meets minimum standards for their workers or pay a fee for failing to do so.” The editorial speaks of a “specified level of benefits” and “yet-to-be-determined ‘essential benefits.’” [Emphasis added].
What these “minimum benefits” and “essential benefits” are, the newspaper does not say.
The editorial describes private “health insurance exchanges” that will be established by the insurance companies, and indicates, in deliberately vague terms, that companies will be allowed to terminate health plans for their employees, who would then be forced, by law, to purchase their own insurance, providing unstated “minimum benefits,” from these exchanges.
Talking out of both sides of its mouth, the newspaper at one point asserts that workers “might end up with better or cheaper coverage,” but at another writes: “Less clear is what financial burden middle-income Americans would bear when forced to buy coverage. There are concerns that the subsidies ultimately approved by Congress might not be generous enough.”
In other words, “middle-income Americans,” i.e., the vast majority of the population, will see an immense decline in their coverage. That is not all. People who presently assume that tests, drugs and procedures will be covered by their company plans will suddenly be told that a host of things are no longer covered and will cost extra to receive.
The editorial devotes a section to Medicare, which is a central target of the Obama plan. It suggests the kind of cost-cutting regimen that will be introduced into the government insurance system for the elderly, including “payment incentives in Medicare to reduce needless readmissions to hospitals.”
“Not everyone in Medicare will be happy,” the Times acknowledges. Congress, it notes, is “likely to reduce or do away with” subsidies for Medicare Advantage Plans upon which millions depend to supplement their government benefits. “... many of these plans are apt to charge their clients more for their current policies or offer them fewer benefits,” it states.
Yet somehow, the Times writes approvingly, “President Obama insisted that benefits won’t be reduced, they’ll simply be delivered in more efficient ways...”
Reductions in care for those on Medicare will set a precedent. As the Times puts it, the changes in Medicare will “percolate throughout the health care system.”
As for extending coverage to the 50 million Americans who are uninsured, the newspaper says the various versions in Congress of the Obama plan “do a good job.” In fact, it is estimated that at least 16 million children and adults will remain without any coverage.
Also on Sunday, the Washington Post published an editorial, “The Health-Care Sacrifice,” which provides a more frank presentation of the implications of the Obama plan. The Post criticizes the president for failing to level with the public and prepare it for massive cuts in their health care—a change that has the newspaper’s full support.
“Getting health costs under control,” the Post writes, “will require saying no, or having the patient pay more...”
The newspaper notes that technological innovation in medical care is the fundamental driver of health-care inflation, and declares that reducing costs will require rationing access to the most advanced treatments. “In other words,” it states, “You can’t always get want you want—at least if you want costs to be lower. This would require an enormous change from the current practice, particularly in Medicare...”
Obama’s health care counterrevolution is of a piece with his entire domestic agenda. It parallels the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the imposition of mass layoffs and wage and benefits cuts in the auto industry, and a stepped-up attack on public education and on teachers.
The economic crisis has been seized upon by the American financial aristocracy, with the Obama administration as its central instrument, to carry through a class-war agenda, long in preparation, that is directed against the vast majority of the American people. All that remains of the social reforms from the 1930s and 1960s, and the gains won by previous generations of workers in bitter struggle, is to be wiped out.
The immense growth of social inequality and the domination of society and the political system by a financial aristocracy are incompatible with institutions and programs that retain any vestige of a democratic and egalitarian impulse. Public education and health care must be reorganized more openly and directly along class lines.
This is the basic program of all factions of the ruling elite—liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican.