The Senate in SB 111, and the House in HR 3962, have finally passed similar health care legislation. We will now be forced to watch 536 legislators, most of them obscenely subsidized by the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. carve out like the bloated breast meat of the Thanksgiving turkey, a succulent meal for their benefactors. We had once expected, listening to the campaign rhetoric of President Obama, that after all these years we would be served a plate called Health Care Reform. In May 2007, speaking to the AFL-CIO, Obama promised health care for all by the end of his first term. The two bills now being masticated on Capitol Hill do not provide universal health care and do not even promise reform: the “R word” is not mentioned in either version of the bill. The plans so far passed in Congress only expand health care by between 31 and 36 million, still leaving 19 million people uninsured.

KUCINICH SAYS “I VOTE NO AND HERE'S WHY”
Dennis Kucinich voted with the most conservative Republicans to defeat Nancy Pelosi's compromise bill: “We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money by not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are.  But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles, they are simply trying to make a profit.  That is our system.

“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.  They are driving up the cost of health care.  Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills.  The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%.  It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care.  Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.  

“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.  In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million uninsured Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high. This would result in a windfall $70 billion in new annual revenue from taxpayers.  This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.”

The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry, was whittled down in the House so it now would cover only some 6 million of the 50 million uninsured. An amendment allowing for states to pursue single-payer health care independently was stripped on orders from Obama. It remains doubtful that a strong public option alternative to being forced to buy health care protection from the insurance monopoly will survive in the Senate.

We seem to be offered a program guaranteed to assure that those who caused the health care crisis by their predatory practices will now be subsidized by the government and rewarded with an vast expansion of their customer base. We are given few assurances that those who profit from the sick will not charge whatever they care to and make little effort to restrain costs or eliminate the 31 % administrative red tape we now endure. Medicaid, where the poor and indigent have gone when in need, will be eliminated, Medicare, the system that has worked for those over 65 will be cut back in scope and benefits.

WHY NOT MEDICARE FOR ALL?
The bills sponsored by John Conyers in the House and by Bernie Saunders in the Senate would have been a huge net savings to Americans, by eliminating the need for the Medicaid ($470 billion saved), the Veterans Administration health care system ($100 billion saved), and pubicly-funded charity care in hospitals ($300 billion saved). It would have also eliminated $150 billion in private health insurance administrative costs, and $75 to $100 billion in insurance industry profits. That totals $1 trillion dollars, people!! When the costs of Medicare for under 65 years olds is added in at a net cost of perhaps $750 to $800 billion, we are left with a savings of over $200 billion a year. (Dave Lindorff –dlindorff @mindspring.com). We have not included on the savings side of the ledger the enormous savings to business and private citizens who now must purchase expensive health insurance policies – this alone amounts to $1.5 trillion. Given all of these benefits, is it small wonder that we cannot take seriously the Republican hand wringing about the enormous net costs of Medicare for All to the government? We are being fed a lot of really misleading propaganda. Isn't it strange that while the Pelosi Bill promises no restraint on the escalation health care costs for those under 65, they have written in a $570 billion cut in Medicare payments – the part of the healthcare package that the insurance companies will not profit from.

MAYBE THE ABORTION BATTLE CAN SINK THE ENTIRE BILL
At the moment, the House bill has banned insurance coverage for abortion from receiving any subsidies from the federal government. The Senate is trying to find a way around this issue. If Obama and the more progressive forces would insist upon abortion being covered, then maybe the 60 votes needed in the Senate will not be possible and we will have seen the last of this fraudulent subsidization of a crooked insurance industry. Then we can take a deep breath and get back to work on real health care reform.

THE PEOPLE WANT A PUBLIC OPTION
Right now, the Public Option for those without the ability to pay full premiums has the support of 76% of Americans. (ABC/Washington Post poll 10/20/09). Single Payer Universal Health Care for everyone is supported by 57% in the same poll and the support of 88 Democrats in the House under Single Payer Bill HR 676. If Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Eric Massa (D-NY) can convince just a few of these 88 that HR 3962 is NOT BETTER THAN NOTHING then the entire Pelosi Bill can be defeated right now. After all, it only squeaked through by 5 votes. Marcia Angell, former Editor of New England Journal of Medicine explains that HR 3962 “simply throws money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry”

President Obama seems particularly 'at sixes and sevens' these past few weeks, as the Brits like to say. He suffers from an inability to focus on one issue sufficiently to bring it to a decision. It feels like drifting.

ITEM 1: WHO SHALL WRITE THE HEALTH CARE BILL?

Bill Clinton entered the White House with universal health care high on his agenda, so high in fact that he gave the task of crafting this legislation to his wife. Nine months later Hillary's Health Care Program had collapsed under Republican attack. Learning from this, Barack Obama decided it might be safer to let others take responsibility for drafting a new health care bill. After 9 months of talk, we are left with a leaderless tangle of proposals ranging from Universal Medicare for All to letting the insurance industry and Big Pharma just give us more of the same expensive and inequitable treatment to which we have all become accustomed.

We still do not know what it is that President Obama recommends nor what priorities he has established. The Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate is just as weak and spineless on Medicare as it has been on the war in Iraq since assuming the majority back in 2006. Leaving the job to them seems foolish at best and downright deceitful at worst, if we are to trust in Obama's early support for real health care reform. For a while recently it almost looked as if he wanted Republican Senator Olympia Snowe to craft the legislation, although no one knows exactly what she wants nor whether she could attract other Repubs to her position. Harry Reid is just as coy as Obama when it comes to revealing his preferences on the issue. Nancy Pelosi sometimes speaks as if she wants an real Medicare-type option but then again seems quite willing to take an even weaker position on the public option if it would get her a few Blue Dog votes.

Meanwhile, we have all become bored and confused while watching the well-funded insurance lobby continue to distribute their gifts on Capital Hill. We will probably end up with a weak gruel rather than the strong medicine that our health care crisis needs. However, you can be sure the President will point to it as a wonderful break-through and the health insurance and drug industries remain in charge of our health. (Is this the policy of a decisive President?)

ITEM 2: SHALL WE JUST STAY IN AFGHANISTAN FOREVER?

President Obama and his Secretary of Defense Gates have allowed General McChrystal and his press agents free reign to tout a program involving the dispatch of perhaps 60,000 more troops to Afghanistan and a dedicated counter-insurgency program lasting up to ten years. Obama insists he has made no final decision as to the number of additional troops he will ask for and insists that he is taking his time because he wants to get it right. Leaders of the key Congressional Committees have been pressing for McCrystal to present his strategy for two months now but Gates had kept him out of Washington. McCrystal speaks to Obama on video and even has time to appear remotely on 60 Minutes and to fly to London for a BBC Television interview, but there seems no point in his coming to Washington where the decision must be made, for the President just isn't ready to decide.

According to George Freidman, senior military analyst for STRATFOR 10/20/09, McCrystal's new plan calls for the increased use of conventional infantry in close proximity to the Afghan people so as to protect those willing to cooperate with us. They would be positioned in the more populated areas of Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Khost Provinces and eventually make regional alliances as locals see that we are there to provide them with safety and a peaceful life. Aerial bombardments, heavy artillery and drone attacks would be cut way back to avoid alienating the civilian populace in cities and town. Air attacks would be used to attack those Taliban hiding outside of populated areas. The US and NATO infantry forces could win battles against the Taliban, in McCrystal's view, because their superior training will be a counterweight to the Taliban's larger numbers of battle-hardened warriors. Many military analysts seriously question McChrystal's thinking.

“If, as our President has repeatedly emphasized, our main enemy is Al Qaeda and our task is to deny them sanctuary, then expanded US infantry presence in Afghanistan seems to have no relevance, for what forces Al Qaeda still have are mainly located across the border in Pakistan, and where we are not free to engage them on the ground”, Freidman states. He then observes that “Obama's decision depends not upon choosing between McCrystal's strategy and others, but upon how to manage the consequences of our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan. While this is not the time to leave Afghanistan, the idea that securing it will hobble Al Qaeda is simply wrong. U.S. Afghan policy will not stop a global terrorist organization: terrorists will just go elsewhere.” Freidman then concludes that: “The McCrystal proposal is a good one for a strategy of 'hold until relieved' . We suspect that Obama will hold to show that he is giving the strategy a chance, but that the decision to leave won't be too far off”. (Is this the policy of a decisive President?)

ITEM 3: THE SWINE FLU SCARE STUMBLES ON

People who get the seasonal flu shot are twice as likely to catch swine flu, according to studies just completed in Canada. These studies await peer review and have not as yet been released for publication. Yet here in Ukiah California, the druggists at the Safeway Pharmacy have been giving out the seasonal influenza vaccine in advance of the normal spring schedule while awaiting delivery of the H1N1 vaccine and assuring customers that the CDC approves of this two-punch approach. CDC has never made the necessary tests and has actually never made its position clear on the interaction amongst various flu vaccines. On October 23rd, Obama declared the H1N1 virus to be a National Emergency.

In the meantime, a suit has been filed in Washington DC Court to halt further distribution of the H1N1 vaccine. plaintiffs state that the hasty FDA approval of four swine flu vaccines so far violates its own regulations and federal laws calling for proper safety and efficacy tests before release to the public. No studies nor clinical trials have been published demonstrating that safety testing has been carried out. Pressure from manufacturers of the Swine Flu vaccine seems to have driven this panic.

In Europe, health care professionals are not impressed by the H1N1 vaccine: one third of French doctors and other health care providers, 29% of Germans health care professionals, and over 50% of those in the UK will not take the vaccine despite pressure from their peers because of their high risks of exposure. Even with the brain wash we Americans receive every day from drug industry TV ads, the latest AOL poll shows that amongst the general public some 61% do not plan to take the vaccine!

ITEM 4: THE ECONOMY LANGUISHES - BANKSTERS FROLICK

Last February, Obama committed $787 billion to an economic stimulus program designed to create 3.5 million new jobs. Yet nine months later we have one in six out of work (9.8% for less than 6 months plus 7% more without full time work for longer periods) and no sign of new jobs forthcoming. We have 21.1 million unemployed if those out of work more than 6 months (6.6 million) are added to the 14.5 million still getting unemployment checks. When we add the 3 million new jobs needed just to keep up with population growth over the next 2 years, we are really in need of 24.1 million new jobs. Obama's program for 3.5 million new jobs would hardly make a dent in the need, even if it were successful. Yet, Obama refuses to put together a 2nd Stimulus Program even after the Republicans have derided his First Stimulus as basically worthless. (Money Morning 10/20/09).

Obama thought he should squelch public anger over the personal bonuses that the biggest banksters have handing out, using Federal funds that we taxpayers actually put in their accounts. So he asked his new Compensation Czar Feinberg to slice the pay checks of the top 25 executives of firms who received TARP funds last year. While we don't know the final 'savings' we taxpayers will receive from this not very impressive bit of bravado, rest assured that if won't have much impact upon the 24 million new jobs that are needed now to get out of this depressive slump.

1978 - 1980: US poured $5 billions into support for Islamist guerillas lead by Osama bin Laden to fight against the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan with major tactical assistance from Pakistan.

1989: Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan after the loss of 1.5 million Afghan lives and the wrecking of Afghan society.

1990 - 2000: US loses interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban seizes power in Afghanistan and imposes its own brand of Moslem fundamentalism.

2001: US decides to retaliate for 9/11 attacks by carpet bombing Kabul and driving the Taliban from power, although not a single Afghan was involved in the 9/11 attack. Al Qaeda, initially a Saudi financed terrorist group led by the former US 'asset' Osama bin Laden, is declared the mastermind of 9/11.

2003 - 2006: US withdraws much of its military from Afghanistan and concentrates upon the Iraqi war. War lords and corrupt politicians assume the reins of government in Kabul but Taliban insurgency regains strength out in the countryside. Osama bin Laden continues to elude capture and is all but forgotten in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

2009: Obama makes the war in Afghanistan his own and searches for a rationale to justify the loss of 840 US soldiers and 575 NATO troops, plus the expenditure of nearly $200 billion during a time of economic recession at home.

HOW WILL WE KNOW WHEN AL QAEDA HAD BEEN DEFEATED?
In Afghanistan we are fighting a mixture of Taliban fundamentalists and Pashtoon patriots intent upon getting back control of their own country. They are winning the fight and are estimated to have established a permanent presence in 80% of the country, up from 54% last year. (GlobalSecurity.org.) At the same time, STRATFOR feels Al Qaeda itself is “continuing a serious decline” and may not any longer be a force to reckon with on either side of the border. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says that Al Qaeda has significantly diminished influence in Pakistan and Foreign Office statements support his assessment. STRATFOR feels that “Al Qaeda is changing from a centralized organization with global goals to a regional 'franchise' with more parochial aims.” In other words, small autonomous bases in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and elsewhere may blow up a hotel, a government building or a logistics depot now and then, but that's about it.

Within Pakistan, Al Qaeda operatives have been involved in bombings and assassinations mainly in urban areas and may have engineered the murder of Benazir Bhutto last year. However, they are not an equipped military force capable of being of tangible assistance to the Taliban. Our special US State Department representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke tried last week to give Obama a boost by suggesting that: “Al Qaeda is still there, ever dangerous and publicly asking people to attack the United States and publicly asking nuclear engineers to give them nuclear secrets from Pakistan”. This was at a reception in Washington hosted by the Congressional Caucus on Afghanistan (IndianExpress.com. 09/16/09). I had to wonder if Holbrooke thinks Osama bin Laden might have a mini-Los Alamos squirreled away somewhere in the Bora-Boras that can readily convert these coveted nuclear secrets into a deliverable bomb.

Back in Iraq, where we once considered Al Qaeda the principle thorn in our side, they are no longer considered a threat to the existence of the Iraqi State: They have fallen out of favor after being abandoned by the Sunnis back in 2006. (Joel Wing, The Progressive Realist 09/02/09). However, they are still capable of individual attacks upon hotels, government buildings and military installations and this is to our advantage since it keeps fear alive in the US media.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a defense and foreign policy expert at the Libertarian CATO Institute in Washington asks: “If Al-Qaeda is not in Afghanistan, why on earth are we in Afghanistan? We went there to defeat Al-Qaeda. If this isn't the arena for Al-Qaeda anymore, then our mission seems to have no rational purpose whatever. Even if the Taliban were able to re-establish control, it's not at all certain that they would allow Al-Qaeda to use Afghanistan as a training and logistical base again. After all, the Taliban were driven from power because of their association with Al-Qaeda back in 2001.” (NPR 9/24/09)

Poor rational Mr. Carpenter: he is not able to see that our mission was never about Al Qaeda, but always about reaffirming US military dominance in the Middle East and Central Asia so we can start pipelining gas from the Middle East through Afghanistan (soon to be renamed Pipeline-istan) all the way to India. If Al Qaeda is nearly dead then we'll resuscitate them to keep the fear alive. We must insist upon a submissive government in Afghanistan as we do in Iraq (where we are keeping hold of five huge military bases indefinitely). Our most immediate task in Kabul is to pull an attractive Afghan carpet over Karzai's election rigging and the corruption that seem endemic to all our diplomatic triumphs. Imagine Afghanistan as another client state like Egypt and Jordan: then we can get down to the serious work of laying pipe!

Yet, the evidence collected to date seems to suggest that H1N1 is a relatively mild flu, similar to the common influenza we have dealt with for decades and is in fact practically indistinguishable from it. It lasts no more than a week and has caused relatively few casualties compared with the deaths attributed to conventional influenza each flu season. The CDC data shows that as of August 28th, 8843 Americans have been hospitalized with Swine Flu and 552 have died of the virus. By contrast the seasonal influenza claims on average 36,000 deaths each year in the U.S. The Swine Flu has supposedly killed 552 in five month, equivalent to 1325 per year.

Despite their dire press office releases and raising the level of the pandemic to their highest rating of 6 in June , WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decided on July 10th that it was no longer necessary to collect data on the spread of the flu and therefore they would no longer require countries from around the world to send in data on confirmed cases. Nevertheless, WHO predicts that 2 billion could become infected over the next 2 years. WHO briefing note July 2009. They stated August 28th that “the swine flu virus H1N1 has overtaken other viruses to become the most persistent flu strain”. Around the world, 209,438 infections have now been identified in 170 countries and 2185 people are suspected to have died from H1V1. It is now the dominant influenza strain in most parts of the world”. At the same time they acknowledged that the underlying symptoms are moderate and that “most people will recover from swine flu within a week, just as they would from seasonal forms of common influenza”. Independent UK 8-22-09. WHO warned that second wave outbreaks of swine flu are expected this fall and that the actual number of cases may be much higher than their data showed. It was not clear how they arrived at their figures while no longer collecting data on the outbreak.

Nigel Dimmock, professor of biological sciences at Warwick University (UK) says it is 'surprising' that WHO has declared a virus the 'dominant strain' at such an early stage. “The scale and speed of the planned vaccination program is insane given that the overwhelming majority of those who have contracted the virus have had very mild symptoms.” Dr. Peter Holden of the British Medical Association said that “although swine flu was not causing serious illness, they were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, beginning with priority groups.” David Icke July 2009

In Germany, Health Minister Ulla Schmidt admitted on TV on August 25th that “the swine flu vaccination campaign was a hoax and the largest ever inoculation experiment in history.” The Chair of the Health Committee in the German Parliament, Dr. Wolfgang Wogarg, warned about potential swine flu vaccine safety. “Novartis' vaccine contained cancerous animal cells. It is a great business for the pharmaceutical industry” he told Neuten Presse on August 22nd. “Swine flu is not very different from conventional flu, but the vaccine can have dangerous side effects. “

WHY THE PANIC?

“This is potentially the largest mass-vaccination program in human history” said Howard Markel, a professor at University of Michigan and advisor to the CDC. More than 2800 local health departments have begun recruiting pediatricians, obstetricians, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and even dentists to carry out the vaccination program in the United States. The CDC is formulating a $4.8 million multimedia campaign to encourage people take the vaccine.
Five pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce the vaccine with the first 45 to 52 million doses due by mid-October. It will be at least February of 2010 before the total required number of doses have been manufactured.

The vaccination effort carries great risks for the Obama Administration: if the outbreak fizzles, they could be criticized for wasting $5 billion for 600 million doses of the vaccine. In addition the costs of administering the vaccine are estimated to run to $9 billion according to the Association of State and Territorial Heath Officials. On the other hand, if the pandemic really breaks out this fall and there will not be enough vaccine available, they will be accused of under-preparation. The last swine flu scare in 1976 fizzled and although 40 million were vaccinated, only one death was attributed to it. However it was blamed for the outbreak of a rare paralyzing disorder known as Giuilain-Barre Syndrome, for which there is no known cure.

“This is over reaction” said Barbara Lee Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center: “There is no national security threat here, why are we operating like this? This is not polio, this is not smallpox.”

The US Military is ready to jump into the pandemic. The Northern Command is awaiting Defense Secretary Gates' approval of a plan for military task forces to work with FEMA and provide assistance in support of civil authorities to assure that all Americans are vaccinated. This is a direct violation of the Posse-Comitatus Act.

GUILLAIN-BARRE SYNDROME

There will be no data available from clinical testing of the vaccine on humans before the inoculation program begins in October of this year. The first to be inoculated will be children, pregnant women, and health care workers. It is unheard of for a vaccine to bypass the precautionary procedures normally involved with clinical trials. Yet no one in a position of authority seems particularly concerned as they rush to get this still-untested vaccine out on the market. One of the vaccine ingredient: the adjuvant “squalene', has been directly linked to cases of the Gulf War Syndrome from the 1990s. This same adjuvant is planned to be added as a means to boost it effectiveness and stretch limited supplies. Ten laboratories in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia have documented squalene as inducing autoimmune diseases in animals. The Swedish Kartolinska Institute has demonstrated that squalene alone can induce rheumatoid arthritis in animals and the Florida Medical School has shown that it induces the production of antibodies associated with systemic lupus etythematosus. Paul Joseph Watson, Global Research 7-27-09.

This is not the first time that fear of a flu epidemic has generated hysteria. The avian flu scare in 2005-06 caused the US and UK governments to buy 34.6 million doses of Tamilflu vaccine at a cost of billions. These stockpiles are now reaching the end of their shelf life. There has been no avian flu pandemic to support this hysteria and there is a considerable history of US soldiers who were forced to take the vaccine and who become ill as a result. In 2003 the SARS virus was predicted to have a 25% chance of killing tens of millions. The virus actually killed 774 between Nov. 2002 and July 2003 and there hasn't been a single infection in the past six years. The BSE virus was said to have the potential to infect up to 10 million Britons. The disease itself did virtually no damage, yet 6 million beef cattle were slaughtered and the meat industry in the UK was savaged. Paul Watson Prison Planet.com 5-1-09.

EFFICACY OF THE VACCINE – 30,000 COULD WELL BECOME PARALYZED

The H1N1 vaccine will be acceptable to the Food and Drug Administration if it creates a protective antibody level in 30% of recipients. For those over 65, this figure drops to 18%. In other words, the vaccine is likely to be ineffective in 70% of recipients under age 65. This does not seem to suggest that its much of a cure.

CDC estimates that 30,000 Americans could have potentially lethal adverse reactions to the novel H1V1 vaccine and get Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) for which is no treatment and which can lead to paralysis and death. This is based upon the experience of 1976, when 40 million received a swine flu vaccine, and 4,000 developed GBS. If all 300 million Americans are vaccinated, then the experience of 1976 then as many as 30,000 could very well die just from the side-effects of this vaccine.

Given that the vaccine will provide protection to only 30%, is it reasonable to put at risk 30,000 lives when the swine flu itself is experienced as only a mild one-week illness? Dr. William Schaffer Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University and a member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, wrote in an e-mail that: “I am skeptical of finishing the vaccine before we know the appropriate dose to be included in each inoculation, before immunogenicity studies are complete, or before safety assessments have been finished. We should not make vaccine available before the trials are completed and the results carefully assessed.” Yet the Obama Administration has elected to start vaccinations in mid-October without waiting for the clinical trials.

“I fear that a rush towards vaccinating the population without completing trials risks leading to the harmful outcome that we witnessed during the 1976 swine flu scare” wrote Dr. A. Afkhami of George Washington University. In that instance, “the government advocated rapid production and vaccination of the population without adequate safeguards, which led to an unexplained increase in cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) amongst other complications, and massive liability for the government”. Dr. Afkhami is a international recognized expert on the 1918 Influenza pandemic and an advisor to the US State Department and the World Bank. He warns that “we must learn from lessons of the past and be mindful of not jumping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire by putting people's health at risk without adequate production and safety monitoring of the vaccines”.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the White House: The health care industry (insurance, hospitals, pharmaceuticals and health care professionals) paid for a considerable portion of his record-breaking campaign budget. Ever since that 2003 speech, he has steadily and consistently backed away from a Universal Single-Payer health care plan for America. Now, thinking forward, he is concerned more with the damage he could suffer if the powerful lobbies were to tag him a “big spend' Democrat advocating “socialized medicine” and ruin his chances for a 2nd term. Obama failed to mention in the 2003 speech that in addition to taking back the White House and Congress, we would need to take back power from the major health industry corporations.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Obama used to support a single-payer health care plan but flip-flopped on the issue Nicholas Ballasy, 8/04/09 – CNN News.com. “I can remember when Obama agreed with me,” said Conyers, referencing Obama’s past support of a single-payer health care system at a recent National Press Club luncheon. In reference to why Obama changed his mind about single-payer, Conyers said: “I'm just guessing now, because we haven't talked about it, but it's because of the Rahm Emanuel factor. Which is, to quote him: “look, we want success and we're willing to make a deal about anything to win in the off-year elections and to get our president reelected the next time he comes up. But I don't want anything that's stamped ‘reform’ and let it go at that.” Conyers said that the approach President Obama is taking now will not achieve its objective of holding down health-care costs and it will not cover everybody. It will not take away the misery of hundreds of thousands of people: the tragedy of people having to go into bankruptcy, of not being able to eat or pay rent, or even to get their pharmaceutical prescriptions.”

NOW THE HEALTH CARE THIEVES MEET INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE
“During his presidential campaign, Obama lashed out at the influence of the drug companies in Washington and criticized their chief lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a former Louisiana congressman. Now, writes the LA Times on 8/0409, Tauzin has secured an agreement that the Administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policies that Obama criticized on the campaign trail. Tauzin has now morphed into the President's partner - invited to the White House repeatedly in recent months along with chief executives of Abbott Laboratories, Merck, and Pfizer”. Ken Randall WSWS 8/05/09. The health care lobby spent $133 million in the 2nd Quarter of 2009 alone to gain this kind of access, more than any other sector. Not to be left behind, the lobby has given Chairman Rangell of the House Ways and Means Committee $1.6 million, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucas got $1.5 million, and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley $2 million. The lobby invested $170 million in Washington politicians in the past 2 years while scoring a 428 percent (over the past 7 years) increase in profits to reach a net profit of $23 billion in 2007. Now that's smart investing !

OBAMA AT WATERLOO
Senator Jim DeMint: “If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him”. Bill Moyers 7/25/09 Truthout: “The Republican Right is moving in to mortally wound the Obama Presidency early in his term, as they did to the Clintons in 1993.” William Kristol, one of their propagandists back then, urged his party to block any health care plan for fear that Democrats would be seen as “the generous protector of middle class interests”. Now he's telling the GOP to 'go for the kill - drive a stake through its heart”. The Wall Street Journal describes “a string of Republican victories plucked from the Senate Finance committee by drug company lobbyists including: (1) no cost cutting steps, (2) no cheaper drugs from Canada, (3) no direct Federal government negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower Medicare drug prices and from the Senate Health Committee (4) a monopoly for the biotech industry against competition from generic drugs for 12 years.

This hijacking of any resemblance to a Universal Single Payer Plan now makes the partisan debate over costs so warped and distorted as to be meaningless as well as inscrutable. “Opponents of reform have hoodwinked much of the public into believing that investments in America's national health care system will wind up costing individuals more than they'd gain from the effort. The CBO now estimates the costs of “reform'to be $611 billion over ten years. Compare this $61 billion per year to the one-time $700 billion bailout of our most insolvent banks. The bigger question now is whether we can afford not to fix the health care system. We are now spending 17% ($7,290 per family) of our economic output on health care compared with 5% in 1960 and this cost has seriously undermined our entire economy and our competitiveness as a nation. Other industrialized countries only spend $2,964 per family). Joshua Holland, Alternet 7/29/08.

DOES THE PUBLIC REALLY WANT MAJOR REFORM
Critics of the Obama public option have had little difficulty distorting public opinion to fit their prejudices: On Meet The Press 7/19/09, Michele Norris of NPR stated that “90% of those who voted in 2008 actually have health insurance and three quarters of them are satisfied with what they got”. Norris' figure fails to include the 50 million without insurance. We learn on Fox News that “nobody really understands the urgency of health care reform and that the American people are beginning to distrust that urgency, that rush into legislation”: Alexis Glick, Fox Business Network 7/21/09. The Wall Street Journal editorial writer Paul Gigot claims “that Obama is making the same mistake that he made on the stimulus package – he's governing from the left. That's why you see these extraordinary costs and extraordinary taxes”.

The Pew Research Center reports that 71% feel we need 'fundamental changes' or want our health system to be 'completely rebuilt'. Anthony Dimaggio, Counterpunch 07/29/09. The American public has actually supported a national health care initiative for many years. A Gallup Poll in 2007 found 64% agreed that it is “the responsibility of the Federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage”. In July 2009, the Washington Post/ABC News poll reported that 72% felt that Obama was placing the right amount of attention on health care or needed to focus even more attention on the issue.

HR 676 – THE SINGLE PAYER OPTION
John Conyer's HR 676. the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, is no longer even mentioned on the television news shows nor is it seriously discussed in Congress. President Obama predicted in 2003 that such a plan would be enacted by the Democrats once Congress and the White House were under Democratic control. Now that these things have come to pass, he says that Single Payer is not 'practical'. Once the Congress has sold its votes to the health care lobby, and once our President has decided that his chances of re-election are more important than the health of the nation, I must agree, Single Payer is no longer 'practical'.

RALPH NADER GETS THE LAST WORD
“About 100,000 lives are lost through hospital negligence per year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. This vast tragedy is hardly going to get worse under universal government health insurance that assembles data patterns to reduce waste, enhance quality, and transparency. By contrast, the secretive big health insurers who make more money the more they deny claims, ignore their loss prevention duties. In 1950, when President Truman sent a universal health insurance bill to Congress, the American Medical Association (AMA) launched a massive counterattack. The AMA claimed that government health insurance would lead to rationing of health care, higher prices, diminished choices, and more bureaucracy. The AMA beat both Truman and the unions that were backing the legislation, using the phrase “Socialized Medicine”. Fifty years later, 'corporatized medicine' has produced all these same consequences, along with stripping away the medical profession's independence. Today, the irony is that the corporate supremacists are accusing reformers in Washington of what they themselves have produced throughout the country: Rationing, higher prices, less choice, and mounds of paperwork and corporate red tape. Plus, fifty million people without any health insurance at all.”

Obama sees Central Asia as an important element in his program to expand 'Full Spectrum Dominance', assure the supply of oil and gas, and the continued sustenance of the Dollar as the world reserve currency. Petroleum (oil and gas) has since 1971 replaced gold as backing for the dollar and our huge military machine has taken on the role of enforcer. Should people decide to pay for their oil barrels with some other moolah, or a 'market basket' of currencies, the value of the dollar would drop like a stone. Our indebtedness would soon crowd us off the world stage. We could no longer print oil-soaked dollars and offer them to China and Japan as legal tender.

Genghis Khan found the 'Stans' (Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and East Turkestan (now renamed Xinjiang by the Han Chinese) a wonderful launching pad, (good horses, good grain, plentiful food supplies, terrible roads) for his insatiable drive to the west. Later, Temur who was born in Samarkand, went on to occupy Russia, Turkey, much of the Middle East, parts of China and northern India. Buddhism had been strong here before Islam but little remains of its influence today. The Arabs swept through in the late 7th century preaching from the Messenger's Koran and driving out Buddhism. Mohammedanism changed the entire culture, imposed Koranic law, and introduced a new vision of science, mathematics, poetry and philosophy.

The region's only protection from outside invaders had been it greatest natural resource: a ring of impenetrable high mountains, and surrounding trackless desiccating deserts. Ghenghis Khan, traveling light, penetrated these physical barriers and made its lush valleys his base for fodder, for food and for further conquests. Temur, a native of Samarkand who knew the region well, established the Moghul Empire in northern India and brought their riches home. Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent became glorious and wealthy cities. The Russians were never very successful here until they built a rail line across those deserts in the 1880s, and under Stalin's regime absorbed the five 'stans' into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The British, who were the world class Hegemon in the 19th century, wanted to strengthen and maintain their hold upon India and keep the Russians, the Persians and the Ottoman Turks the hell out.

All of this changed during the 20th Century with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the independence of the five stans, and the discovery of vast natural gas deposits around the Caspian Sea. In the 21st Century we have introduced the pilot-less drone, aerially refueled troop transports, and Barack Obama. What has really changed? Has everything changed from the days of The Great Game or are we still fighting the age-old battle for territory and influence? The five stans have now been repackaged as the eight stans in the minds of our Pentagon strategists, if you throw in Pakistan and Afghanistan, nicknamed AfPak, and add that new concept called 'Pipeline-istan'. These are the new focus of America's militant foreign policy. The Obama presidency has also introduced us to a brand new acronym to justify all of this: OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror).

AFGHANISTAN – NO END IN SIGHT
John Pilger suggested in his interview on 'Democracy Now' July 6th, that: “The Afghanistan War, so called, is really about building what Defense Secretary Robert Gates describes as a number of secured permanent bases throughout that country and reinforcing the major airbase facility at Bagram. The United States has no intention of getting out of Afghanistan. It is now building another of its fortress embassies in Kabul, just like the one in Baghdad and the $1 billion embassy planned for Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad. In the long term plan, having large numbers of boots on the ground will make no difference. They will be replaced by a string of heavily fortified and electronically advanced bases that will dot the landscape all the way from our client states of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the Emirates and thence on to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. These new-age Crusader Castles will be manned by American soldiers and supported by a large number of mercenaries. Electronic surveillance will employ drones and other remote control devices capable of both monitoring and inflicting instant retaliation upon populations from monitors as far away as Reno, Nevada. No more horrible treks across the desert wastes and the frozen Pumirs. At present we are not allowed, by treaty, to build fortresses within Pakistan, but that too could change. Hegemony without pain, high altitude murder without mayhem or even guilt. These are seen as places where our long term strategic position will allow us to observe objectively every country's behavior, help shape their internal policies, sit in on every rural wedding party, and restrain the influence of our imperial rivals. And oh yes, and insure that the oil and gas valves remain open.

After nearly eight years of fighting, Obama has escalated the Afghani conflict to a new and bloodier level. David Kilcullen, the former advisor to General David Petraeus, told the British Independent this week what is being openly discussed in the White House and on Downing Street: “We are looking at 10 years at least in Afghanistan, and that is the best case scenario. At least half of that will be pretty major combat. This is the commitment that is needed, and this is what the people in America and Britain should be told, and they should be told that there will be a cost involved.”

“General Stanley McChrystal, the newly-appointed US commander, has launched a lobbying drive for a substantial further increase in troop numbers” James Cogan WSWS, 7/14/09. An unnamed senior officer told the Washington Post that: “the view in the military was that as many as 30,000 more US troops were needed, on top of the 68,000 already deployed. Obama has committed his administration to the establishment of a US client state in Afghanistan and selected McChrystal to ensure that this is accomplished. This will certainly require the mobilization of more National Guard and reservist units and a stepped-up recruiting drive.”

The original pretexts given for waging war in Afghanistan have fallen by the wayside. The “authorization of the use of military force” legislation passed by the US Congress in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York City was predicated on the American military being used to hunt down those blamed for these atrocities—al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, a name that now goes virtually unmentioned in official Washington circles.

However, Hilary Clinton was apparently not informed of the change in the wind for, in her big policy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations 7/18/09, Information Clearing House, she explained “In Afghanistan and Pakistan, our goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies, and to prevent their return to either country”. As for Bush’s purported desire to bring democracy to the Afghan people, Obama has explicitly rejected such a goal as unrealistic. The only reason left for what is now clearly Obama’s war is the real and original one—the utilization of American military might to assert Washington’s dominance over the oil-rich and geo-strategically vital region of Central Asia. Three major pipelines are planned to bring the vast gas resources of Iran and Turkmenistan to India and China go through Afghanistan. Could this be the real motivation for our military policy?

PIPELINE-ISTAN
The Central Asian country that cannot speak its name is Pipelineistan and it is not easy to locate 0n the map. The only explanation for the massive US investments in the GWOT is that the Middle East and Central Asia are not only the source of most of the world's remaining oil and gas resources, but also the territory through which pipelines must transit to bring these resources to Europe, to India and to China where the big markets are. We are currently looking at a number of expensive pipeline projects such as (Pepe Escobar, Tomdispatch.com 5/13/09):

TAPI – Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Gas Trunk line, a $7.6 billion project through the deserts of Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. Note that the US is already building a mega-base at Dasha-e-Margo ('the Desert of Death') along this proposed route and plans more.

IPI – The Iraq-Pakistan–India Pipeline (the so-called Peace Pipeline) intended to transport gas from Iran's huge South Pars field (9% of total world gas) in the Persian Gulf. This line goes to the south of Afghanistan. This presumably would be financed by the Chinese.

The Mother of all Pipelines: Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-China Gas Line to south China's energy-starved Guangdong Province. Cost is $26 billion and the length 7,000 kilometers. The Chinese financing agreement specifically calls for no US bases to be built in Turkmenistan. The first phase is under construction.

Nabucco Gas Pipeline: From Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea and through Georgia and/or northern Iran to Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and on into Austria, German and the Czech Republic. Promoted by the US to break Russia's control of Western Europe's gas supply.

The foreign policies of Russia, the United States, China and India are all focused upon Pipelineistan. Forget about the GWOT and freeing women from the tyranny of the burkah.

THE CONTINUING WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ:
When Obama went to Annapolis on July 21, he said we’re getting out of Iraq and appeared to be giving a timetable: “within a matter of weeks, I believe”. General Casey contradicted him and said “we will probably be there for another 10 years. Another Pentagon general upped it to 15 years. The VOA News reporter Al Pessin quoted Pentagon spokesman Whitman on 14 July 2009 as follows: “Whitman says there will be no significant increase in the U.S. troop strength in Iraq, currently at 128,000. The plan is for that number to fall sharply in the first part of next year to between 35,000 and 50,000 by August 2010. Much of that residual force is expected to fall into the new category of Advisory and Assistance Brigades. All U.S. troops are to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.” We had previously been told that this withdrawal would begin in mid-2009 and by 2010 only 30,000 to 50,000 would remain at remote bases. No combat forces would be stationed in the cities and towns. The date “for all troops out” may be 2011 or it may be 2024 depending upon who has the most credibility and what we actually mean by the word 'troops'.

Stratfor reports July 1: “Iraqis celebrated the long-awaited departure of American combat forces from their cities on Tuesday, July 1st. But concerns about the fragility of the new-found stability in Iraq persists, and nowhere is that more evident than in the fact that U.S. troops remain essentially the same as at pre-surge level of three years ago.” While it is important that the “withdrawal of US combat forces be seen in the US media as a “stunning turnaround”, the truth is that the US needs these troops elsewhere but cannot allow Iraq to fall into chaos again as lethal political battles amongst the party factions replace the U.S.-jihadist war. "In other words, there is a reason the United States continues to commit 130,000 troops to Iraq: to assure the day-to-day security of its cities as effectively as possible.” Stratfor July 1. So the July 1st deadline for withdrawal has passed but the troops remain, despite slight-of-hand about who is combat and who is trainer, and whether downtown Baghdad comprises one of those remote fortifications to which our forces would withdraw upon Iraqi takeover of security needs. No mention is made of the enormous American army of mercenaries. They are never counted when it comes to withdrawal schedules but they're armed, poorly disciplined and well compensated.

KYRGYZSTAN – OUR NEW DEAL
The US was kicked out of the Manas Air Base at Bishkek, which also serves as the country's only international airport last February as the government tried to extract concessions from the US and get counteroffers from the Russians for another base near the city of Osh. The Manas Base is a hub for C-17 transports to Afghanistan and the lead refueling location for US and NATO forces. Without Manas, the Afghan war becomes a logistical nightmare as routes through Pakistan have become less secure. I sat in the airport in June for hours awaiting a flight to Osh and watched the heavy US troop transports lumber into the air and the lines of GI's being dumped from buses into the bellies of these behemoths. I thought they kicked us out, I asked, and later discovered that on June 23, 2009, a new deal had been reached between the U.S. and Kyrgyz governments. Under the terms of the new agreement, U.S. payment for use of the facilities will increase from $17.1 million to about $180 million per year including a $60 million signing bonus and funds for upgrading the airport, $21 million for fighting drug trafficking in the country, and $20 million for economic development. Stratfor 7/7/09. These Kyrgyz sure are learning how to play 'The Great Game'. While Russia generally wants the US out of Central Asia, they are, at the same time, unwilling to see a Taliban government in Afghanistan. They are not interested in committing their scarce resources to such an effort and seem convinced the Manas agreement can be revoked once again when it's in their interest.

HEY - LOOK OUT FOR THE MONSTROUS TYRANNY!
Are you still unconvinced, despite Bill Gates' testimony, that the Clinton/Bush doctrine of Total Global Dominance continues? Then try reading Obama's wonderfully Churchillian speech in Annapolis, Maryland: Barack Obama Annapolis Graduation Speech 5/22/09:
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy.
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without Victory there is no survival. We will ensure you can meet the missions of tomorrow, which is why we’re investing in the capabilities and technologies of tomorrow — the littoral combat ships, the most advanced submarines and fighter aircraft — so that you have what you need to succeed. In short, we will maintain America’s military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen.”

What is this never-surpassed monstrous tyranny? Surely Mr. President you aren't talking about that almost forgotten group of Al-Qaida fighters holed up in the AfPak mountains? Are you speaking of the Shi'ites in Iran, the Sunni Taliban in Pakistan's Hindu Kush, the Somali pirates? No? Then we must admit that we have never heard such ringing phrases to describe the defense of the dollar. Could it have been scripted at one of those Think Tanks in Washington stat are staffed by our military-industrial contractors and their Pentagon pals? Is all this rhetoric really necessary to assure the free flow of oil and gas from producer to consumer?

In this Eighteenth Edition, we review the Obama speech in Cairo, the Palestinian impasse, and how he balances his message of friendship with Moslems world wide alongside his armed attacks in Afghanistan and support for the Pakistan’s army’s assault upon the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

The man’s performances are captivating to us all. We are proud of a President so knowledgeable of Moslem history and accomplishments, who can speak comfortably of common aspirations, while skipping deftly past lethal Drone attacks on wedding parties in small mountain villages, and yet who somehow keeps our hopes alive while moving us towards more war and ever greater hypocrisy.

The Cairo speech was directed not to any one country but addressed the entire Islamic Nation, most of whom are intensely wary of American motives and of our capacity for change, while incredibly fond of our way of life. Stratfor suggests 6/03/09 that: “the Moslem masses are in for a disappointment . . . but this will not pose much of a problem for Obama. The fond feelings of the Moslem world might be nice to claim but ultimately he does not need their support. In the end, it will be the American people, not the rest of the world, who will issue the final referendum on his performance as President.”

GAZA WILL NOT DIE
It is 139 days since January 19th, when Israel stopped the wanton killing of Gazans, so as not to “rain upon the start of Obama's Reign” the following day. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told a Code Pink delegation to Gaza last month that “billions in aid had been promised in the wake of Israel's massacre, but so far nothing had arrived”. Code Pink reporters added: “Make no mistake about it: the blockade, directly enforced by Israel and Egypt but conspired in by their superpower patron in Washington, is a continuing act of war against an entire civilian population of 1.5 million, a form of collective punishment and a crime against humanity.” Roane Carey, The Nation 6/02/09.

Building materials that would allow Gazans to rebuild are forbidden, not one bag of cement, not one 2 by 4. Netanyahu complained that: "We are being asked to ease the living conditions of the population and allow goods and equipment in, but we have other priorities in the Gaza Strip. We do not want to strengthen Hamas, by allowing them to rebuild their defenses". By this logic, he could forbid flour since it gives nourishment that rebuilds strength and thus furthers resistance. In Cairo, Obama acknowledged that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza: “Suffer daily humiliations that come with occupation. There is no doubt that the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.” He said America will not turn our backs on their “legitimate aspirations” while carefully avoiding ascribing to them any 'rights'. Most appropriately, Obama said: ”Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build.” A nice phrase, but without the weight of a single bag of cement.

AND THE PALESTINIANS AIN'T ABOUT TO LEAVE
Obama equated Palestinians’ displacement from their homes (first in 1948 and now with each new Jewish settlement in the West Bank) with Israel having to suffer the hostility and attacks from individual Palestinians. “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed." He talked about Negroes in our south who resisted yet never did he acknowledge that it was their physical resistance which eventually got them some rights in America. Never once did he condemn Israel's violence in Gaza (1400 killed), nor in Lebanon (1300 killed), nor in the West Bank (2308 Palestinians killed in the Al Aqsa Intifada from 2000 to 2004, along with 727 Israelis).

Uri Avnery reports from Tel Aviv 5/31/09 that: “This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. The bill also promises one year in prison to anyone who publicly disagrees, no matter whether they be Arabs or Jews. It also prohibits Jews from advocating any change in the state’s definition, or the creation of a bi-national state in all of historic Palestine or spreading any other such unconventional ideas.” Finally, Avnery speculates: “One can only imagine what would happen in the U.S. if a senator proposed a law to imprison anyone who suggests an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. This government has already adopted a bill to imprison for three years anyone who mourns the Palestinian Nakba”. Nakba refers to the 1948 uprooting of more than half the Palestinian people from their homes and lands by a Jewish Army.

Well that pretty much brings us up to date in the prospects for either a one-state or even a two-state solution. Our Seventeenth Edition outlined the futility of these non-solutions and need not be repeated here, although President Obama hangs onto the Two-State Plan as if he couldn’t think of any other place to stand.

But let us at least end on a positive note with the announcement that Israel has finally released a set of maps showing where US-supplied cluster bombs were released around Lebanese villages during the last few days of their 2006 invasion of Lebanon. According to Ha’Aretz, the Israeli newspaper in Tel Aviv, between 1.2 and 3 million were dropped in Southern Lebanon (IDF figures). Since the war, 30 have been killed and 203 injured by these indiscriminate weapons that are prohibited under Article 50 of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. AntiWar 6/04/09 Stephen Green.

AFPAK WAR DEVISTATES AND DEPOPULATES
James Cogan reported 6/01/09 in URUK.net that: “A little over a month ago, the Pakistani government acquiesced to the demands of the Obama administration to use brute force to eradicate radical Islamist influence in the north-west of the country, as part of the so-called AfPak war to secure American interests in Central Asia. Pakistan had resisted all pressures up until this time to go after the rebels in the Northwestern Territories. In recent years, they have been afforded a considerable autonomy and allowed to impose their own system of government and of justice so long as they stayed in the mountains and did not come into the valleys.
Now, for the first time, the Pakistani military has attacked the Taliban on the ground as well as from the air in the Swat Valley where they had seized large areas. The Pakistan Army claimed over the past weekend that they had largely shattered the armed opposition in the Swat Valley, Lower Dir and Buner districts of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).”
The military operation in NWFP has emptied the city of Mingora – population 300,000 and has driven out most of the ethnic Pashtun population in the three districts targeted. The current UN estimate is that 2.4 million people have been internally displaced in just over a month, making it the largest displacement on the Indian subcontinent since the 1947 partition. The mass exodus has taken place during the harvest season, meaning that thousands of small farmers who could barely subsist before the offensive have not been able to bring in their crops. A large number of livestock have died or been lost.
The violence, instability and suffering will only escalate if, as appears increasingly likely, the government bows to US demands to carry out a full-scale offensive against the strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal agencies of South and North Waziristan. These areas are used as a safe haven by Pashtun fighters from over the border in Afghanistan who are resisting the US/NATO occupation of that country. Targets in these areas are being repeatedly bombed by unmanned US Predator drones but the cross-border movement has barely been disrupted.
Pakistani troops, not American, serve as Obama’s cannon fodder in these bloody battles with an estimated 15,000 Taliban fighters. In exchange, the Pakistani ruling elites represented by President Asif Ali Zadari and Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani will get the financial assistance they need to stave off economic collapse of the entire nation” reports James Cogan.

Obama’s only mention in Cairo of his major new military thrust into Pakistan was a brief reference to a $1.5 billion dollar five- year program to build schools, hospitals roads and new businesses. Did his speech writers just overlook the latest offensive? Did Obama think that with all his warm hug-a-Moslem talk his audience would forget this increasingly dark side of America’s program for the Moslem world?

SO AFTER CAIRO WHAT HAPPPENS?
We have searched the text of this “historic” speech for even a single concrete proposal to redress the grievances the Moslem world holds against America. We have not located a one. Yet many liberals praise Obama’s efforts and not a few conservatives have been equally enraptured. He has been applauded for not being Bush, for looking a bit ‘Third-Worldly’ and for a willingness to recognize US errors in the past. He was drafted several years back by key sections of the American power-elite to put this new face on American imperialism and global hegemony. Veteran cold warriors like Zbigniew Brzezinsky, who has backed him for years now. Zibby recently said, in an interview with the German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’, that the collective danger we (the US) face in coming decades is “that the majority of humanity will no longer tolerate these enormous disparities in the human condition”. In other words, world revolution is the fear and Obama was put in the White House to prevent such a cataclysmic social upheaval. Hence, our new and exciting President has opened his road show in Cairo this past week.

The semi-annual Israeli trek to the Oval Office took place this week and was a wonderful success – nothing changed, no one moved, and all is as deranged as ever. Bibi Netanyahu, with a most diverse Cabinet and an almost-fascist Foreign Minister, is said to have arrived hoping to get “fundamental redefinitions of the regional dynamic”, Stratfor 18 May - George Friedman, such as a re-examination of the 'two-state solution' and a “finite time frame for talks with Iran, after which unspecified but ominous-sounding actions are to be taken”. With Obama up to his ears in torture, the AfPak War, and a broken economy, Netanyahu's expectations seem quite demanding. Exactly why Obama agreed to the visit at this time is strange in itself, but Bibi is new at the job, and he needs to demonstrate his “special US relationship” in front of constituents. Israel has lost a lot of friends lately after their murderous treatment of the Gazans. Recent figures show emigration now outpacing immigration while between 700,000 and 1 million citizens live outside of Israel proper. A 2007 poll showed only 69% wanted to stay in the country and this included half of all young people. These figures are a bad omen for Israel” says John Mearsheimer in the American Conservative 5/15/09.

“Progress towards a two-state solution”, the assumed rationale for all talks between Palestinians and Israelis for years now, “is a total chimera” in the view of George Friedman in Stratfor 5/18/09. “It is a fiction that serves US purposes”: Geographically it is impossible to implement and control. Israel will never agree to return to the 1967 Truce Lines upon which the two-state plan is based. Furthermore, the major Arab powers are not supportive: The Jordanian royal family does not want to see Fatah in charge of a new Palestinian State on the West Bank, expecting that they would quickly overthrow the Hashemites that tried to annihilate them way back in Black September, 1970. President Mubarrak of Egypt views Hamas as a descendant of the damned Moslem Brotherhood that he has tried to eliminate for 20 years. Certainly the Saudis have no particular interest in according Palestinians any power or voice. So, the gentleman's agreement has been to make comforting noises about Palestinian rights while being careful not to achieve anything much beyond food handouts and periodic payoffs to political leaders.

“The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served US and Arab interests quite well: they provide the illusion of activity with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions - - all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again”. George Friedman Stratfor 5/18/09.

The Israeli prime minister is now asking that the various Arab states become directly involved in a conference wherein they would be forced to reveal publicly their very different public and private positions on Palestinian statehood and their lack of any real interest in pressuring the US to demand a viable two-state arrangement with Israel and a return to the 1967 borders. The clever thing about this position is that Netanyahu not only knows his request will not become a reality, but he and almost all Israelis do not want it to become a reality. The continued political stability of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even Syria is as much in Israel's interest as it is America's. “Israel is a conservative power, it does not want upheaval, and it is quite content with the current regimes in the Arab world. But if the Arab states were to roundly condemn Israel at a big international conference it would help justify tough Netanyahu's policies domestically, showing once more how Israel is surrounded by hostile states lusting for its downfall. Obama would probably just as soon put off any demonstration of the hollowness of the two-state peace process as long as possible. He's sent George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy to deal with the issue and that's quite enough attention to the problem.

Netanyahu, of course, knows all this. Part of his mission is simply convincing his ruling coalition, and particularly Israel's most aggressive foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, whom Netanyahu needs to survive, that he is committed to redefining the entire Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Once he has performed this Two-State Two-Step in the Oval Office, Netanyahu can move on to Iran where the US has made it very plain that Israel cannot mount an attack on their nuclear facilities without US approval to over-fly Iraq. Yet, Israeli writers continue to place scare articles in the American media, knowing full well that they are not a free agent when to comes to bombing the Persians. Netanyahu knows the limits of Israeli power in the region and is highly unlikely to put it to the test.

THE SAME OLD TWO STATE TWO STEP
So, given that Netanyahu does not expect nor actually really want the full-frontal Israeli-Washington embrace to change significantly, then what is all this talk about one-state and two state, and about the hard line opposition to a two state solutions by his hard-assed Foreign Minister Lieberman? Well – it is mostly thin smoke and foggy mirrors but should allow Bibi to return with an increase in his yearly allotments of economic and military aid.

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who earned Israel's eternal wrath in 2007 as co-author of 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy' explains the total impossibility of the Two-State Solution best:

- Netanyahu has been opposed for many years to a separate Palestinian state and will continue to build illegal settlements that ensure no Two-State solution can ever be reached;
- Obama is committed to the Two-State solution and to the elimination of any new settlements in the West Bank;
Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land, built 30 new settlement, and built 250 miles of roads connecting them since the 1990s;
- Like Presidents before him, Obama is powerless to stop Israel's colonization in the face of a hugely powerful lobby in the US Congress;
- Obama's silence during the murder of over 1000 civilians in the Gaza War shows him to be no match for the Jewish lobby in America, despite poll results that indicate 60% of Americans favor withholding aid from Israel if they continue to block a separate Palestinian State;
- Without some movement, Palestinians will remain locked-up in a handful of impoverished enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza and periodic strong-armed suppression will continue.

THE CASE FOR A GREATER ISRAEL
If we are to rule out the Two-State Solution since withdrawal from the new settlements would be political suicide, and if we consider the impossibility of living within a chopped-up Bantustan-like Palestine intermingled with walls, checkpoints, uneasy Jewish settlers, and a myriad of commercial, legal and political complications, then we are left with three alternatives that can be grouped under the rubric “Greater Israel”. All three make Israel, Gaza and the West Bank into one country that could be called one of the following:

-- Integrated Greater Israel - a secular society
-- An Ethnic Cleansed Israel – all Palestinans clear out please
-- An Apartheid Israel – the South Africaner Model

The0 Integrated Greater Israel would be a democratic bi-national state with Palestinians and Jews having equal political and civil rights but would mean the abandonment of the original Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland since the Palestinians would soon outnumber them. Israelis would never agree to such a thing.

Expelling all Palestinians from Greater Israel would be seen to outsiders as a crime against humanity. There are 5.5 million Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean and they would put up a wicked fight! Yet there are many Israelis who no longer have any qualms about killing Palestinians.

The most likely alternative is an Apartheid State wherein the Palestinians would have limited autonomy and few political rights. Former Prime Minister Ohlmert has warned that this will become the solution unless there is a two-state solution. He feels that apartheid would be suicidal for Israel. Mearsheimer, 5/15/09.

While Netanyahu and Obama posture for the cameras, Israel is indeed in serious peril. The only practical solution may be the two-state solution even though 480,000 Jewish settlers now live illegally outside Israeli borders and only32% of Israelis support the plan. The best argument for it is the fear that arises when the alternatives are considered.