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Republicans Demand the Impossible in a Healthcare Bill
Eric Zuesse
Republicans demand a healthcare bill (or medical system) that will simultaneously (and without sacrificing quality of healthcare) reduce their total expenses on medical care — including their insurance premiums and their out-of-pocket costs — and that will also be more free-market (with less government involvement and regulations) than in existing U.S. healthcare policy (both before and after Obamacare began); they want more free-market, and less cost, and also no sacrifice on quality.
The economic data show that (by far) the most cost-effective medical care is in countries that have socialized healthcare; the least cost-effective (meaning the least efficient) medical care is in countries that have not socialized healthcare, and the middle that’s between those two extremes is countries (there is only one: Switzerland) that are between those two categories: countries that legally require everyone to have health insurance but that remove the profit-motive from health insurance by having (as Switzerland puts it) “60 government-approved non-profit insurance providers offer basic mandatory insurance and optional loss-of-earnings [disability] insurance in accordance with legal requirements and the supervisory authority’s directives.” America’s propagandists for Obamacare had been saying such things as "Switzerland Has Its Own Kind of Obamacare — and Loves It”, and mentioned that "For many Americans, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which makes health insurance mandatory, is a bitter pill to swallow” but that it’s really “a victory for common sense,” but they were misrepresenting the extent to which the Swiss system is similar to Obamacare, and also misrepresenting (over-praising) the Swiss system’s track-record of performance.
Brazil’s Coup Plotter Convicted on Corruption Charges
Stephen Lendman
Former Brazilian Chamber of Deputies president Eduardo Cunha was convicted on corruption and related charges in connection with Operation Car Wash, a scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras.
Last May, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended him as lower house speaker for attempting to intimidate members of Congress and obstruct investigations into corruption allegations.
In September, the Chamber of Deputies stripped him of his position for breaching parliamentary decorum for lying about secret offshore accounts he maintained.
Accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes, he hid his wealth in foreign tax havens - like many other crooked politicians and others with ill-gotten gains.
Cunha was instrumental in ousting democratically elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff last August, a coup plot on fabricated charges - phony claims about budget manipulations, nothing improper about what she did, a practice many governments employ, notably America.
Neocon US General Urges War on Iran
Stephen Lendman
Iran threatens no one. It’s a leading global advocate for peace, stability, and mutual cooperation among all nations.
Russia’s geopolitical agenda fosters the same objectives. US policies are polar opposite, waging endless wars of aggression against sovereign independent countries - wanting pro-Western puppet regimes replacing their legitimate ones.
CENTCOM commander General Joseph Votel outrageously called Iran “the greatest longterm threat to (Middle East) stability.”
He lied, saying it’s “operating operating in what I call a gray zone, and it’s an area between normal competition between states…just short of open conflict.”
“We need to look at opportunities where we can disrupt (Iran) through military (or other) means.”
Genocide in Mosul
Stephen Lendman
America’s rage for global dominance is responsible for raping and destroying Mosul - the same pattern as in all US wars of aggression, civilians harmed most, massacred in cold blood.
At her weekly press briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said humanitarian crisis conditions in Mosul “soared to an unprecedented degree.”
“It’s time to ring alarm bells.” Hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the city with scant food, virtually no medical care and other essentials to life.
“Experts warn mass famine will be unavoidable if the operation…lasts” much longer, she stressed. “Regrettably,” this is where things are heading.
She condemned US-led airstrikes massacring civilians. No one in the West wants to talk about mass casualties. Horrendous war crimes continue daily - unaddressed and ignored.
Continued bombing of residential areas assures mass slaughter of civilians in harm’s way.
CENTCOM Commander on Phony Regional Threats
Stephen Lendman
America’s rage for endless wars is the greatest threat to world peace, stability and security.
Russia justifiably fears possible preemptive US nuclear attack on its territory.
According to its General Staff deputy head of operations Gen. Viktor Poznikhir, “(t)he presence of American ABM sites in Europe and ABM-capable ships in the seas and oceans close to Russia’s territory creates a powerful clandestine potential for delivering a surprise nuclear missile strike against Russia.”
“The presence of the global ABM system lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, because it gives the US the illusion of impunity for using strategic offensive weapons from under the protection of the ABM ‘umbrella.’ “
“The ABM shield is a symbol of the build-up of rocket forces in the world and a trigger for a new arms race.”
Since the onset of Western-instigated Cold War in the late 1940s, lunatics in Washington and at the Pentagon believed nuclear war on Russia was winnable.
What America’s Coup in Ukraine Did
Eric Zuesse
On March 23rd, Gallup headlined "South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering”, and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see it here), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a ‘democratic revolution’, but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it’s now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.
America’s criminal ‘news’ media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama regime began planning for a coup in Ukraine, and that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside the U.S. Embassy there, and that they hired members of Ukraine’s two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party, or “Svoboda" instead), and that in February 2014 they did it (and here’s the 4 February 2014 phone call instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. ‘news’ media misrepresented as ‘democracy demonstrations,’ though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption, even more than today's U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end Ukraine’s corruption — which instead actually soared after his coup there). The head of the ‘private CIA' firm Stratfor said it was “the most blatant coup in history” but he couldn’t say that to Americans, because he knows that our press is just a mouthpiece for the regime (just like it was during the lead-up to George W. Bush’s equally unprovoked invasion of Iraq — for which America’s ‘news’ media suffered likewise no penalties). When subsequently accused by neocons for his having said this, his response was "I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history,” but he was lying to say this, because, as I pointed out when writing about that rejoinder of his, he had, in fact, made quite clear in his Kommersant interview, that it was, in his view “the most blatant coup in history,” no conditionals on that.
US War Without Mercy in Mosul
Stephen Lendman
The battle for Mosul began last October - conducted by Iraqi ground forces and US-led warplanes.
Relentless terror-bombing killed thousands of civilians, war crimes by any standard. Residents told to remain inside were buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes.
US-installed Iraqi puppet president Haider al-Abadi lied, calling civilian deaths “miscalculations (and) unintended mistakes.”
Indiscriminate US-led terror-bombing and ground shelling destroyed or badly damaged almost every structure in western Mosul where fighting still rages.
The area resembles a moonscape with no visible life. The horror of what continues can’t be overstated. Residents still in western Mosul risk death or serious injury.
Online Privacy Protections Gone
Stephen Lendman
Last Thursday, majority Senate Republican members passed SJ Res. 34, a joint resolution, rescinding FCC broadband privacy rules.
On Tuesday, House members followed suit, Trump sure to sign the measure into law, letting telecommunications and cable companies sell private customer information for profit without their permission - an infringement of their privacy rights.
Free Press Action Fund head Craig Aaron said the following:
“Ignoring calls from thousands of their constituents, House Republicans just joined their colleagues in the Senate in violating internet users’ privacy rights.”
“Apparently they see no problem with cable and phone companies snooping on your private medical and financial information, your religious activities or your sex life.”
US War Crimes in Iraq and Syria
Stephen Lendman
Wherever US forces show up, mass slaughter and destruction follow - notably ongoing in Iraq and Syria.
Russia requested a special Security Council session so members can be briefed on US terror-bombing of Mosul, specifically the March 17 strike, massacring hundreds of civilians.
Sergey Lavrov criticized what’s ongoing, harming noncombatants most, noting the March 17 incident “because of its scale,” he said.
“If one cannot establish for hours that the airstrikes are hitting the wrong targets, then such actions of the US military startle me, as” its technology can strike targets with pinpoint accuracy, hitting what it aims at, Lavrov explained.
Marine Le Pen Peacenik?
Stephen Lendman
Her anti-establishment-sounding comments rankle Western politicians.
Her March 24 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow reflected support for closer ties with Russia.
With first round presidential voting scheduled for April 23, she hopes her meeting and calls lifting sanctions will boost her popularity among undecided French voters.
“The fight against terrorism can only be effective if the largest nations stand side by side and join forces,” she said.
If elected president, she pledged withdrawal from the EU and NATO. French citizens “must have the opportunity to vote for the liberation from slavery and blackmail imposed by technocrats in Brussels to return sovereignty to the country,” she stressed.
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