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Iraqi Vice President in Moscow
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki served as prime minister from 2006 to 2014.
Washington forced him out for not being subservient enough to US interests. Haider al-Abadi replaced him.
Weeks later, Maliki became one of three Iraqi vice presidents. He holds the post despite efforts to abolish it.
In late 2014, he accused Washington of using ISIS as a pretext to maintain a military presence in Iraq, saying:
“The Americans began this sedition in Syria and then expanded its dimensions into Iraq and it seems that they intend to further stretch this problem to other countries in their future plans.”
The American System in Healthcare: The Path to Medicare
Nancy Spannaus
The current stalemate on healthcare in the Congress provides a perfect opportunity to "get it right," beginning with the approach represented in the legislation of "Medicare for all." The United States is faced with a health care emergency, and action to deal with the crisis by applying American System principles is needed immediately.
In his 1944 State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that the nation had basically accepted "a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed." Among them were "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health," and the "right to adequate protection from the economic fears of ... sickness...." As I outlined in the first article in this series. FDR was proceeding from his Constitutional commitment to provision for the General Welfare, which he had pursued throughout the New Deal. Having won the battle for Social Security and unemployment insurance, he was determined to build on his successes to provide prosperity for the entire population.Thanks to the effective counterattack against FDR's American System approach to the general welfare, ongoing now since FDR's death, this basic right has not yet been put into practice more than 70 years later.
Responses to House Passed Sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
North Korea responded to earlier US sanctions, calling their imposition “an act of war.”
Last month during his annual marathon Q & A session, Vladimir Putin said anti-Russian sanctions benefitted the country, making it more self-reliant and self-sufficient, notably by developing stronger ties with China and other countries.
He criticized Washington’s agenda, saying it “constantly tries to exert influence on the minds of the residents of other countries. Take a globe, spin it and point with a finger to any place.”
US interests are everywhere - interfering in the internal affairs of virtually all countries. “I know this from talks…with other the heads of state,” Putin explained. “They do not want to quarrel with the Americans and no one directly speaks about this.”
America’s Invasion of Syria Will it finally end now?
Eric Zuesse
The U.S. government has invaded and occupies Syria to overthrow its President, Bashar al-Assad and also to destroy ISIS, which is one of the jihadist organizations that are (like the U.S.) trying to defeat Syria’s government forces (Assad’s forces). The U.S. government has been supporting the ‘rebels’ (tens of thousands of imported foreign jihadists who aren’t ISIS but who are instead allied with or led by Al Qaeda) against the nation’s internationally recognized legal secular (non-religious) government. The only two U.S. Senators who are at all disturbed that the U.S. has violated both U.S. law and international law by having our soldiers and weapons invade Syria, are the two libertarians, Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Even they — the Senate’s two libertarians — don’t care about America’s violation of international law by America’s invasion and occupation of Syria; even they care only about our government’s violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even they do not challenge America’s right to violate international law (which wasn’t even an issue in that Senate vote).
CIA Director Pompeo Sees Nonexistent Threats Everywhere
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
Interviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, CIA director Mike Pompeo mentioned lots of nonexistent threats, ignoring a real one in Washington - the greatest menace to everyone everywhere.
He lied saying whether Russians or Soviets, they threaten America, “trying to shape world public opinion through a whole host of means - some overt, some less so.”
“That threat is going to be constant. We have an obligation to push back, defeat it, to work to make it painful for them so that they’ll reduce the magnitude of what they’re doing.”
Fact: Most important is challenging US aggression, its rage for global dominance, its support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, its CIA, FBI, NSA Big Brother spying and imperial menace to everyone.
John McCain: Neocon War Criminal
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
What Arizona voters failed to do for decades, serious illness did instead, likely ending McCain’s political career straightaway or in the months ahead.
It’s hard feeling sympathy for someone supporting decades of high crimes of war and against humanity - along with likeminded extremists in Washington.
Perhaps brain cancer at age 80 is payback time, hardly compensation for imperial lawlessness he supported throughout his political career - mindless of the enormous harm to millions. Instead of denouncing his ruthlessness, the neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post disgracefully called him “a hero…a maverick and a man of courage throughout his life.”
Senate Rejects Repealing, Not Replacing, Obamacare
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
GOP efforts to make America’s dysfunctional healthcare system worse continues.
On Tuesday, an amended Trumpcare without CBO scoring was defeated by a 57 - 43 margin - nine GOP senators joining all undemocratic Dems, gutting Medicaid the most contentious issue.
On Wednesday, legislation to repeal, not replace, Obamacare was defeated by a 55 - 45 margin, seven Republicans joining all Dems - even though Congress passed identical legislation in 2015, vetoed by Obama. What’s next is likely trying to get a so-called “skinny bill” passed, eliminating only parts of Obamacare, including unpopular provisions.
As long as three GOP senators defect, passage won’t happen. Enough Republican House support for this type legislation is uncertain.
Trillions of Dollars in U.S. Military Spending Is Unaccounted-For
Eric Zuesse
Now, and for many decades past, the American public has displayed far higher confidence and trust in “The Military” than in any other “Institution” (including than churches, schools, the Presidency, the police, courts — any).
And yet — according to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense — many billions, and sometimes even trillions, of dollars, in the Department’s periodic financial reports, are not documented. What has happened to the taxpayers’ money is unknown — it’s missing (alleged to have been spent, but to payees unidentified).
According to the DOD’s IG, this goes on year-after-year (yet without at all reducing Americans’ trust in “The Military”). Apparently, Americans, as a lot, are gluttons for punishment — or else our ’news’media haven’t sufficiently reported the “waste, fraud, and abuse” that “The Military” are doing to the American public. Either way, there is this extraordinarily high public confidence in the military ongoing year-after-year though the U.S. DOD continues to be the only unauditable federal Department, and expenditures amounting (over the years) into trillions of dollars remain unaccounted-for. But here will now be the American ‘news’media’s chance to call to the public’s attention this discrepancy between the military’s reality and the public’s perceptions of that reality, by publishing this documentation:
Democratic Party ‘Better Deal’ Puts Lipstick on Its Pig
Eric Zuesse
I write this as a Democrat who rejects the Party as it has become — controlled by and representing the Party’s billionaire donors, against the American public.
That Party — the Clintonite Democratic Party, which deregulated Wall Street and allowed no regulation at all of financial derivatives, and ended FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, and invaded Serbia, and increased the size of NATO (which should have ended when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance did, in 1991) — served superbly well the interests of America’s billionaires, but not of the American people, whose wages flatlined as Wall Street’s bonuses soared, and as that Democratic-Republican orgy of deregulation paved the way for the reckless lending that produced the 2008 crash, from which we’re still recovering. (America’s billionaires, however, did just fine from it all — and is that any wonder?)
The era of endless war didn’t really begin only with George W. Bush; the Clintons too were and are part of it and support every measure to ratchet-up military spending and turn America into the weapons-exporter to all of the world in order (not just to fatten the bottom lines of firms such as Lockheed Martin but) to “regime-change” every head-of-state that our billionaires or their ‘allies’ want removed from power and replaced by their chosen stooges.
NYT Hypocrisy on Healthcare
Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)
The Times notoriously supports wealth, power and privileged interests at the expense of progressive ones.
Its opposition to Trumpcare is more about hostility toward the president and support for abominable Obamacare than concern about House and Senate healthcare measures gutting Medicaid and leaving millions more uninsured than already.
The Times blasted House and Senate versions of Trumpcare, saying “Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday to begin repealing that law without having any workable plan to replace it.”Fact: GOP hardliners have lots of unacceptable ideas, polar opposite what all Americans need.
The Times: GOP “proposals vary in severity, but all of them would leave millions more people without health insurance and make medical care unaffordable for many low-income and middle-class families. “
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