Author: R J Adams

In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.” ~ US President Dwight D Eisenhower, January 17th 1961.

The internet is abuzz with comment on the closure of the US government. Much of the feedback relates to the immaturity of those responsible: “Stop playing childish games”; “Grow up and get back to work”; “Wise up and sort out your differences”, are just a few of the public reactions encapsulated by the US media, for once not too removed from public opinion.

Unfortunately, the public are wrong. The events leading up to this week’s government closure have nothing to do with childish bickering between parties. Put simply, the issue is a war between government and corporate America.

Those members of what is colloquially known as the Tea Party, are basically corporate infiltrators into government, working (often unwittingly) to bring down the system on behalf of their corporate masters. It’s common knowledge that the Koch brothers gave birth to the Tea Party and that funding comes primarily from health professionals, the real estate industry, and oil and gas.

Obamacare, while not of itself a major threat to corporate America, is a step in the wrong direction for those who would see corporate government control as the future for this country – if not the world.

In its present form, the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’ will probably benefit the health industry, but the fear for corporate capitalists is that it will prove a mere rung on the ladder towards a more social welfare form of health service, and that’s definitely not the way Messrs Koch and associates view the future. After all, they’re working hard behind the scenes to cripple social healthcare services in other countries – particularly Britain, where the right-wing Minister of Health, Jeremy Hunt, has stated publicly that he favors “…the American system of healthcare.”

Already, the British Health Service is in disarray; deliberately starved of funding by the government, reduced to skeleton staffing levels, publicly maligned by the right-wing press in an effort to poison public opinion, while a sudden influx of advertising extols the benefits of private healthcare on British TV screens in a manner never before seen on UK television.

It’s hardly surprising that most of the private health companies now available in Britain are American infiltrators.

This quote, from Pinnacle Care, LLC, a Baltimore company that calls itself a ‘patient advocate service’, with a foothold not only in the US, but also Canada and Britain:

..a growing demand by patients for quality management of health care, more information and personalized attention, and a true partnership with health care providers has sparked explosive growth in the field of patient advocate services not just in the United States, but in Canada and the U.K. as well.”^[1]

It comes as no surprise then that Jeremy Hunt has recently released the UK’s ‘Care Quality Commission’ from parliamentary control. The CQC was a government body responsible for vetting all aspects of health service care, and Hunt’s announcement is surely a first step towards privatizing the commission.

Accompanying Hunt’s announcement, Leader Cameron dropped a bombshell on GPs (family doctors) by informing his party conference this week that doctor’s surgeries will soon open seven days a week, from 8am to 8pm. Dr Chaand Nagpaul of the British Medical Association responded that:

“These additional hours amount to around a 58% increase on current levels and we really don’t have the GPs to meet current demands, let alone an additional 58% increase in hours.”^[2]

No doubt Mr Cameron will be happy to call in the US private sector to assist.

Most Tea Party politicians are likely blissfully unaware of their enslavement to corporate America – as, indeed, are their supporters, happily brainwashed twenty-four hours a day by media advertising, perverted news programs, dip-stick radio-jocks, and the well-paid boot-lickers of Rupert Murdoch on his Fox News TV cable channel.

It begs the question as to why the less depraved members of the US Republican party, otherwise known as the majority – don’t simply vote the Tea Party out of the picture?

The only obvious answer is that they, too, find it advantageous to bow the knee to their corporate masters. After all, they’re not fools, and they’re certainly not children. Their power, as well as that of the Tea Party, is dependent on those who financially support them.

And that most certainly is not the voting public.

^{[1] Pinnacle Care Website}

^{[2] “PM wants longer GP hours” ITV, October 1st 2013}

Rafael Edward Cruz is, undoubtedly, an idiot. But, as idiots go, he’s not particularly outstanding among members of the US Congress. Like many of his colleagues, he’s more enamored of the sound of his own voice, than the quality of his words.

He may well hold his nose. Much of the guff he spouted during his recent Congressional marathon stank to high heaven and beyond.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn what Cruz, or any other American politician, says in criticism of their fellows. They can call each other the most horrendous names, accuse their opponents of a preponderance of foul crimes, or even, as happens frequently, expose themselves sexually on the internet. It all does no more than prove the shallowness of their thinking, and a lack of concern for those poor suckers who voted them into office.

What sticks in my craw is a habit common to many American politicians, that of blackening the names of those they know absolutely nothing about, to gain effect for their otherwise pathetic, childish, and frankly, stultifying speeches.

Senator Rafael Edward Cruz isn’t fit to mention the name of the late British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. His reference to that gentleman as an ‘appeaser’ of the Nazis is insulting to the British and shows a total lack of any knowledge of the period.

Chanberlain’s ‘appeasement’ stigma resulted from political propaganda propagated by a gutter press, both in Britain and America, following his attempts to prevent a European war he knew would prove disastrous for the continent. Chamberlain was feted for his efforts when he returned from Munich on September 29th 1938. King George VI wrote:

“After the magnificent efforts of the Prime Minister in the cause of peace, it is my fervent hope that a new era of friendship and prosperity may be dawning among the peoples of the world.”

It was only in later years, when scapegoats were being sought, that the label, ‘appeaser’ was laid at Chamberlain’s door.

Senator Rafael Edward Cruz has likely never bothered to consider reasons why Chamberlain would seek a peaceful solution to the problems afflicting Europe in 1938. After all, it’s a nice story spun to Americans as cowardice – not something that could happen in America, where the military alternative is the only alternative on the table. You know, like the bully in the school playground who’s as thick as a farmyard full of pig-shit and only knows how to use his fists to win an argument?

Consider why Chamberlain attempted peace by diplomacy before going to war (and it was Chamberlain who declared war on Germany in 1939). The country wasn’t ready for war. Its munitions were in a sorry state. France, the only real ally of the British, was weak, and America – that great land of the free and the brave – like Pontius Pilate, was washing its hands of the whole affair and wasn’t going to get itself embroiled in someone else’s war.

When it came to the crunch, Britain took on Germany, Hitler and the Nazis, alone. According to Senator Rafael Edward Cruz’s history books, WWII began in 1942. Actually, Senator, it didn’t. It began in 1939. Where was America in the intervening years? Surprise, surprise! America was busy appeasing the Nazis by financing their war effort via highfalutin US families whose members would go on to become US Presidents.^[1]

…The debate over Prescott Bush’s behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the “Bush/Nazi” connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty…^[1]

Which begs the question: who were the true appeasers?

While we’re on the subject, like most Brits I’m heartily sick of hearing Americans tell us how they won the Second World War for us. By 1942, when Japan made fools of the US by bombing Pearl Harbor, the war in the air over Britain had been won by the RAF. Hitler’s attempt to invade that island by sea had been thwarted. ‘Unternehmen Seelöwe’, (that’s ‘Operation Sealion’ in case Senator Rafael Edward Cruz’s German grammar is a little rusty) was cancelled and the German chancellor instead instigated ‘Fall Barbarossa’ – the invasion of Russia on his Eastern Front. We all know what happened there. Well, maybe Senator Rafael Edward Cruz didn’t make it that far into history while at Princeton, and unfortunately the US history books used in educational establishments are not known for their accuracy.

So, Senator Rafael Edward Cruz, if your fellow Americans are prepared to tolerate listening to the shite emanating from your vocal chords for twenty-one hours and nineteen minutes, that’s their prerogative. No doubt there are some who might even agree with you. After all, it appears the ‘standard’ for US political pundits is to announce the most outrageous lies in the certain knowledge that someone, somewhere, will nod sagely in agreement simply because their grand-daddy belonged to the same political party.

We British – even those of us who live in this country – would be most obliged if you would leave our history out of your rhetoric, unless of course you can provide a truly accurate assessment.

But, then, even if you could you probably wouldn’t dare. It might just cause a rent in the fabric of that American, arrogant, exceptionalism that makes you believe you can stand up and spout the most obscene nonsense and the rest of the world will simply nod slavishly in agreement.

^{[1] “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power” Guardian, September 25th 2004}

When Vladimir Putin wrote his op-ed to the American people in the New York Times recently the US media rose up as one to mock, taunt, vilify, and generally overstate their disgust of Putin for daring to criticize American exceptionalism. After all, if the US media is to be believed, America is the greatest nation on earth, and its people an example to the whole planet of just how people should be.

One man more upset than most at Putin’s gall was the eminent senator from Colorado, John McCain. Not even waiting for the support of his alter ego, Senator Lindsey Graham, or that other member of the political menage-a-trois, Joseph Lieberman…

…in bed with each other on so many matters of US policy, he rushed off a quick eight hundred words or so, not to Mister Putin, but to the Russian people.

Unfortunately, the tome wherein McCain intended to publish his offering was not in a position to accept it. Since Senator McCain is a little out of touch with modern Russia, he hadn’t realized that in the 1990’s the well-known newspaper, Pravda, had become the official organ of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Instead, our noble senator chose a website of the same name, but sadly one unlikely to attract the attention of many Russians, and certainly not Vladimir Putin.^[1]

According to Mister McCain [Excerpt]:

I believe you deserve the opportunity to improve your lives in an economy that is built to last and benefits the many, not just the powerful few. You should be governed by a rule of law that is clear, consistently and impartially enforced and just.

He [Putin] has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few…He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent.

It appears to Mister McCain that Russia isn’t too different from the United States: “you deserve the opportunity to improve your lives in an economy that is built to last and benefits the many, not just the powerful few.”, and, “…has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression…” It does smack a little of the old home country, John.

Whatever one’s opinion of Putin, a comparison between his writing in the New York Times, and McCain’s in pravda.ru, reveals on the Russian side a man who, while ruthless, is characterized by great intelligence, and on the other a blatherer better suited to a fireside chair, a warm cup of cocoa, and a rug carefully wrapped around aged knees.

^{[1] “Pravda vs. Pravda: Which one is McCain writing for?” CNN, September 15th 2013}

^{NOTE: Anyone still needing to compare the writings of the two gentlemen herein involved (I use the term ‘gentlemen’ in its broadest possible sense) can view Mister Putin’s offering HERE, and Mister McCain’s response HERE.}